Overwhelming applause for inaugural 'World Travel India'

'The concept of a major international travel trade show blended with a high level conference was a potent formula' says Richard Gayle, WTI's project manager.

'A unique attribute of WTI was the well organised hosted buyer programme where 25 buyers from north America, Europe, Africa, Russia and the Far East were brought to the event courtesy of Qatar Airways', said Gayle. They met with major local organisations such as the national tourist boards of Goa, Maharashtra and Kerala along with independent enterprises such as Jet Airways, Air Sahara, Indian Airlines and Le Meridien hotels, Cochin & Kovalam.

In all, WTI presented over 180 exhibiting companies from 19 countries including some of the industry's biggest names such as Tourism Malaysia, Gulf Air, Dubai's DTCM, Visit Britain, Switzerland Tourism, Hong Kong Tourist Board and the Kingdom of Cambodia. Exhibitors offered positive comments such as those voiced by Ms Barbara Van Deventer of South Africa's Three Cities properties who said 'the show was extremely beneficial for both Three Cities properties as well as South Africa. I feel that we need to attend this show on a yearly basis in order to grow our business from India'

According to Ashish Kumar Singh, managing director of Maharashtra Tourism, the event underscored the India's importance on the international travel market, 'WTI could well go a long way towards affirming Mumbai's credentials as a MICE destination' Other endorsements included comments from experts like Ian Graham, of the UK's Hotel Solutions Partnership, who said 'India contains a lot of potential and events such as these [WTI] go a long way in enhancing the tourism position of the country.'

This sentiment was echoed at the WTI conference by the regional representative of the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), Dr Harish Varma. The WTO estimate that India will receive five million visitors soon, reaching nine million by 2020. He also observed that 'everybody connected to tourism and hospitality should understand that price sensitivity will lie at the heart of every marketing operation,' he emphasised.

Qatar Airways support was for the exhibition was matched by their participation at the WTI aviation summit. The airline's CEO, Akbar Al Baker, made some frank and informative observations stating that 'open skies are key to developing the aviation industry in the country and so too, the tourism, because airlines are the chief delivery system of the tourism policy of any country especially, India, which has serious potential unfortunately untapped up till now.'

Dina MacDonald, managing director of WTI organisers Kinex Log of the UK, said she was delighted with the outcome. 'For any event to make the impression WTI made is remarkable, for this to have been achieved at its first show is truly sensational'.