World Travel Market 2024 – Visit the West

The world’s travel market is the biggest event on the travel calendar. The event is held at the ExCel in London and attracts tens of thousands of attendees from around the globe. Over 40,000 travel professionals attend the annual event. Once again, Visit West exhibited on the UKinbound stand, N7-210.

Image: WTM2024 was held at the huge ExCel Exhibition Center in London

Destinations, tour operators, DMCs, service providers and more from the UK were in the North Hall along with the rest of Europe and others. The UKinbound the stand has a prime location at entrance door N7 and dominates the UK section. It is clearly one of the most popular and busy stands in the entire event.

Many other destinations were present on the UKinbound stand, including Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, the North East of England and Greenwich along with Visit Britain. Visit West (under the Bath & Bristol travel brand) also exhibited alongside Cotswolds Plus LVEP.

Image: Kathryn Davis meets with the Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism, Sir Chris Bryant MP at WTM 2024.

89 meetings were pre-arranged with the team across the three days, and many more took place with people coming to our stand unannounced. Many of our Visit West members also stopped by and it was great to see them.

The stand presence was managed by Visit West’s Head of Marketing, Jon Chamberlain, who leads the travel trade engagement for Visit West, but various members of the team were also present at various times to hold meetings and answer enquiries. Kathryn Davis (Managing Director) had a busy calendar of meetings and also met with the new Minister for Tourism, Sir Chris Bryant MP. Susie Bowers (PR Manager) and Emma Frayling (PR & Communications Manager) had packed diaries of meetings and conversations with visiting media and influencers on day one.

The World Travel Market also attracts a number of ‘fringe’ events before, during and after the event itself. There are also several stages with informative plenary sessions and keynote speakers. Kathryn Davis was invited to participate in a discussion around film tourism on day one.

Themes during the week that came up in conversation were outlooks for 2025 and 2026, availability of accommodation, success stories from 2024 and plans for positive engagement and activity ahead. We updated old and new contacts with key themes and events for 2025 as well as new developments for 2026, including new homes in the pipeline. There were also a few live inquiries where our ‘Destination Triage’ service has started and suggestions for businesses to work with including availability and pricing are being worked on. A key theme that was repeated from previous years included the need for DMCs and tour operators to be offered guaranteed FIT rates – and how the accommodation companies that offer them will benefit greatly from medium-term bookings.

Over the next few days and weeks we’ll be following up with everyone we met, but if you’d like to speak to the team in the meantime, don’t hesitate to contact us via email.