New U.S. Incentive and Meeting Travel Show Planned for 2011 October 01, 2009 The Americas IBTM (AIBTM) show will take place in June 2011 in Baltimore, using a hosted buyer format
By Leo Jakobson
Reed Travel Exhibitions today announced that the inaugural AIBTM trade show, which will compete with the Motivation Show in the incentive and meetings travel arena, will be in June 2011.
The Americas Incentive, Business Travel and Meetings show will run June 21-23, 2011, in Baltimore, MD. It joins existing IBTM shows, including the flagship European show, EIBTM, in Barcelona, Spain, as well as others in the Gulf, China and Australia.
The show will be similar to the larger EIBTM in that it will have a large-scale hosted buyer program, the company confirmed in a statement. While it is clearly premature for attendee estimates for AIBTM, for comparison purposes, the ABC Audited 2008 EIBTM attendee numbers are: 3,725 hosted buyers out of 8,131 total attendees.
AIBTM was originally planned to debut in 2010, as Incentive previously reported, but was postponed in February, 2009, when the one-two punch of the poor economy and negative perceptions of business travel hit the industry.
“Having consulted with the industry we now feel that it is an appropriate time to announce the launch of AIBTM in 2011,” said Vanessa Cotton, chair of Surrey, England-based Reed Travel Exhibitions Meetings and Incentive Events, in a statement. “When the global economic downturn hit the industry, and we had to postpone the event, it was always our intention to consider 2011 as our goal for launch.”
Incentive/IMRA Sales Excellence Awards Winners Announced Incentive magazine announced the winners of its 15th annual Sales Excellence Awards earlier this week, celebrating the best and most successful independent representative firms in the industry.
U.S. Travel Association Forms Meetings, Incentives, Trade Show Council The U.S. Travel Association has created a new board member council that will build a proactive meetings and incentives research, communications, government relations and promotion agenda, it announced yesterday.
President Signs Travel Promotion Act President Barack Obama today signed the Travel Promotion Act into law, creating the public-private Corporation for Travel Promotion tasked with marketing America as a tourism destination around the globe.
INCENTIVE HIGHLIGHTS
INCENTIVE NEWSLETTER
Get up-to-date coverage on the latest on industry news, travel, and merchandise!
RSS
