PATA Travel Mart up 56% on last year

The 26th PATA Travel Mart opened in Singapore Wednesday with sellers taking up 56.5 percent more exhibition space compared to last year.

Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) President and CEO, Mr. Peter de Jong reported that this year’s 2,325 square metres of net booth space was a major improvement on last year’s figure of 1,485 square metres.

He said that representatives from 213 seller organisations from 33 Asia Pacific countries exhibiting at the Mart would meet with 190 registered buyers from 46 countries during the three-day trade event.

Mr. de Jong told delegates he was very pleased with the strong turnout but that PATA Travel Mart was more about “balance and quality of buyers” than purely numbers. Since resuming total operational and marketing control of the event last year, PATA has strived to reposition the Mart for future expansion. PATA Events policy is to apply strict quality criteria to buyers - a factor essential to attracting a broad range of travel products.

“PTM 2003 is the start of the repositioning of the Mart,” said Mr. de Jong. “Our region deserves a large mainstream travel trade show. This is an exciting first step.”

Chairman of the PATA Travel Mart advisory committee, Mr. Kevin Murphy, said the turnout after the challenges the industry had faced in the last few months was a “very good start - everybody is keen to get back to business”.