IBTM World has exceeded its previous record for pre-established meetings: a total of 77,651 business meetings have been reserved before this year’s event, 5% more than last year. There has also been a year-on-year increase of 9% in the average number of appointments per exhibitor, from 25.1 to 27.4 in 2018.
In addition, the latest figures show that 54 percent of hosted buyers participate in the hosted buyers program for the first time this year, 20 percent more than in 2017; 50% of the hosted buyers are completely new to the IBTM portfolio, an increase of 16% year-on-year; and 20% of the hosted buyers are corporate buyers, 52% of which are new to the IBTM portfolio.
Commenting on the news, David Thompson, Exhibition Director, said: “We are absolutely delighted to announce such solid results for our clients, not only that this year’s event is another highly successful opportunity for exhibitors in terms of volume of quality opportunities to do business with completely new contacts, but it’s also a big boost for our team, which continues to work very hard to get in. The final stages of preparation for next week’s event. ”
Buyers will be present from organizations such as Moet Hennessy, Netflix, Bayer US, Diageo, Salesforce, Hewlett Packard, Amway, Toyota, Delta Air Lines – Meetings and Worldwide Events, Motorola, Peugeot Sport, MIA Communication (WALMART), Inter IKEA, InfoWatch , PricewaterhouseCoopers, Procter & Gamble, Siemens Ltd. and SONY. IBTM has also announced that, in addition to a strong portfolio of returning brands, this year an exciting selection of exhibitors will be presented for the first time at the Barcelona event, which includes the Tourism Board of the Philippines, Tourism New Zealand, Municipal Tourism Commission of Beijing, SIXT GmbH. & Co., Global Passenger Network, Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. and Rosewood Hong Kong.
In 2017, IBTM World welcomed almost 3,000 exhibiting companies from more than 150 countries, 3,463 buyers and thousands of visitors for a calendar full of meetings, networks and educational sessions. More than 74,000 meetings scheduled between exhibitors and buyers were organized during the three days.