THE German National Tourist Board (GNTB) hosted the 38th Germany Travel Mart (GTM) together with Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing and Tourismus Marketing Gesellschaft Sachsen from May 13 to 15, 2012.
Speaking at the opening Petra Hedorfer, chief executive officer of GNTB said: “The GTM is the biggest event of the year for Germany’s inbound travel industry and is extremely important in terms of international marketing.
This is where key accounts from all over the world can come together with German suppliers.”
For medium-sized tourism providers, this platform is a unique opportunity to establish contacts within the international travel industry and to promote their latest products and services.
GTM 2012 was a year of several firsts as the event went green for the first time. Another first was the live social media newsroom featuring multimedia content on the @gtm2012 or #gtm2012 Twitter feed and on Storify.
Taking place at Leipzig, this year’s three-day event, attracted 620 buyers and journalists from 40 countries who found out about inbound tourism, transport in Germany, and new products and services in the hotel industry from 356 German exhibitors as well as from local and regional tourism organisations. The largest delegation, comprising 131 people was from Asia. 109 travel industry representatives travelled to Leipzig from north-west Europe, 105 from north-east Europe, 95 from south-west Europe, 91 from south-east Europe and 90 from Americas/Israel.
Leipzig and Saxony, GTM partners in 2012, promoted their cultural appeal and visitor attractions to key international accounts and opinion formers at the event. “After 1998 in Dresden and 2003 in Chemnitz, we are delighted to be back in Saxony, and in its 38th year will showcase Leipzig as a worthy and attractive host city to international delegates,” said Hans-Jürgen Goller, managing director of Tourismus Marketing Gesellschaft Sachsen.
“Although tourism in Saxony has been on an upward curve for a number of years now, the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. This GTM is an excellent opportunity for us to raise the profile of Saxony as a high-calibre destination for cultural travel.”
For the entire duration of the GTM, the GNTB engaged in a range of social media activities. The content generated on the individual social media channels will paint a dynamic picture of events at the workshops and will be available online even after the GTM has finished. “This is part of our on-going Web 2.0 strategy”, added Hedorfer.
“As well as offering an authentic picture of what’s going on at the trade fair, the multimedia content will also consolidating the impact of this year’s event and extending its reach.”
This year, for the first time, the international press forum at the Porsche factory in Leipzig was telecast live over the internet. A special social media feed was set up to tell the story of the GTM. Its multimedia content includes photos, videos and audio podcasts. This feed is integrated into the www.germany.travel/gtmlive microsite, thereby allowing people to access all relevant content from one source.
At the heart of the world’s biggest B2B marketplace for inbound tourism is the two-day workshop, which saw exhibitors from Germany showcasing their products and services to buyers from all over the world. An additional educational programme of events also provided buyers an overview of individual sales tools for promoting travel to Germany.
Continuing its trend of taking the exhibition to a different city each year, GTM 2013 will take place in Stuttgart from May 5 to 7, 2013.