TMI Director Helene Lloyd on the 2019 B2B Luxury & MICE Workshop
Rooms Hotel Tbilisi this year hosted the third edition of the prestigious professional luxury travel event B2B Luxury & MICE Workshop. As an established specialist travel industry event, the B2B Luxury & MICE Workshop brings together a variety of luxury hospitality and destination travel products in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and introduces them to new markets, where travel and specifically Luxury travel is emerging.
The Workshop focused on luxury and up-market travel products including luxury hotels and resorts, destination management companies and travel destinations such as national and regional tourism boards and allowed local Georgian travel companies to have one-to-one meetings with top international exhibitors.
This year’s B2B Luxury & MICE Workshop brought prestigious new destinations to the Georgian market for the first time, including the tourism boards of Catalonia and Tenerife, and saw the return of the Slovenian tourism board. There were also some new hospitality participants including international hospitality brands such as the Intercontinental - Vienna Hotel from Austria, one of Greece’s most prestigious Hotel Brands, Grecotel and most importantly, the participation of S7, Russia’s 2nd largest and most dynamic airline. Turkish Airlines also participated for the 2nd year running. There was also a number of hotel and DMC representatives from Slovenia and Croatia, as well as travel products from other European countries.
Slovenia and its potential were put into the spotlight in a presentation delivered by Slovenian Tourism Board representative Anja Bezgovsek, followed by B2B meetings and, that evening, by a cocktail gala at Tiflis Veranda, where the international participants were introduced to a Georgian hospitality experience.
GEORGIA TODAY grabbed a chance to meet and speak with Helene Lloyd, the Director of TMI, a British travel marketing and communication company which is part of Travel Consul global Alliance www.Travelconsul.com. In Georgia TMI works in partnership with Brandor Consulting to organize the professional travel industry Workshop.
“We are organizing B2B Luxury & MICE Workshop in Tbilisi for the 3rd year running, but in fact it’s quite an established event. It was first launched in Almaty, Kazakhstan 9 years ago and then expanded into Baku and finally came to Tbilisi for the first time in 2017. The key aim of the event is to introduce international participants from different countries and introduce them to different potential partners in Georgia, so the focus is on outbound travel and the B2B workshop is one way to open up the market. It accentuates the importance of networking and helps the companies to share their experience and ameliorate a number of skills which are necessary in this industry, including sales and product promotion”, she said.
The Head of TMI also shared her future plans regarding Georgia, announcing that another project is scheduled to be carried out in Georgia in October this year. “We’re planning another event in Georgia in Mid-October, 2019. This will include meetings between different professional industry players, in a workshop format, but the focus will also be on the promotion of Georgia. Instead of desk-based meetings we will organize different Georgian experiences for the international and local participants to experience together. This will be more fun and help to establish more relationships between the different business partners. We will bring together international buyers from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia as well as MICE agents from Russia. The workshop will provide all participant with a taste of Georgia and to show case the destinations unique features including for eg how to cook a traditional Georgian dish or how to sing a polyphonic song”. We believe that this more interactive approach, will help tourism professionals to fall in love with the destination and realize its huge potential in the tourism sphere.
Helene Lloyd also share her thoughts about Georgia as a tourist destination, describing it as a colorful, historical and interesting country, with very high potential for development to become a must-visit place in the future. “Georgia is very authentic and that is key and it is vital that it is maintained. It has the potential to give individual experiences to every kind of visitor. The future of travel is about personalized experience and Georgia can really excel in this sphere, but it is important that tourism in Georgia is carefully planned and not over exploited, as this can ruin a destinations reputation and, in the long-run result in a mass tourism destination differentiated only by price, this does not benefit anyone and can destroy the main attraction of the destination.,” she told us.
As to why Georgia was chosen to host such an important event, the TMI Director said the decision was made as a result of the high demand of the clientele of her company and the great attractiveness of Georgia as both an inbound and outbound tourism market. The removal of the Schengen visa restrictions was another catalyst for the decision.
By Ketevan Kvaratskheliya