Tbilisi Hosted B2B Luxury & MICE Workshop for the 2nd time

On February 17, Tbilisi hosted the prestigious professional luxury travel event B2B Luxury & MICE Workshop in Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel for the 2nd time.

This year, the workshop saw 30% more international participants than in 2017 due to the potential of the local market.

As an established specialist travel industry event, the B2B Luxury & MICE Workshop brings together a variety of luxury and destination travel products and introduces them to new markets, where travel, and specifically Luxury travel, is emerging.

The B2B was a closed ‘invitation only event’ which focused on luxury and up-market travel products including luxury hotels, destination management companies and travel destinations via national tourism boards. A selected number of leading outbound Georgian Travel companies were invited to attend and have one-to-one meetings with prestigious international exhibitors.

The B2B Luxury & MICE Workshop is organized by the British company TMI, a travel marketing and communication company which is the part of Travel Consul Alliance (www.travelconsul.com), working in partnership with Georgian marketing consulting company BRANDOR Consulting.

This year, the B2B Luxury & MICE Workshop brought some prestigious new destinations to the Georgian market for the first time, including the tourism boards of Slovenia, Monaco, Dubai and Greece, and welcomed the return of Singapore and the Dominican Republic.

As many of the international participants were visiting Georgia for the first time, the workshop kicked off with a presentation/ overview of the Georgian outbound travel market by TMI’s Director Helene Lloyd and was continued by an introduction to technology platform CHUTE.

CHUTE helps destinations, hotels and other travel products to increase their presence on social media. Company representative Nathan Bird and invited speaker Sandro Sulamanidze, from Travel Business Service Ltd., held a panel discussion about the influence of social media on tourism in general, and its tendencies in Georgia.

Local participants attended a presentation innovatively introducing Slovenia, this year’s Official Partner, delivered by Slovenian Tourism Board representative Anja Bezgovsek.

The presentations were followed by the workshop itself, a series of face-to-face meetings between international and local partners.

The working day finished off with a gala cocktail for all workshop participants in the “Hotel Museum” and other special guests.

GEORGIA TODAY and OK Magazine were the Official Media Partners of the event.

The world of luxury was represented by numerous well-known and niche 5* star hotel brands, including: Belmond; Bahia Principe from Spain; Duetorri Hotels from Italy; Chateau de la Messardiere, France; Losinj Hotels & Villas, Croatia; Grecotels, one of the leading hotel brands in Greece; as well as Italian Hospitality Collection, a collection of upscale Italian properties that came to the Georgian market for the first time.

A complete list of foreign participants and the event details can be found on the event website www.B2Btravelworkshop.com.