It's the beginning of the year so it must be travel show season! Last week we went to Destinations: The Holiday and Travel Show while a few weeks before that I also went to the Adventure Travel Show.
The Adventure Travel Show was the smaller of the two and held at Olympia. As you might expect from the title, it was aimed mainly at gap year students and people seeking adventure sports and uncomfortable trips to remote locations. Think "expeditions". It was interesting and would be fabulous if I was single but there wasn't a whole lot for families. It was good for finding volunteer organisations. It wasn't very busy when I went at the end of the day which made it really easy to strike up convesations with the exhibitors.
The Destinations show was held at Earls Court and was much bigger and busier. Think "mainstream". Many of the exhibitors were tourist boards from numerous countries. However, there was considerable variety including some very small tour operators and more adventurous travel companies. For example, we had a chat with the company that was involved in making the "Tiger! Tiger!" BBC documentary. We also found a tiny company that did tours of Cambodia and Vietnam.
We came back from both shows with large stacks of brochures which we're slowly going through and helping us refine our itinerary. I've also been renting a few travel DVDs of India and China which have been useful. The kids have been watching them and thinking about what they would like to see. However, the DVDs have also made Jenny a bit worried about the health aspects of travelling India.
I didn't know about this before, but you might be interested in The Gap Year Show.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gapyearshow.com/