ITB Berlin

Not a premiere, but still exciting: GlobalCom PR-Network was represented with its own booth at ITB Berlin, the biggest tourism trade fair worldwide! Four participating agencies went to see the world: Claudia Wittwer from GlobalCom PR-Network Germany, Luc Malcorps from Outsource Marketing and Communications (Belgium), Daniel Chardon from Chardon Communications (Switzerland) and Velibor Zolak from AMC Communications (Montenegro), all members of the tourism task force within the network, presented GlobalCom to airlines, hotel chains and destinations.

Little obstacles put in our way – the public transport was on strike and there was heavy snowfall right on the first day of ITB – did not keep us away from making about 50 meetings with companies and organizations like Kempinski Hotels, Regione Piemonte, National Tourism Organisation of Montenegro, Abu Dhabi National Corporation for Tourism and Hotels and many more. The follow-up of these meetings is still in progress, but some of the meetings were quite promising.

ITB proved an excellent chance to present GlobalCom as a network of PR agencies with long-term experience and a good standing in their respective markets. It is definitely an asset that most of our members do not focus exclusively on tourism. First, that grants that agencies will bring in innovative ideas from their experience background with clients from other industries. Second, besides tour operators, airlines and the like, a lot of companies offering services for tourism industries (like software companies) were represented at ITB.

Our experience at ITB showed clearly that there is a growing need for international communication in tourism – preferably with as little coordination effort as possible. It also showed that we can achieve even better results when we show our full potential as a global network: especially the USA, Russia, Japan and China are “hot” target markets, where we definitely do have strong partners. So before we confirm our booth for next year, everybody in the network should definitely think about a trip to Berlin in March next year. And by the way: Snow-covered Berlin looks wonderful!

Claudia Wittwer