Despite financial crisis and swine flu, ITE & ITE MICE this year maintained its scale largely as a result of expansion by past exhibitors especially some official pavilions, and participations by new exhibitors.
The swine flu resulted in some late cancellations of booking and dashed earlier hope for a bigger expo this year.
In all, some 600 exhibitors from nearly 50 countries and regions exhibited this year, and occupied a total of 16000 square meters, a small increase of 15000sqm last year.
Mr. Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR Government, has again sent a message to welcome all participants of ITE & ITE MICE.
The travel expo this year was held from June 11 to 14, and officiating its opening on June 11 with Guest of Honor, Ms. Rita Lau, JP, Secretary for Commerce & Economic Development Bureau of the Hong Kong SAR Government.
Official pavilions by Hong Kong, India, Japan, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, Switzerland, and Yemen, all exhibitors last year, expand by double to triple digits this year.
China pavilion remains the largest while other official pavilions, such as Abu Dhabi, Argentina, Macau, Malaysia and Taiwan etc, maintained significant presence.
Japan has been this year's Partnerland Asia this - the very first time that the travel expo has ever named a Partnerland. The Japan pavilion, already number two by scale last year, increases by nearly 40%.
New exhibitors this year came from different continents.
Those with national pavilions include Azerbaijani, Fiji, Greece and Indonesia, while Bhutan, Canada, Chile and Syria have only individual exhibitors.
Provincial tourism authorities, such as Jakarta of Indonesia, Kyushu of Japan, and Sabah of Malaysia, took their own collective stands outside their respectively national pavilions.
Launched for the first time this year was the Health & Medical pavilion which had an official Taiwan pavilion and exhibitors from some other countries.
Many exhibitors in ITE, which covers mainly leisure travel, also target business and MICE travel.
Besides the Indonesian pavilion in ITE MICE, several official pavilions in ITE such as Hong Kong also feature MICE significantly.
For more information, visit ITE MICE
Related Article:
