Because much of the world still isn’t used to the idea of independent travel, a daunting prospect when you venture to destinations where you have no local knowledge, can’t speak the language, don’t have a clue about the culture.  Some travelers just like the ease, relaxation and convenience of having it all pre-arranged for them.  How do you suppose all those package tours get put together?  Sometimes an energetic organizer will do it on their own, but more often it is the result of working with a variety of companies that are easiest to meet at the world’s top travel shows.

ITB Berlin is the world’s top trade show in the travel and tourism business, bar none. That is established by ITB’s visitor and exhibitor statistics, but that is also the conclusion of the world’s travel professionals who use the show.  [Full disclosure: I used to help American exhibitors make money at ITB.]

ITB Berlin attracts 108,000 trade visitors.  Yes, there are days when the show is open to the public and is engulfed with Berliners thinking about their next vacation. But they aren’t counted in the 108,000. These are real business people from throughout the world who are arranging travel packages, looking for fresh destinations, or gathering new info on destinations of interest to their customers. The majority of these trade visitors are from Germany or the surrounding European Union, but that’s not a bad thing.  They work with travelers who are willing to go long distances for an experience, who stay at a destination longer than travelers from most other areas, and who generally spend more on a per visit basis.  And, of the non-Germans, nearly 16% of the trade visitors are from Asia, including the Middle East, decidedly attractive markets.

Papua New Guinea was at ITB, but where was Hawaii?

There are more than 11,000 exhibitors, more than 76% of whom are not from German destinations.  In fact, the exhibitors represent more than 180 countries! And guess which major world destination isn’t there?  Hawaii! Yeah, Hawaii may be mentioned at some hotel stands and there are some small German tour companies that hype Hawaii along with other tropical destinations, but there is no major Hawaii splash at ITB.  And there hasn’t been for at least four years now.

The Hawaii Tourism Authority, responsible for such things, has devoted only $100,000 of its multi-million dollar marketing budget to Europe.  That’s for all of Europe, though it is actually split between between Germany and England, with nothing left for any of those other pesky Europeans.  And how is it spent?  I’m told that 15% of it is used just to bring the head of HTA’s contractor for Europe to Hawaii to say what he is spending the other $85,000 on.  That’s turns out to be mostly on marketing brochures and press releases.  What do you expect when you hire a PR firm to do business promotion and give them little money to work with?  Virtually nothing is left to spend on trade shows, despite these fairs being the cornerstone of how much of the world, and Europe in particular, does business.

So, what were Hawaii’s competitors, the tropical resorts of the world, doing while Hawaii was sitting on its laurels?  They were exhibiting at ITB Berlin, setting up their future business.  Here’s the list.

The next ITB Berlin is March 9 – 13, 2011.  There is even an ITB Asia now, October 19 – 21, 2011 in Singapore, which gets the Asian coverage HTA says it craves.  Will HTA exhibit at either one?  Not likely under present management.

Hot property

I worked in Vienna in the late 1990s and tales of rampant car theft were common in the Austrian capital.  My office had a Plymouth Voyager minivan that I drove regularly across the border into Slovakia.  Turned out it wasn’t the only Voyager crossing that particular border.  My security officer cautioned me to always be careful where I parked, making sure it was in a secure location.  Voyagers were in demand, it seemed, by the Ukrainian mafia, which was using them as “troop carriers” back east.  In one two-week period, 25 Voyagers were stolen off the streets of Vienna and some were later spotted in Kiev.  A van belonging to the American ambassador in Austria was stolen after it was parked on the street in Bratislava.

It wasn’t just the Ukrainian mafia.  Bratislava in those days was divided into spheres of influence controlled by the local Slovak mafia and interlopers from the Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and Italy (and probably others I never heard about).  They each used a hotel in their part of the city as a headquarters and, if you parked in that hotel’s garage, you were pretty much assured protection.  Ironically, I think my van was usually protected by the Ukrainians.

Things worked differently if you had an expensive or rare personal vehicle.  I drove a BMW roadster in Austria and made an early decision never to drive it to the east, though I did make nervous exceptions for brief excursions into Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.  The Albanian mafia was especially active in thefts of BMWs, Mercedes and the like, though the Poles did a good business in stolen cars to the north of us.  The local wags in Vienna swore that the official Albanian tourism slogan was: “Visit Albania.  Your car is waiting for you!”.  In fact, cars stolen from Austria and Italy could be found in huge impromptu “lots” on Albanian beaches and owners sometimes found their vehicles and bought them back.

Nope.  The stolen car trade is nothing new.