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World Travel Market – the colossal b2b travel trade event held each year in London’s Docklands- and I will both be celebrating our 30^th birthdays this November, so I thought that it was time I expressed my long-held secret love for the show that costs me my sanity every year.

There’s plenty of reasons for the British travel PR to hate November – not seeing daylight for four entire days, existing on a Morgan Spurlock-style diet of pastries, realising your client is half a mile away from the waiting journalist who you have BEGGED and compromised yourself in five different ways for an interview, I could go on, but I’ve still got to admit that I really quite love WTM week and there’s two main reasons for that:

Firstly, it’s a bit like Ready…Steady…PR! A little holiday from all that strategising, taking the long view, etc. You’ve got a tiny bit of budget, about 3 working days, an eye-watering level of competition from every other travel PR in London but your client is only here for 2 days so it’s well worth pulling something impressive out of the bag. My number one career highlight happened at WTM: back in 2007 I was in the mobile radio studio with Carlos Alberto, captain of Brazil’s 1970 World Cup-winning team. Slightly demented with caffeine, I found myself shedding a little tear as he described the team effort that went into one of the world’s all time greatest goals. It’s not often that you get to sit in a 3ft-wide caravan with a legend.

Secondly, it’s the age-old desire of human beings to get together in one place, have a drink and dish the dirt. Maybe I’m a bit sad, but WTM is one of the few weeks in my year when I’m greeted by more than one person who I know but haven’t seen for a while. Just like the early Britons embraced Christmas because there was already a Pagan celebration to break up the winter misery a bit, no matter how much the travel trade socialises and sells online, I reckon WTM will always be a relevant focal point of the year. Anyone else feel the same? What’s the US version of WTM like?