Notes from the Underside

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World Travel Mart, London 2010

Holiday, as a verb, an adjective, a noun and a concept is intrinsically positive. Everyone can appreciate it, because whether you do database entry or drill oil, a holiday is a break on your own terms. If you want to put yourself through a fitness bootcamp (a growing trend in North America), go for it. If you want to sit by the beach and burn your skin to cinders, that’s great too. What you don’t often see, if at all, is just how much money, thought, and commerce goes into influencing your decision making process. Billions are spent trying to convince you, in all manner of ways, how to spend your time and money. Scratch the underside of the tourism industry, and under your nails you’ll find a highly competitive, cutthroat battlefield where countries, regions and companies attack each other ruthlessly in their quest for your mind and dollar. If you don’t work within the tourism industry itself, you’ll only see smiles and glossy brochures. Visit the invite-only World Travel Mart, an annual trade show for the business of travel, and you’ll find knives out in the form of flashy pavilions, backroom deals and financially slippery graft. “It’s like all the joy in travel is sucked right out the room,” Simon Calder, the UK’s top travel expert, tells me. We’re in the belly of the beast here folks. Never have so many people worked so hard and spent so much to ensure you have the holiday of your dreams.

My entire train disembarks at Custom House for the Excel Centre, a massive convention facility located in London’s Canary Wharf. Notably, just about everyone is in formal business attire. For an industry that sells fun and smiles, both were absent. Networking is for meetings, not the train. Inside the hall, split into two halves, national tourism boards have built flashy pavilions, with representatives from their domestic tourism operators, hotel groups, airlines and media in small booths taking meetings. This is where the travel industry in 2012 is decided, the trends that will be shaped, the destinations that will be in the news. If my travel agencies promote you here, what can you do for me there? If my airline flies in there, what can you promote for me here? Considering Greece and California are pretty much bankrupt, and Spain and France are gripped in huge budget austerity measures, it’s fascinating to see just how much cash they’ve sunk into their respective theme park pavilions. This investment shows just how important tourism is for the economy. 160 nations are represented, and all have to have something unique to show – from the giant snow globe in Switzerland to Rwanda’s tribal dancers, the traditionally dressed Inca in Peru or the huge sweeping desert tent of oil rich Abu Dhabi. Israel is squeezing freshly squeezed Jaffa orange juice, the coffee at the Brazil and Dominican Republic bars is world class. The French and Italians, of course, are dishing out wine at all hours. The pavilions are divided up by region, and it’s easy to identify the big boys on the block. France, Spain, Holland and Germany dominate Europe, but it’s great to see countries like Slovenia, Belarus and even Bulgaria putting on a show. Israel has been removed from the Middle East in this alternative planet, placed somewhere in Europe close to Turkey, but not quite. With 150 tourism ministers in attendance, politics must be accounted for, which is why you won’t find Israel sandwiched between Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority pavilions. Even Iraq has a presence, promoting new hotels and customized antiquity tours. The Caribbean is pushing hard, as is Central America. Only Haiti seems lost, out of its league or budget, with a small, simple trade show booth seemingly ignored by the vast majority of foot traffic.

I walk around taking meetings, learning about what tourism boards are promoting, looking for interesting story leads. I speak to Kazakhstan, Bhutan, Uruguay and Serbia. I pop into the folks at Namibia, Iceland, Gambia and Nepal. Countries that I have yet to visit, but hope one day to do so. The World Travel Mart, perhaps the largest tradeshow of its kind, is not for tourists. So while giant screens flash typical glossy helicopter shots of lovers on the beach, drinking wine, eating lobster, it’s not for the sake of the thousands of people mulling about. It’s to sell a dream to the dream peddlers, the folks who ultimately influence your holiday decision-making. I see a man going through the business cards he has collected in just two days, and they stack five inches high. Connections are made, deals are brokered. Everyone want you to visit, spend your money, tell your friends, and come back in the future. It’s important. It keeps sizable chunks of the economy afloat.
Technology companies, ticket brokers, online portals – laid out before me the travel industry loses its sheen and becomes like any other. Wealth is created, jobs are secured, products are created. It just so happens that the product involves us having a good time. Which, no matter how you look at it, is preferable to ones that destroy us (arms), rape the environment (minerals) or manipulate economies (finance). Still, this week I peeked into the desperate shadows of travel. I learned much and made some great contacts, but feel a little tarnished, as if I’d just overheard the adults talking about something I wasn’t supposed to hear. Maybe I just need a holiday.

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