Over 100 industry actors were present, including Nice Côte d’Azur Airport and Plaisir de Partir, official partners of the SITCA exhibition; the Tourist Offices of Lithuania, the Lisbon region (Portugal), Ajaccio, Bonifacio, Innsbruck (Austria); the Consulate General of Indonesia; Travel Agencies and Tour Operators like Marmara, Fram, Grand Nord Voyages, Altiplano (South America), Pharaon Tours (Egypt), Jacaranda (Madagascar), Ansel Travel Agency (China), Trenitalia, Donatello (Italy), Club Med, SNCM, Tourinter…
Most of them, present since the first edition in 2005, have successfully created a warm and friendly atmosphere within the Exhibition Hall hosting this event for the first year. The choice of this new, much larger space demonstrates the organizers’ ambition to make this exhibition an unmissable event in the global tourism industry. As Agnès Scalliet, head of marketing at Nice Côte d’Azur Airport, points out: “It’s a very good idea, Nice deserves its own Tourism exhibition. Plaisir de Partir has supported this exhibition since its inception and will continue to do so in the years to come.”
Nice Côte d’Azur Airport is a partner of the International Tourism Exhibition of the Côte d’Azur for the third consecutive year. Plaisir de Partir is a website, a real promotional tool for flights and Tour Operators. Part of the commercial sector of Nice Côte d’Azur Airport, it is a platform gathering all offers departing from Nice from a large number of travel agencies and partner Tour Operators. Customers can thus get a broader and more complete offer through this site. With over 17 Tour Operators present at the Plaisir de Partir stand, it was hard for visitors not to be tempted by ever more enticing offers. Six booking terminals were set up in the entrance hall, providing visitors an opportunity to discover and book travel deals departing from Nice.
Exhibitors were not lacking in originality to bring their stands to life, differentiate themselves, and showcase the unique aspects of their destinations. Lithuania, a country still little known on the international stage, is a good example. The Lithuanian Tourist Office, present for the first time at the exhibition, aims to develop its tourism activities through its 2009 European Capital of Culture, Vilnius, as well as its UNESCO-listed sites. According to its director, Inga Lanchas, “The country is still little known; however, since the opening of the Lithuanian Tourist Office in Paris, we have seen an increase of +18% in French visitors.”
With an even more varied offering than in previous editions, everything was in place for everyone to find their next holiday destination. From cultural visits in the Leiria region in Portugal, to the snowy ski slopes of Innsbruck, to humanitarian tourism in Madagascar, several new offerings were present in the aisles of this exhibition, rich in history across some of the world’s oldest civilizations like India or China.
Jean-François Zhou, director of Ansel Travel Agency, a Paris-based travel agency-tour operator specializing in China and Asia, took the opportunity to remind us that the city of Hangzhou is twinned with Nice, and hopes, through his presence, to develop the Azuréen clientele.
Other destinations close to the Côte d’Azur were also offered, like the regions of Corsica, Vendée, Alpes de Haute Provence, or even Italy. These last ones came to provide weekend ideas more suited to the lifestyle of an average citizen, as Angela Grinblat, Product Manager at Trenitalia, the Italian railway company, points out: “There are very few flights between Nice and Italian cities. Given the significant Italian presence on the Côte d’Azur and the dynamic relations between these two countries, the train remains the most effective and fastest means of communication.”
Good luck to this young exhibition…
