ITE Hong Kong's only travel fair well covers southern mainland China too

• Published Month : Thursday, 09 Jan 2020 12:00 pm

More outbound in holiday seasons of Summer & Christmas

ITE, organized by TKS Exhibition Services Ltd, covers regional travel trade, MICE and quality FIT. Of the 11,613 buyers and visitors in 2 trade days of ITE2019, which require registration for admission, 11% from overseas and 26% from mainland China mainly Guangdong, so south mainland China is well covered. Attending the two public days are 73,665 visitors with some 85% prefer traveling in FIT or private group.

In fact, ITE offers B2B and B2MICE programs which include seller-buyer quick-dating, help promoting exhibitor's trade seminar / workshop by online campaign, pre-registration, etc. Also available is the B2C program.

Despite the varied economic situation in recent months, Hong Kong residents continued making more outbound trips during peak holiday season: July to September 23.0 million departures, up 1.7%; and on December 21, starting day of "extended" Christmas holiday 318,000 departures, up 5%, The city's air ticket sale grew 9% in July, 8.5% in September and 11.7% in November; dropped 8.6% in August and 7.3% in October; and revenue from January to November grew 3.8% to HK$27.5 billion.

Also minimally affected are international exhibitions at the city's major convention centers, as nearly all of them held as planned. Significantly, a large outdoor consumer fair, which was held from December 10 to 31 last year at the Victoria Park in the city center, went smoothly and reportedly with good visitor flow.

Hong Kong with 7.4 million people but spending US$26.5 billion on outbound, rank World's 11th and Asia's 3rd largest source market in 2018 after mainland China and South Korea (population around 50 million). Its per capita outbound spending averaged US$3580, higher than Australia at around US$1500 and UK at US$1150, which respectively visited by some 309,000 and 243,000 Hong Kong citizens in 2018.

In first 9 months of 2019, Hong Kong arrivals to Australia grew 2.7% to 232,300, to Taiwan grew 4.8% to 1,175,321, and Thailand grew 2.7% to 799,474. In third quarter (Jul-Sep) last year, 562,970 Hong Kong citizens visited Japan, up 2.2%, with a spectacular 23.56% growth in September.

ITE Hong Kong 2020, the 34th ITE (LEISURE) & 15th ITE MICE, will be held from June 11 to 14, 2020 at Halls 1 of Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. Organized by TKS Exhibition Services Ltd, ITE is supported by China's Ministry of Culture & Tourism and Hong Kong Tourism Board etc. 

At ITE 2019 over 87% of 675 exhibitors were from overseas, and over half of the 56 exhibiting countries and regions were from outside Asia. In-depth and theme travel products for up-market travelers are highlighted. 

The comprehensive ITE enables exhibitors to conduct channel sale and trade promotion in trade days, and direct marketing to travelers in public days. In fact, ITE public visitor interest buying travel products online and onsite each exceed 60%.