Winter is the travel expo season by John Dersham

Every winter DeKalb Tourism participates in some of the key travel shows around the Southeast and Midwest. These shows are held in large cities, usually at convention centers or complexes that can accommodate up to a thousand supplier booths and up to 140,000 visitors to the exhibits. These shows are held mostly in the coldest part of winter for a couple reasons.  Number one: people are looking for things to do and places to go during cold and sometimes ugly weather; Number two: people are interested in planning their warm weather vacations; and number three: many of these shows are comprised not only of Destination Marketing Organizations like ours, but they are boat, RV, fishing and motorcycle expo’s too. In cold weather visitors come to these shows longing for sunny days and warm weather and seeing RV’s, Boats and Motorcycles gets them in the mood to travel and in the mood to buy one of these products at the show or in our case plan to take a vacation to our area.

Our travel show season begins this weekend in Columbus, Ohio at the AAA Great Vacations Expo. This particular show is dedicated to travel and vacation planning. There will be organizations from all over the world set up to show off their destinations. This show is a three day event and will have up to 50,000 visitors. The next show is in Greenville, SC in February and it is also a three day AAA Great Vacations Expo. This is followed by the Indianapolis Travel, RV, Boat and Motorcycle Expo. It is held at the Indiana state fairgrounds and covers multiple buildings. This show began in 1954 and usually draws up to 150,000 people during the course of the ten day expo. In April we will attend the Nashville Women’s Expo. These women’s expos are held in various cities and they focus on products and services that appeal to women, including travel planning. In most cases it is women who plan their family vacations.

Overall this is a very effective way for DeKalb Tourism to promote to regions within our range of likely visitation. These shows are an opportunity to talk to and hopefully sell people on the reasons they should come to see us. We will give them travel guides and other pieces of printed information to take home with them. Every year when I go back to some of the same expo’s I will have people come by our booth and tell us they have been to our area and they tell us how much they enjoyed their visit. In several of these shows Alabama has a large presence. We partner with Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association and the Alabama Department of Travel and Tourism. Our booths cover approximately 50 running feet down one of the isles. Like all forms of advertising, if you increase the visitor pool everyone will get more. The more people we can get to visit Alabama will increase our chances of some of them spending time in our area.