Best World Travel Market Event sponsored by Make Travel Fair

Winner: Your Safe Planet & The Blue Yonder

Tuesday night at the Abacus bar near Bank station in the heart of the city was probably the most useful and inspiring travel related event on offer this week, despite the collossal World Travel Market being in town. The Fringe Networking event was organised for the second year running by Your Safe Planet and The Blue Yonder, both beacons of light for the future of sustainability and fairness in travel. The evening was a typically relaxed and informal affair ideal for making new connections and reconnecting with old ones.

Highly commended: All those who attended

I chose not to visit World Travel Market this year based on my experience of the first ‘World Responsible Tourism Day’ last year, and what seemed like an attempted monopoly on an event and tourism sector by the International Center for Responsible Tourism (ICRT) and its associated ventures. It seemed as though a new £230 per person Thursday conference this year on ‘The Business Case For Responsible Tourism’ was far more important than any seminar being conducted on Wednesday during ‘Responsible Tourism Day’.  I very much doubt this year was any different to the last. As the ICRT and responsibletravel.com monster continues to grow it becomes ever more important that grass roots organisations and initiatives around the world continue to exert their indepence, innovate and come together to network through events like Tuesday night.