I made it to the Adventures in Travel Expo here in Washington, DC last weekend and was quite impressed at the turn out. There were a significant number of reps from tourism boards, agencies, operators and gear outfitters. The amount of effort being poured into the marketing systems for these organizations has taken a significant jump. You can tell just by looking around that everyone in the travel industry is bracing for impact but at the same time they are being proactive about the state of the world economy and actually are reaching out to people.

Representatives from the Caribbean nations were out in full force as were the reps from Central America. I was surprised to see that there weren’t as many South American operators/officials but in hindsight, South American nations don't rely heavily on the US for tourism revenue. There was a significant showing of representatives from the African nations, which would make complete sense since restoring tourist confidence in the African tourism structure should be a major focus in the region. The political upheavals in Kenya did a very good job of taking that confidence away, resulting in significant economic losses for Kenya its surrounding neighbors such as Tanzania.

Some of the keynote speakers included Andrew Zimmern - host of the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods show and Tony Wheeler – Founder of Lonely Planet Publications. They provided some great insights into the world of Travel media and the travel landscape as we know it.

Despite their insight I found that the true indicators of where the travel world was headed could be found in the crowd itself. First off, there was a good amount of people, which means that there was a lot of ‘shopping’ going around. Members of the crowd were carrying multiple plastic bags filled with publications and other marketing ‘goodies.’ To me this says a couple of things:

1. People could actually be looking to get away for a little bit
2. People need good bathroom reading material with beautiful pictures of exotic places
3. People are always going to be interested in the possibility of and Adventure of a Lifetime experience. Who isn’t?
4. Everyone is always looking for a good travel deal
5. It is not that hard to reach out to people because the interest in travel will never go away.

In this slowing economy it is obvious that people will always make an allowance for a getaway no matter how quick. If they can’t afford to, they will save to go at a later time. It is right now, though, that most people do their travel research and begin to formulate their plans. Likewise, this is the perfect time for all travel firms and tourism boards to show the best that they can offer in order to attract the attention of the millions of travelers ready to hit the road .