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Visit Scotland | Alba
Article published 05/11/2024

Scotland at World Travel Market 2024

We’re attending the World Travel Market (WTM) in London this week (5 – 7 November) alongside UKinbound and 10 businesses from Scotland.

WTM is a global event for the travel industry to meet industry professionals and conduct business deals.

It brings together domestic and international buyers and sellers from every sector of the industry seeking to build unique and competitive world-class travel experiences to package up and sell on to consumers.

WTM also sees the largest gathering of global media under one roof, making it an important platform for keeping Scotland on the world media’s radar, inspiring them to engage with our destination. In 2023, it was attended by more than 40,000 professionals from 184 countries. 

World Travel Market logo

 

Over the course of three days, we'll meet with over 100 key travel trade, media, and marketing contacts.

Participating alongside hundreds of destinations is important to raising Scotland’s profile on the global tourism stage. What’s even more important is the opportunity to establish and progress relationships with target intermediaries from right around the world. We aim to support them in developing and evolving the Scotland product that they take out to market. This helps:

  • ensure consumers know what Scotland has to offer
  • drive seasonal spread and spend
  • deliver good return on investment
  • our commitment to grow responsible tourism products and programmes

How we position Scotland across the globe has never been more important. The increased competition across tourism and events means we must work harder to ensure Scotland is top of mind for travellers.

Attending this event – and all our travel intermediary work – allows us to build demand for 2025, 2026 and beyond and ensure that Scotland is seen as a must visit, must return, year-round travel destination.

International visitor booking habits

More than half of international visitors plan and book their travel through travel intermediaries of all types (tour operators, travel advisors, travel agents, etc.).

They play a significant role at both the holiday planning and booking stages for Scotland visitors. Many travellers have continued to turn to tour operators and travel agents to advise, support and provide them with reassurance in their choice and arrangements.

In 2023, we commissioned the Scotland Visitor Survey to gather insight on visitor attitudes and behaviours. Here are some of those findings:

  • 68% of European visitors and 67% of long haul use some type of intermediary (net figures)
  • most long haul and European visitors are beginning their holiday planning six months out
  • three in 10 longer haul travellers even say that they begin to plan more than a year ahead
  • over 70% of high spending US travellers use one or more intermediary channels to curate and book their trip
  • 44% of European visitors and 63% of long haul visitors booked their activities and experiences in advance of their trip.
Read more about the planning and booking behaviours of our visitors.

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