Travel fair hailed as a window to the world

The Riyadh Travel Fair (RTF-2016) concluded here Friday on a highly successful note, with around 250 exhibitors representing more than 50 countries and a large number of people visiting the event. 

The RTF is a major travel industry showcase in the Kingdom where leading travel and tourism companies from around the world gather under one roof for four days of specialized B2B and B2C dealings. 
The fair impressed the foreign exhibitors representing tourism boards and authorities of their country. Over 50 national and regional pavilions registered a prominent presence with the show floor space having been increased by 11 percent compared to the 2015 event. The event was praised as the right place to showcase tourism products.
Muhammad Akmal.D, deputy director of the “Wonderful Indonesia” tourism campaign and the head of the Indonesian delegation at the RTF-2016, told Arab News that RTF-2016 was absolutely a great opportunity for the foreign exhibitors. 
“It was indeed a very good opportunity for us to promote our destinations by branding well our Wonderful Indonesia campaign for travel and tourism business community, which will pave the way for more Gulf tourists heading to our country,” he said.
“It was good also from our point of view that we could sell more Indonesian tour packages favored by the Saudi travelers. The RTF indeed helped us attract more tourists from the Kingdom,” he said.
“The Kingdom is the most populous country in the Gulf region, by participating in this event, we hope to attract more Saudi tourists to Indonesia.”
Asked how far RTF addresses the aspirations of travelers and reach the expectations of travel and tour operators from participating countries, Akmal said, “RTF is really good because it facilitates business meeting between sellers and buyers as well as end users.”
“For the next opportunities, we really hope that the organizer would consider to hold RTF in a more spacious venue so that there would be more room from one stand to another,” he added.
He also advised the organizers to be more committed to visa administration support for the guest delegates as well as participants because “we found it was still difficult to acquire visas for participation.”