If you love to travel, a great way to get some amazing first-hand information about places all over the world is to go to a travel show. At these conventions, people from all over the world set up booths and displays to show attendees about their area and give information to make travel there easier and more exciting. However, if you’re not prepared, you could spend a lot of wasted time at these events. To ensure this doesn’t happen to you, here are three tips for going to a travel convention.
Know The Areas You Want To Hit
Before you even get to the venue for the convention, you may want to know the areas you’re wanting to travel to so you can seek those booths out. At a decent convention, there could be hundreds of booths set up for all kinds of different destinations. And if you don’t know where you’re wanting to focus your time, you could spend a lot of it just wandering. So, according to Elissa Leibowitz Poma, a contributor to Smarter Travel, you should know which areas you want to hit and be sure you get to those booths first. This will ensure you’re able to get information on the areas you actually want to be traveling to and not just to random places throughout the world.
Create Your Own Schedule
Along with booths being set up for various destinations, many travel conventions also will have speakers or panels where someone addresses a certain topic or place. To make the most use of your time, Eric Ravenscraft, a contributor to LifeHacker.com, recommends that you find out this schedule before you get to the convention and create your own schedule based on which event you want to take part in. This can help you to better organize your day and maximize your time spent at the convention.
Bring Some Business Cards
To entice attendees to visit their booth, many vendors will have some kind of competition or giveaway that you can participate in. To save yourself from having to spend time filling out forms or writing down a lot of information to enter, Leslie Ye, a contributor to HubSpot.com, suggests that you bring a stack of your own business cards to use for these purposes. Also, you may meet someone who could help you in planning your own trip or give you additional information in the future, so giving them your business card could be beneficial as well.
If you plan to go to a travel show or convention in the near future, use the tips mentioned above to make the most of the time and money you plan to spend researching your future travels.