We are just back from The New York Times Travel Show! This is one of the biggest travel shows and attracts over 30,000 visitors every year. While we wish it were held a few months later with warmer weather, we were happy to get to New York for an extended weekend.
Our review
The show was huge, with over 500 exhibitors representing hundreds of travel destinations and 150 countries. In addition to the booths on the show floor, there were four speaker tracks with travel experts and celebrities giving talks filled with good tips and information.
The show was held in the Jacob Javits center by the water on 34th St in Manhattan. What a beautiful venue. We covered a good part of the floor day one visiting booths for the South Pacific, Asia, North America, and much of Central and South America. We entered lots of contests hoping to win a free trip but we also learned a lot more about destinations and got to ask questions to many people that were from the locations themselves. Things like: Best times to go, how to get around, favorite places to visit, etc. Nothing like getting answers from a local’s perspective.
We found a booth from Canada where they were offering a North passage cruise. We had had enough cold with the 30F-degree (1°C) weather in NY and even thinking about cruising by Greenland did not appeal to us. Perhaps ask us again in the midst of the Florida summer.
We met someone from the Philippines who was a scuba diver and was happy to highlight and circle on a map all the best diving spots.
We even met some Estonians in a Baltic pavilion with Latvians and Lithuanians that were promoting trips to the Baltic. We had to laugh at the travel book, I still can’t decide if it’s bad marketing with the elderly ladies on the motorcycle with sidecar or genius. It sure caught our attention so perhaps it is genius.
We also attended a session about Croatia and we loved what we saw. Ancient forts overlooking the ocean and beautiful cobblestone streets lined with castles and ancient buildings. It reminded us of Malta and that was only Dubrovnik. While we initially had thought of Croatia as a cruise port, the show actually convinced us that this could be more of a week-long tour destination.
Another thing we came to realize with many of the Caribbean islands represented was that we were lucky to be in Miami. We have direct flights to many/most of these and we were already planning lots of future dive destinations.
We also met a lot of operators from Australia. One let us know that their website tracked Flight prices and that every month or so flights would come down to $599 or $699 on what is typically a $2000+ fair. This is certainly a testament to shopping around and watching on line price fluctuations. This is such a far trip for us but… one day we would like to dive the Great Barrier Reef and see Down Under.
Interesting gizmos
One fellow from a European company was selling a jacket (or a vest option) which could carry all your luggage in a series of large wide pockets lining the whole inside of the jacket. One way to overcome the airlines that want to stop allowing carry-on bags! Just be sure not to sit on your glasses or camera.
One of the speakers was also sporting a travel sports jacket made from a Lycra-like fabric that didn’t wrinkle. This also had multiple pockets, perfectly sized for passports, tablets and phones. There were also many hidden pockets on the inside and in various seams. One was specifically designed for boarding passes, which is a great idea. This same fellow had a survival bracelet with fishhooks, fish line, fire starter, a compass and what seemed like a full wilderness kit. Very compact for something that could save your life.
We listened to folks from nomadic travel on topics such as travel writing advice and photography tricks and tips. We found this information interesting and useful. We were also depressed to hear that typical rates for travel pieces were in the $25 range. Well, they all said that the perks were getting to travel.
We had a great time despite the cold and learned about many new destinations that we have added to our bucket list. We also rekindled our interest in others that we’d been thinking about for a while. We feel really lucky that we had the opportunity to attend the travel show and for all the opportunities we’ve had to travel the world. The show gave us enough ideas to last for years, but if we can we will return next year again. We only wish they would do it in warmer weather 🙂