G.S.A.R. Marketing is part of Convenco, a group of companies involved in the travel industry since 1974. The Convenco Group has successfully applied its deep and wide international expertise toward an important segment of national and international clients. The Convenco Group is formed by two companies, Convenco-Incentive Solutions and G.S.A.R. Marketing. G.S.A.R. Marketing travel trade shows goals had been to produce quality oriented trade fairs. G.S.A.R. Marketing believes that professional travel trade shows are a very valid marketing tool for both buyers and exhibitors for as long as there is a balance between supply –number of exhibitors– and demand –number of buyers–; the buyers are qualified professionals and the trade shows are directed to a specific market, as it is the case with MITM events, addressed to the business travel market, and CULTOUR, directed to heritage and cultural travel.

Up to 2011, a total of 3,820 business and cultural travel buyers from 42 countries have been hosted by G.S.A.R. Marketing to attend its events and over 96,500 business meetings were performed at MITM and CULTOUR shows between these buyers and travel and tourism suppliers from Europe, the Mediterranean, Latin, North America and the rest of the world.

Charo Trabado, Vice President of Sales
Master in Tourism, she had been in CONVENCO group from 1987.
Director of sales for Spain and Portugal of American Airlines (2 years), Taca Airlines (6 years), Copa Airlines (10 years) -all represented by GSAR Marketing-, accumulating 25 years of experience with G.S.A.R. Marketing in the commercialisation of trips, transport and tourism events, including sales and operations of incentive groups worldwide, as well as conventions, seminars, corporate product and events presentations within Spain and abroad.
At the present time she is the Vice-president of Sales of GSAR Marketing and leads the commercialisation of all the fairs organized and produced by GSAR Marketing. From 1997: MITM Euromed. From 1999: MITM Americas. From 2006: CULTOUR, Global Heritage & Cultural Travel Exhibition.

Interview:
GSAR Marketing is the organizer of Cultourfair and MITM Euromed and MITM Americas. Can you describe the history of GSAR briefly?
Trabado: G.S.A.R. Marketing is part of Convenco, a group of companies involved in the travel industry since 1974.
Founded in 1982, G.S.A.R. Marketing is a global sales/marketing and Communication Company specialized in travel and tourism. Internationally, GSAR functions are:

- REPRESENTATION: To represent, market, sale and p.r. international travel and tourism organizations and companies, looking either to enter or to expand their market share in Spain, Portugal, Europe or the Americas.

- TRADE FAIRS ORGANIZATION: GSAR Marketing produces its own Travel Trade Exhibitions, organizing annually, since 1997, three international travel trade shows in Europe and the Americas.

- PROMOTION: G.S.A.R. Marketing also promotes and operates Marketing and Sales Seminars, Product Presentations, Workshops, Roadshows, etc.

The three Trade exhibitions organized by GSAR are very successful in the last years – what is your target in the future?
Trabado: Since our exhibitions are “quality oriented trade shows”, the size of the events cannot be increased, as our aim is to keep the quality instead of the quantity of participants.

In 2012 the Cultourfair was happened in Granada and the MITM Americas in Panama – do you have the dates and Locations for the coming year 2013?
Trabado:Cultourfair 2013 will be held in Guadalajara next October, MITM Euromed in Northern Europe and MITM Americas probably in South America. These both venues will be announced very soon.

How much time do you need to organize an exhibition?
Trabado:We organize these three shows per year, taking us the whole year for preparations, since the venue is defined, following with the promotion to exhibitors and to hosted buyers and the coordination of the whole program, stands, etc. with the sponsoring venue. Actually, we’ve been requested on various occasions to organize a specific trade show for a particular destination, which we’ve had to refuse, since we prefer to focus in our three events.
Every year a new travel exhibition appears and another one, or more, vanishes. It is a fact that there are too many exhibitions and that the real good buyers don’t have time to participate in all of them. This raises the question: Are really all buyers shown in the statistics of most trade shows “true buyers”? For us around 70% of these buyers are not good. That’s why we keep our events small, bringing buyers with real business potential, reaffirming our slogan of “Quality Oriented Trade Shows”.

What are the conditions for a sponsoring city or country? What do they have to do?

Trabado:First of all, the venue has to be an interesting destination with good international connections by air and the adequate infrastructures: high level hotels, exhibition spaces and qualified professionals.
The sponsoring venue needs to appoint an official committee to recruit every need for the event (exhibition space, hotel accommodation, social networking program and post-tours) and supervise the quality of the services offered to promote the destination.

Why should a city or region host an exhibition like MITM or Cultourfair?
Trabado:Hosting one edition of MITM or Cultourfair brings a recognized international exhibition to the venue, where they can sell “in situ” their destination to the selected hosted buyers, showing the beauties of the city, infrastructures, quality of services, and ideas of what they can offer to their clients. It is not the same than showing them a nice brochure or a CD presentation of their destination.
When the venue agrees to sponsor any of our exhibitions, it is as if they make an arrangement with a tourism marketing company. We actively promote the destination around the world through specialized media, travel exhibitions and email blasts to our database of around 200.000 updated tourism contacts in the world.

How many buyers are in your database?
Trabado:We have two databases: the regular one of nearly 80.000 contacts in the world and a black list of nearly 5.000 contacts, which we have proof that they don’t have any tourism business, retired people, etc.

How do you check these buyers and which buyers you invite?
Trabado:Buyers must complete a registration form with their company information, as they use to do at any other exhibition. The difference is that we verify the information provided. If we don’t know the company, we ask them to provide the contact from the hotel or DMC who handled their business and we check if the information is true. No other exhibition organizing company does that!

Can you tell us some numbers and statistic of a fair?
Trabado:This past edition of MITM Americas in Panama attracted near 250 participants of 36 countries. Around 3.640 appointments between exhibitors and buyers were done and the estimated business on medium and long terms is € 95.200.000.

What do the hosts tell you after an exhibition?
Trabado:Normally, the hosting venues have been participating as exhibitors in many of our trade shows before and they know by first hand how the fair is executed. This is the main reason why they apply to be a sponsoring venue of a future event. So they know the benefits to host one of our exhibitions.
We are proud to have helped many destinations to start promoting their countries as new destinations in the MICE industry. Many of these destinations have repeated as hosting venues of MITM or Cultourfair. This is the best proof that they are satisfied with the job done by GSAR Marketing and that hosting an edition of MITM or Cultourfair is an excellent opportunity to promote their destination and having a successful exhibition in their country.