This weekend I went to the New York Times Travel Show, it's the first time I ever went to a travel show and it was just ok.
If you want to enter contests, and collect brochures, this is the place to be! Bring address labels so it's easier to give out your information.
If you want to learn about destinations, travel, tour companies - it's ok. Obviously there are lots of vendors there - Greece had a giant set up with lots of tour companies there. There were all sorts of tour companies there, there were locations. There are seminars on travel and tons on contests. But after about an hour or two of being open it started to get very crowded and if you wanted to talk to someone, it was hit or miss. I can also say that I didn't meet anyone at any table who tried to suck me into anything, a few spoke to me, but no one pushed me. Which left me wondering why are they there?
But my biggest disappointment was there there wasn't anything there for the locations I'm considering for this year. I found one person who dealt with Ireland and it wasn't what I was looking for. There wasn't anything in a few hours drive of my that jumped out at me for a weekend trip. If you want the caribbean though, the place was flooded!
What I would do differently, I would only go again if I had something in mind - say an African Safari. I would find out what vendors would be there, if I was interested in any of them and then I would get there early so I could talk to the vendors and see if I could get a discount by booking through any of them. Also, I would budget a little more time so I could do the rock climbing wall.
My apologies if this post is a little random - I have a headache, it's late and my mind is racing a bit as I write this.
