A bit of context before we start. The BTL – Bolsa de Turismo de Lisboa (Lisbon Tourism Fair) is a 5-day event where the first two are meant for industry professionals only (including hotels, tour guides, content writers, journalists).
On the last three days, the event opens its doors to welcome potential clients and luring them with cheap tour packages, raffles, and lots of free food and brochures.
Thirty years ago, when this event started, there was no Internet. Travelers came here for inspiration, discounts, and, I’m sure, to see if their trusted travel agent was really making their dream trip as cheap as possible.
Who are the clients who visit now? I confess I didn’t stick around long enough to find out since I was expected in Porto for the weekend.
To keep up with industry trends, they have been hosting a Travel Bloggers Awards since 2012.
But.
I was there as an industry professional, looking for story angles and destinations worth mentioning. Now, to be clear, I lack some essential networking skills, namely chit-chatting, which may or may not make me sound arrogant.
The bigger the better show booths, piles of brochures, stickers, free food, and other marketing tricks don’t appeal to me. At all.
Do you have a website, an app, a Facebook page, or an Instagram profile? Cool, I’ll find out more about you there.
There’s a chance my pet peeve with professional fairs and industry conferences grew during the times I had a corporate job. But I still tried to make the best of the half-day I spent there.
I believe the following list of places to visit in Portugal is relatively diverse. I also love a tourism professional who knows their destination like the back of their hands, the positives, and the negatives, and is not afraid to promote it for what it is. A tourism professional that understands that the destination’s value is its singular cultural identity has me hooked in seconds.
Most of the destinations with the big budgets (easily spotted from miles away either for being loud or bright or both) lacked soul.
At some booths, overflowing with stacks of brochures, I waited more than 10 minutes to talk to someone before giving up.
Although the fair had opened two hours before, some of them were empty, with no signs of anyone ever showing up.