WRTD at WTM

Day three of WTM can only mean one thing - World Responsible Tourism Day (WRTD). The Opening Ceremony of the event began at 10:30 this morning and featured Charlie Mayhew, MBE and Chief Executive of Tusk Trust. Travel companies, organisations and individuals signed up to be a part of WRTD at WTM – helping to build a solid, sustainable future for the travel and tourism industry. 

As part of WRTD we also saw the Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards. Reality Tours and Travel took the overall award for their educational Dharavi Slum Tours, demonstrating that it is possible for tourists to tour a slum in India in a responsible way. To see the results in full read the press release on our website.

A new initiative for this year’s WRTD event is the WRTD WTM Speakers Corner giving delegates the chance to talk about their own responsible tourism activity and discuss new trends. This feature has been really well received during the show – particularly through the day today. 

Another feature of WTM that began today is Social Travel Market – featuring conferences on the psychology of social media, video and blogging and jobs in social media for 2013. All of todays sessions have been incredibly popular and feedback has been amazing.

The atmosphere on the floor today has been really positive and there is still so much going on – both in terms of the Event Programme itself and with features that exhibitors themselves have been setting up. Today on the show floor we’ve seen Italian Cooking Lessons, East African dancing and a visit from Olympic medallist, Max Whitlock!