TTG Travel Experience 2026
Rimini.

What TTG Travel Experience is, in two lines

TTG Travel Experience is Italy’s benchmark B2B marketplace for promoting and trading global tourism: it connects tour operators, travel agencies, destinations, transport, hospitality, and travel-tech with qualified Italian and international buyers. It runs every October in Rimini, organised by Italian Exhibition Group, and the 2025 edition drew over 70,000 professional visitors and 2,700 exhibiting brands from 66 countries.

It is not a fair for the general public: it is an event where real travel-trade contracts close in the weeks after the halls shut. That is why lead management matters as much as the on-site presence.

What to exhibit, where to exhibit

The show is organised by macro-area, not by numbered hall like an industrial fair:

• Italy Area, Italian destinations: regional tourism boards, consortia, DMCs, incoming operators
• The World, international destinations: national tourism organisations, NTOs, embassies, foreign operators
• Global Village, product and segment focuses: luxury, cruise, MICE, active travel, travel-tech, transport

If your offering is cross-segment (e.g. a tour operator selling both Italy incoming and outbound packages), consider a position in transit between Italy Area and Global Village. Cross-area buyer flow is significant on Thursday afternoon, historically the day of highest top-tier buyer concentration.

Factor in the co-located shows, SIA Hospitality Design (hospitality interior design), SUN Beach&Outdoor Style (beach and open-air), and InOut | The Contract Community (hospitality supplies): they bring hoteliers and accommodation purchasing managers to the fair, an extra audience beyond pure travel trade.

Visitor profile, who actually enters the booth

At TTG the visitor is not a final consumer: it is an intermediary or a sector decision-maker. The typical composition:

• Tour operators and travel agencies, looking for product to add to their catalogue for the coming season
• International hosted buyers (1,000+ in 2025, from over 60 countries), profiled buyers on appointment, the highest commercial-value segment
• Tourism boards and destinations, evaluating co-marketing partnerships and fair presence for their territory
• Accommodation, transport, travel-tech, hoteliers, carriers, and tech vendors looking for suppliers and distribution channels

The decision-making profile is high: most buyers arrive with a product-buying budget already set for the season and the authority to close travel-trade agreements directly at the fair.

How to prepare in the 4 weeks before the event

Week -4, messaging audit

Verify that your value proposition answers the three questions every TTG buyer asks within the first 30 seconds at the booth:

1. What you sell, in one sentence (destination, product, service)
2. Who it is for, precise segment (e.g. “Italy incoming for DACH-market agencies”)
3. What changes, concrete commercial lever (margin, zone exclusivity, guaranteed allotment, commissions)

No slides. No catalogues to leaf through. One clear sentence, repeated by every team member.

Week -3, booth operations playbook

Define who does what across the three days:

• Who is on the front line at the booth and welcomes walk-ins
• Who manages the hosted-buyer appointments (they are scheduled, do not improvise)
• Who is in the back office (HQ) running live follow-up during the event (yes, this is a game changer, see below)
• Who is the point of contact for sales directors and product managers who show up

If the team is larger than 4 people, set up shift rotations by time slot. Being at the booth for 9 hours straight degrades conversation quality after 2:00 pm.

Week -2, qualification form

Every contact collected at the fair must be qualified on the spot, not “later”. The critical questions are only 3:

1. Volume, how many pax/nights/bookings handled per year?
2. Seasonality, which season are you programming product for? (winter 26/27, summer 27)
3. Decision, who decides catalogue inclusion, and how many people are involved?

Everything else (markets served, company size, sales network) can be found in the 30+ public data sources that good automated enrichment covers without you needing to ask in person.

Week -1, CRM integrations

The classic mistake: contacts collected on paper, business cards in a pocket, scans in the official app, and then no one moves them into the CRM. Follow-up starts 9 days after the event (industry average), by which time the buyer has already spoken with 3 of your competitors and nearly closed the catalogue.

Configure the system so that every scan, at the fair, lands directly in the company CRM, with event tag, qualification answers, and a voice note from the sales rep. Not in an Excel, not in a proprietary fair app, not in a Google sheet “we’ll tidy up on Monday”.

Is the official TTG app worth it?

The official TTG site references an event app, alongside a visitors’ reserved area to manage registration, agenda, and networking preferences. The exact store name and full feature set are not detailed on the public page, but by logic and in line with other major IEG fair apps it is decent for fair navigation: map, event calendar, exhibitor list, appointment management, badge scan.

What it does NOT do, and the reason few sales teams use it as a real lead capture tool:

• It does not integrate with your company CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive). Contacts stay inside the app.
• It does not automatically enrich data. If the badge only has name, surname, and company, that is all you keep.
• It does not send follow-up to buyers. Follow-up is on you, manually, afterwards.
• It does not generate executive reports. At best you get a CSV export.
• It changes each year with every fair you attend, so you end up with 4-5 different apps on your phone, one per event.

The official app is a good informational companion for visitors (what to see, where to go, appointment management). As a commercial lead capture tool, it falls short. For that, you need systems built for the fair to CRM to follow-up workflow. See how Linkly works.

What to do during the 3 days of the fair

Day 1 (Wednesday), opening

• Team briefing at 8:15 am, review the 3 messages and the roles
• Calibration: the first 10 leads of the day are for fine-tuning the qualification questions
• Honour the hosted-buyer appointments already on the calendar, they are the highest-value contacts
• At 6:00 pm, first debrief: what works, what to fix tomorrow

Day 2 (Thursday), the decisional day

Historically the day with the heaviest top-tier buyer traffic. Expect sales directors, product managers, chain buyers who want to “see who sells what” for the coming season. Keep a senior person always on the floor: the most strategic prospects of your event will pass through today.

Day 3 (Friday), closing

Natural drop of 40-50% in traffic. It is the moment for:

• Closing meetings with hot leads from Wednesday and Thursday
• Deeper conversations (less rush, calmer booths)
• Competitor visits: walk the other areas (Italy Area, The World), see who came, take notes for next year

What to do in the 7 days after the fair

The average time between fair and first post-event contact, in the Italian travel trade, is around 9 days. Companies that reduce it to under 48 hours reach the buyer while they are still assembling the season’s catalogue, not once the deck is already stacked.

The winning follow-up playbook:

1. Within 24h, personalised email to every qualified buyer with volume, seasonality, decision. No templates: reference one specific thing said at the booth.
2. Within 7 days, assign 1 sales contact per qualified lead. Schedule a specific touchpoint (call, fam trip, rate-sheet delivery), no batch email.
3. Within 14 days, deliver on promises made at the booth (seasonal rate sheet, allotment, trade agreement). Automatically extractable from the sales rep’s voice notes if the system recorded them.
4. Within 30 days, executive report on performance vs target, distribution by sales rep, market, estimated pipeline. Use it to request next year’s event budget renewal from the CFO.

Practical FAQ

How much does it cost to exhibit at TTG Travel Experience 2026?

Costs are not published as an open rate card and vary widely by area (Italy Area / The World / Global Village), square footage, and build-out. As an indicative order of magnitude for an entry-level 12-20 sqm booth in standard position: €6,000 to €18,000 bare space + €5,000 to €15,000 build-out and services + €4,000 to €10,000 staff, travel, materials. Realistic total range: €15,000 to €45,000 for a respectable three-day presence. For real quotes, refer to the IEG sales office on the official site.

Is a small booth or an island in Global Village worth it?

Depends on the goal. A small booth in a destination area = visibility and volume lead capture. An island in Global Village (luxury, MICE, travel-tech segment) = product positioning and closing with profiled buyers. Below 12 sqm the risk is no space to run a hosted-buyer appointment in private, and appointments are TTG’s real asset.

Is it true Friday is quiet?

Yes. The drop is 40-50% in traffic, but the average quality of remaining buyers is high. They are the operators who did walk-throughs in the first two days and return to close or dig deeper.

When does visitor registration open?

Typically from the summer of the fair year. Early registration on the official site is reserved for industry operators (TTG is a B2B trade-only fair, not open to the public).

What alternative is there to paper for collecting contacts?

Paper and business cards collected in a pocket are a poor option (digitisation time, errors, lost leads). Three practical alternatives:

1. Official fair app, it works, but is disconnected from your CRM (see section above).
2. CRM with native mobile scanning (HubSpot and Salesforce have dedicated features), works if the team knows how to use them. Often they don’t, in a fair context.
3. Dedicated lead capture system + AI agents for enrichment, qualification, follow-up, the pattern Linkly executes. See how it works.

Page updated ahead of the 2026 edition. For official information and exhibitor/visitor registration please refer to ttgexpo.it.