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http://www.helexpo.gr/philoxenia eng. Philoxenia the official international tourism exhibition of Greece, will be held between November 16th and November 19th, 2006, at the Thessaloniki International Exhibition Centre.
Exhibitors include national and regional tourism organisations from around the globe, hotels, travel agencies, airlines, cruise lines, hotel equipment providers and tourism industry media. This year’s edition, however, comprises many novelties as part of a new strategy to rapidly grow the exhibition and to establish it as the main tourism industry event in Southeast Europe.
Novelties include the introduction of two new specialist exhibitions, the hotel equipment fair Hotelia by PHILOXENIA and the PHILOXENIA Spa Expo, the country’s first event dedicated to wellness and health tourism. Both new exhibitions will be held simultaneously with PHILOXENIA within the same venue.
This year’s edition will also include a wider range of parallel events. The PHILOXENIA Spa Congress will take place on November 17th, with industry experts from Greece and abroad presenting the latest trends of wellness and health tourism. Held two days earlier, the PHILOXENIA Destination Marketing Workshop aims at educating destination marketing professionals in advanced marketing and planning techniques. Additionally, this year’s opening gala of PHILOXENIA on November 16th will for the first time include the presentation of the PHILOXENIA Tourism Awards honouring the best of the best of Greek tourism.
Following last year’s very successful launch, PHILOXENIA is further expanding its Hosted Buyers Programme, which will grow to over 100 senior travel buyers from throughout the world in 2006. A relationship marketing scheme is also being introduced with the aim of transforming PHILOXENIA into a 12-month marketing platform for its exhibitors. This includes the PHILOXENIA Travel Club (for consumers), the PHILOXENIA Buyers Club (for travel and tourism professionals), the PHILOXENIA Media Club (for journalists), the PHILOXENIA Suppliers Club (for professionals from the hotel supply industry) and the PHILOXENIA Spa Club (for both consumers and professionals interested in the spa industry). Select media will also be appointed as PHILOXENIA Media Partners.
New in 2006 is the introduction of a full range of sponsorship opportunities for exhibitors. These promotional packages provide sponsors with extensive media and industry exposure for an entire year. Options include several levels of sponsorship such as “Destination of the Year”, “Business of the Year”, “Spa of the Year”, “Supplier of the Year” and “Grand Sponsor of the Philoxenia Tourism Awards”.
The introduction of these novelties is expected to further boost the steady growth in visitors and exhibitors witnessed in recent years. In 2005, a total of 23,790 trade visitors and consumers – representing a 48% growth over the previous year – attended PHILOXENIA in order to meet the 705 exhibitors (compared to 606 exhibitors in 2004).
In its 22nd year now, PHILOXENIA is organised by Helexpo, the National Trade Fair Organisation of Greece, in collaboration with the Greek National Tourism Organisation and under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism.
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