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Special Report ILTM Cannes: What’s Really Happening in Luxury Travel? |
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Let’s start with the bottom line of International Luxury Travel Mart Cannes. It is, magnificently, ONE BIG CONVERSATION between buyers and sellers. The one to one buzz is palpable from beginning to end. The brand on brand environment, so smoothly crafted, produces surprising energy. You know that action is in the air, and that everyone means business!
I had not attended previous ILTM events, having launched Luxury Travel 360 just one year ago. And, in fact, ILTM is not really designed for the business press unless you are searching for the essence of future global planning among leading brands in high end travel.
Without question, the vital takeaways for us were found largely in private conversations with brand leaders. 
Begin with the fact that rich conversation is precisely what smart
luxury consumers want when they are in the decision-making process for
anything beyond point-to-point business travel.
The sine qua
non in pleasure travel planning is advice you .can trust –not just
knowledge, but trust-- and the successful travel agents having those
buy-sell conversations at ILTM certainly score high in that department.
There is another conversation going on at Cannes absolutely critical to
the future of travel. Brands talking to brands about issues, insights,
and innovation — all music to my ears, of course, because that’s what
Lux 360 is all about:
- using the interactive web and face-to-face opportunities to share what’s new in imaginative marketing around the globe
- research on what consumers want in good times and bad
- how to score high in generational marketing
- what really resonates in customer/client care
In upcoming issues we will be covering how all this played out in
conversations with people like Matthew Upchurch of Virtuoso, Paul Kerr
of Small Luxury Hotels, Philippe Kjellgren of Kiwi Collection, Richard
Duvauchelle of Hotel Palais Stephanie in Cannes, and others . Plus,
later in this issue, a conversation with the irrepressible editor and
publisher of The Gostelow Report.
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Issues & Insights 
