United Kingdom & Ireland Office Update
Brand USA Successfully Launches Travel Week Europe
Brand USA’s inaugural Travel Week Europe was held this past September at London’s County Hall. The event drew nearly 100 destination, hotel, and attraction partners among others, and almost 200 buyers from across Europe.
Brand USA Travel Week was created as an immersive business forum to provide its U.S. travel partners an innovative, cost-effective, efficient, and results-driven networking and transactional platform to stimulate in-bound tourism for the United States.
The four-day event was comprised of 3,420 pre-scheduled appointments, as well as meetings, enrichment opportunities, and social networking events for delegates. Attendees included the travel trade and exhibitors from every corner of the United States.
Travel Week Europe is one of several activities that will support Brand USA’s “One Europe” single-market strategy. Marketing as one region enables the organization to leverage and amplify initiatives and partnerships more powerfully.
“What’s really attractive to me [about Travel Week] is the ‘One Europe’ concept,” said Wendy Northcross, CEO, Cape Cod [Massachusetts] Chamber of Commerce. “After Canada, the European visitor is our biggest market for international and it was really very efficient to be here and set up appointments and focus on that one marketplace.”
Brand USA plans to make Travel Week an annual event. Future dates include:
- 2020: United Kingdom and India
- 2021: Germany
- 2022: United Kingdom
- 2023: France
- 2024: United Kingdom
- 2025: Netherlands
As a single market, Europe is the third-largest source market for inbound travel to the United States. In 2018, 14 million travelers arrived in the USA.
Additionally, European visitors spent more on their U.S. travel than any other group. In 2017, Europeans spent $53.3 billion, with Chinese travelers coming in second, spending $35.3 billion.