The Aviareps Nordic Virtual Fair specialist workshops for Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish travel agents took place in Scandinavia recently. The Polish Tourism Organisation (POT), the Nordic offices of LOT Polish Airlines, and the Warsaw Tourism Organisation were all active participants.

The event was based on a special online meetings platform that offered quite a good simulation of a real tourism trade fair. The extensive online space included a welcome lobby with a wide range of exhibitors’ visualisations, an exhibition hall with 20 stands, and external terraces as additional meeting venues. Apart from individualised graphic identifications, the stands could present videos and informational brochures, while the information desks could be stocked with additional information about the exhibitors. Each participant of the event was represented by an avatar in the exhibition space; the details of its presentation could be personalised. Participants could move freely around the exhibition space and encounter the avatars of other participants, generating ad hoc meetings.

Besides the POT International Office in Stockholm and other representatives of Poland, the 20 exhibitors included destinations such as Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia and Spain.

The stand promoting Poland as a tourist destination was mainly designed to advertise Warsaw as LOT Polish Airlines’ principal destination, but also to highlight active tourism within and outside the city. The visual aspect underlined the joint character of the project by showing the logos of all the partners, and the videos were merged into a joint presentation. The five brochures on offer included a presentation of Warsaw’s attractions, made accessible thanks to LOT Polish Airlines, together with tourism products available all over Poland. Warsaw’s tourism industry was represented by a member of the Warsaw Tourism Organisation: the Station Warsaw company.

The event drew over 70 participants from all the Nordic countries. The Polish section also included over 70 interactions between the exhibitors and interested partners. Forty-nine people downloaded brochures; the most popular ones were LOT Polish Airlines’ offering, a promotional material about Polish cities produced by the Polish Tourism Organisation, and the exhibitors’ joint presentation. Twenty-four people watched the video showcasing the proposals of all three partners.

The meetings held during the fair suggest that the time is not yet ripe for organising events from Nordic markets to Poland, but there are already businesses active on our markets that are getting ready to offer Poland as a destination to their customers, and are interested in news and contacts from Poland for the future.