Travel Expos: Are they worth it?

I spent my last two Sundays walking around Earls Court and Kensington Olympia exhibition centres at the Active Travel Show and the Destinations Holiday & Travel show respectively.

For my RTW planning obsessed self it was an absolute MUST to go to both these shows (we even nearly went to the Adventure Travel show the week before). I checked out the websites beforehand and saw a myriad of exciting sounding exhibitors who I hoped would give us astronomical discounts on everything from our flight tickets to our Inca Trail trek.   

So off we went armed with our passports (just in case), paid the £10 entrance fee and set out to search for those bargains. It didn’t take long for us to realise that we might not exactly fit the target audience as most exhibitors were aimed more at the upper class traveller who would happily pay £2000 to drive around the US in a campervan for two weeks. Now don’t get me wrong, the campervan was awesome, I would’ve probably signed up on the spot if Simon hadn’t stopped me first. But sadly it was slightly out of our budget range. We found that we got the most useful advice from the countries’ official tourist boards like Incredible India and Malaysia Truly Asia. The Malaysian rep literally sketched out a complete itinerary for our 3 weeks we will spend in Malaysia, including day trips, transportation and border crossing information. One less thing to worry about.

What we didn’t expect to find when we set out to the show though was to find a ton of stalls selling “essential travel gear”. Now if there’s something I’m a sucker for, it’s travel gear. I felt like a kid in a candy shop: there were universal power adaptors, plastic door locks for the female solo traveller, sunscreen and even garlic graters! Yes, you read correctly, garlic graters. Now why I would need a garlic grater on the road is beyond me but people were actually buying the things.

The one thing that actually caught our attention though (and in the end our wallets) was a water purifying system that two lovely Liverpudlian gentlemen from Sawyer Water were displaying. I had actually done a bit of research into how we would make sure we’d have access to clean water while we’re on the road. There are quite a few options but in the end we were convinced that the Sawyer water filter would be a simple, safe and convenient way for us to purify tap water and to avoid leaving a trail of plastic bottles around the globe.

The exact same thing happened at the second show we went to, but this time we bought a couple of bottles of P20 sunscreen each (25% show discount) and a set of Incognito Mosquito Insect repellent spray, oil and deodorant. I’m not going to tell you how much we spent on all this “essential gear” but let me tell you we did get an awesome discount.

It almost made up for the entry we paid…

So, is it worth visiting travel expos while planning your trip? It really depends on what you’re hoping to find. Sadly, you probably won’t get 50% off your RTW ticket but you will definitely get some great advice from expert travel agents and the tourism boards which can save you hours of planning an itinerary. If you are planning a shorter vacation rather than a year long trip around the world you might find some great deals on hotels and tours.

And you might just pick up some awesome gear along the way.

More fun stuff:

How to choose your RTW route? When to book your RTW flights Travel expectations and reality