The third Business Travel Market (BTM), held at London’s ExCel on the 22 and 23 June, built on the successes of previous years with another informative and well-received event. This year more than 300 VIP buyers from over 20 countries across Europe and beyond were hosted and the feedback from attendees has been incredibly positive about the educational sessions and high quality meetings. During the two days, over 2000 pre-arranged meetings took place between exhibitors and hosted buyers, proven to be a unique and key feature of the event.

“We’re thrilled with how the event went this year” said Business Travel Market’s event director Paul Robin. “As anticipated, 2011 was bigger and better than ever before and we’ve already had a great deal of interest from past exhibitors and new big-name companies who are keen to sign up for next year.  We know the exhibitors are receiving a ROI from the pre-arranged meetings with the VIP hosted buyers, which certainly gives a business case for them to return year after year.”

Adrian Parkes, chief commercial officer for Portman Travel said: “Portman Travel’s participation in this, its first BTM, was an unprecedented success and we were delighted with the level of interest we received as the official travel management company for the exhibition. It was a great event and perfectly demonstrated its importance to corporate travel buyers from around the world. We were also impressed with the sophisticated meetings diary system which delivered many good new contacts for meetings on our stand. After such success, we are already looking forward to next year’s BTM.”

In addition to the exhibitors and educational speaker sessions, other highlights this year included the PA Programme, sponsored by Etihad Airways and an industry favourite - the BTM party – this year with a Miami beach theme and sponsored by Virgin Atlantic and Carlson Wagonlit.