The annual World Travel Market (WTM) Forecast Forum, which focused on global travel and tourism trends and predictions, took place on 10 November as part of WTM at London's ExCeL.

Organised in association with IPK International, the 2003 WTM Global Travel Report provided an exclusive summary of the global travel trends which had been outlined at the Pisa Forum earlier in the month.

The forum was chaired by IPK's Rolf Freitag and also incorporated a comments and opinions from speakers including the secretary general of the World Tourism Organisation, Francesco Frangialli and CEO of Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), Peter de Jong.

Freitag outlined the 10 main challenges which the travel market will face in 2004. These included the ‘Walmart-Paradigma’ – an ongoing trend for acquiring a better life through cheaper products which in turn is creating a yield challenge within global travel.

Other points included the disclosure that a booming Chinese outbound travel market had overtaken Japan and that India and the Tiger States were also large emerging markets. The differences between expected travel risks – such as the war in Iraq – and unexpected risks - such as the impact of SARS – were also examined in depth.

Amongst the forum recommendations were calls for a better line of communication and co-operation between the World Health Organisation and the World Travel Industry in terms of crisis management to create a uniformity of a single voice and prevent future imbalanced media reports.

The linked continuation of 'Project Phoenix', aimed at restoring consumer confidence in pan-Asian travel post-SARS, was highly recommended alongside measures to better anticipate for a variety of different factors that could have a massive impact on global travel, such as a second SARS outbreak, a new 'son of SARS' virus or another terrorist attack.

World travel estimates for 2004 were that global growth could rise by up to five per cent, with Europe increasing by three per cent and the Americas, including Latin America, also expected to see and increase of five per cent. Details: www.pata.org