The busy TTNA staff earned a few extra airline miles this Spring as they criss-crossed the country promoting Tahiti and Her Islands at various tradeshows, partner trainings and the Spring Workshop series.

TTNA’s very own Taha’a native, Carmen Ostrea, headed to our nation’s capitol in March for the Adventures in Travel Expo in Washington D.C.

The show was very busy, had good attendance numbers and the consumers showed quite a bit of interest in traveling to Tahiti. While our partners were unable to join us in our booth, we did have brochure support from Air Tahiti Nui, Caradonna, InterContinental, Islands Escapes by Goway, Pearl Resorts and Star Clippers.

In April, Maureen Furedi participated in the Ultimate Travel Show in Toronto, Canada. Joining us in our booth was Islands Escapes by Goway along with brochure support from Star Clippers, Pearl Resorts and Haumana Cruises. While there was good interest in Tahiti and Her Islands and several consumers commented they had recently visited Tahiti or are planning to travel there in the near future, the overall booth traffic was slow over the three-day show, in part due to other consumer shows being held in the same general area.

Also in April, while Maureen headed north, Michelle Bartlett headed south to take part in the first annual Atlanta Journal Travel Expo held in Atlanta, GA. Jeanne Kutz from Air Tahiti Nui and Judy Sweet from ATS/Islands in the Sun also joined us in our booth, with brochure support from InterContinental, Pearl Resorts, Star Clippers and Islands in the Sun by Goway.

The foot traffic was a bit slow for the first-time show, but there was a good deal of interest in Tahiti and Her Islands and several consumers stopped by to let us know they had just returned from their family vacation in Tahiti. Contributing to the low attendance numbers was the fact that the PGA Masters Golf Tournament final was taking place just a few hours outside of Atlanta!

Tina Karimi attended the TravelCom Conference held in Chicago, IL from April 8th -10th 2008. TravelCom is the only eCommerce conference designed by the travel industry for the travel industry.

This year’s conference was very well attended with over 750 attendees and many guest speakers from such online greats as; Google, Priceline, Travelocity and Sabre Holdings.

The Conference addressed several common themes in the travel and tourism sector. The main areas covered included the recent economic outlook, the phenomenal growth of social media and the decline of e-commerce traffic, which have each shown the challenges facing everyone in the travel industry.

April 30th, Maureen Furedi from TTNA and Debbi Boyle from Air Tahiti Nui conducted a web seminar for Classic Vacations organized by Paul Giannini, business development manager for the states of Colorado, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. The online attendees were owners of agencies focusing mainly on the wedding & honeymoon market.

May 12th, Leila Laille headed East to Bethlehem, PA and was joined by Jeanne Kutz from Air Tahiti Nui to conduct partner training for 54 Travel Impressions’ reservations sales staff. 

The entire month of May was fully dedicated to TTNA’s workshop series. Each Spring, TTNA hits the road visiting 15-18 cities across the United States and Canada bringing an in-depth and in-person method of reaching qualified travel agents through our workshop series.

The purpose of these workshops is to attract qualified travel agents who are not yet selling our destination yet and need more knowledge and selling tools, travel agents who are selling Tahiti and her islands, but are not yet enrolled in the Tiare Specialist Program, and travel agents that are already selling Tahiti, but wish to renew their knowledge and momentum of selling our islands. 

Our workshops are run by TTNA and by our opt-in partners' representatives from the tour operators, hotels, cruise lines, and airlines. For this year, TTNA opted for another evening series for the workshops in order to reach more travel agents as well as home-based travel agents.

Each Workshop began at 4.30 pm with a 45-minute reception, allowing travel agents and our suppliers to socialize while enjoying hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. 

After the reception, TTNA gave a one-hour presentation, boasting the attributes of our beautiful destination.

During this presentation the attendees are given the opportunity to learn about each of the islands, the hotels and resorts, activities, air service, culture as well as cruise products.

Following the presentation given by one of our TTNA Team, travel agents are then separated into small  groups that rotate from table to table listening to 8-minute in-depth partner presentations on their respective products.

We would like to extend a very big thank you to the following participating partners that dedicated their time to our islands during the workshop series: 

-Accor Hotels & Resorts French Polynesia
-Air France (U.S. only)
-Air Tahiti Nui
-Boomerang Tours (Canada only)
-Bora Bora Lagoon Resort & Spa
-Classic Vacations (U.S. only)
-Four Seasons Resort Bora Bora (U.S. only)
-Gogo Worldwide Vacations (U.S. only)
-Happy Vacations (U.S. only)
-Hotel Bora Bora (U.S. only)
-Hotel Kia Ora (U.S. only)
-InterContinental French Polynesia
-Islands Escapes by…Goway
-Islands in the Sun (U.S. only)
-Le Meridien Hotel Tahiti & Bora Bora
-Pearl Resorts & Spa
-Pleasant Holidays (U.S. only)
-Regent Seven Seas/ Paul Gauguin
-Star Clippers
-Starwood Resorts French Polynesia
-Swain Tours (U.S. only)
-Tahiti Legends (U.S. only)
-Travel Impressions (U.S. only)
-Voyages Cassis (Canada only) 

TTNA along with Air Tahiti Nui, InterContinental French Polynesia, Pearl Resorts & Spa and Starwood Resorts French Polynesia, visited two key incentive houses, Maritz and Meridian Enterprises in St. Louis on June 10th for in-house presentations followed by a luncheon on June 12th, at the Clubhouse in Costa Mesa for incentive buyers in Southern California.

VIVA Las Vegas! TTNA attended and participated in the annual Vacation.com convention held in Las Vegas, June 11-13. The one-day tradeshow event was attended by several Canadian and U.S. based agents who showed quite a bit of interest in the destination.

The weekend of June 21st TTNA participated in the SCUBA Show in Long Beach, CA.

The show earned its best attendance ever with 11,195 over the two days. We were very lucky to have the following Tahiti based partners join us: Vincent Coue from Bathy’s Dive (Tahiti & Moorea), Rani Chaves and Christa Dekker with Haumana Cruises, Jack Uenoyama from Hotel Kia Ora, Christophe Gomet from Maitai Hotels, Bernard Begliomini with GIE Tahiti Tourisme and Carmen Ostrea and Michelle Bartlett from TTNA. Star Clippers and Caradonna provided brochures and flyers.

TTNA and Air Tahiti Nui participated for the first time at the Incentive Travel Exchange at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, June 23-25. With supplier participation limited to only two companies sharing a meeting suite, Maureen Furedi and David Nordquist attended to represent the destination along with collateral for distribution from InterContinental French Polynesia, Pearl Resorts & Spa, Radisson Plaza Resort Tahiti, Star Clippers and Four Seasons Resort Bora Bora.

ITE is a highly organized, appointment-based incentive event highlighted by several networking opportunities and attended by hosted pre-qualified buyers. TTNA and Air Tahiti Nui met with interested buyers in 31 one-to-one appointments over the two business exchange days.