Originally Posted by Sam Bee

As i'm off for my 12th consecutive ITB tomorrow morning i'd say -

The public days I imagine (I say that as i'm trade so never attend public days) are probably a waste of time. All of my meetings are with people who will leave on Friday evening (I'm there Thu / Fri). I expect that you would be able to get a ticket for the trade days based on your travel blog.

So I would suggest seeing if you can make it in the next couple of days? A lot of people will be fully booked up with meetings (i've 30 on Thu PM / Fri) but it's a bit more relaxed - and you'll find Friday AM a good time to meet people as there are less buyers, and therefore people have less meetings and more freedom to chat. I prefer Fri to Wed.

If you have to go on Saturday then just go and admire it - the sheer scale of it is incredible. Just do not expect to meet anyone that important! But - plan well, the venue is HUGE. My first ITB I made the mistake of booking meetings in different halls - they were 20 minutes walk away from each other. Now I focus on different geographic areas AM then PM.

Otherwise as Raffles says you have WTM, but they are eliminating their public days (so get a trade pass). WTM in Excel in November is still really big & tiring, but it's probably 1/5th of the importance & size of ITB.

Take comfortable shoes