Beneath the Seas 2010 Expo

Report by Danish Syed, Aquamarine Director: Vanuatu Tourism and Aquamarine  exhibited at Beneath the Seas 2010, New Jersey, USA. Danish Syed represented VTO at the show. The show from an American consumers awareness perspective was a big success. Our presence was vital in the show as it complemented our Australian relationship with About Australia. About Australia pushed Vanuatu as a side destination throughout the show and kept sending people to our booth to learn more about our Vanuatu. The combination resulted in 3 interested groups in the Aus-Van trip and several groups interested in coming just to Vanuatu separately.  Also, I met with all the wholesalers at the show. After the publicity at the show about the combined Australia Vanuatu travel packages, Scuba Travel approached me to help them put together an Fiji Vanuatu travel package for the American consumers. I am working with Scuba Travel to launch this by Long Beach show.

Also, talked to the "Dive Travel" folks, they are a video production company who shoot professional videos of dive travel destination and sell it as a DVD to people around the world. If you have any interest I can get the distribution number of these DVD to see if it will be worth getting these people to shoot the diving in Vanuatu.

A lot of curious consumers stopped by the booth, talked to me, and left with a decent amount of knowledge of the Island. The small Vanuatu brochure booklet was all gone half way through the second day. I was only left with the single page brochure for the last day. Most of the people who stopped by weren’t just "brochure collectors" they actually stopped and talked for a few minutes. Micheal Gerken a friend of Aquamarine's and the gentlemen who shot the documentary of the SS President Coolidge was talking to the audience of the show at a seminar about the Coolidge which also resulted in interest about the Island. All in all the show was good and I will look forward to spreading the word in Long Beach, California in May 2010.

Lastly, I would like to thank VTO for joint participation and thank Sue Herrick for her enthusiasm and continued support in promoting Vanuatu to the North American dive market.