We are currently attending PURE Life Experiences 2013 in Marrakech, the crème de la crème of travel trade fairs, bringing together the world’s best experiential travel providers in one single place to show off the most exciting and innovative travel experiences from across the globe. PURE hosted its first fair in 2009, which Aracari attended as a member (affectionately known as a ‘Pureist’). We have been present at every fair since, as a specialist on experiential travel in the Andean region.

This year Aracari founder Marisol Mosquera is once again showcasing the most authentic and culturally enriching ways to explore the plethora of attractions across Peru and Bolivia. We are particularly focusing on our Peru family travel experiences, recently opened hotels like the four-star boutique hotel El Mercado Tunqui in Cusco and adventure experiences at Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni in the Airstream camper, to give but a few examples. We are exhibiting alongside a collection of our closest partners from Latin America, 5 other operators from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador and Central America respectively.

PURE’s philosophy

The good folks at PURE believe that travel companies should create personalized, authentic and transformative experiences for guests; they should proffer proper luxury products for the “sophisticated traveller”; they should be independent and forward thinking, always looking for trends even before they are trends; they should work to protect the heritage and environments where they operate; and of course, they should know how to tell a good story to transmit their messages with imagination and sincerity. Little wonder, then, why Aracari is a founding Pureist!

This year the theme of the show is “New Frontiers, New Challenges”, which highlights the need to break boundaries and push limits of how and where travellers can explore other cultures and destinations. Speakers at the conference include Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer, explorer and author, who had to overcome social barriers in the 1960’s to join ocean expeditions, Tom Shelley the president of Space Adventures, which is the first company to offer private space travel, and Lewis Pugh, a swimmer promoting a positive human impact on our oceans.

Perhaps the boundary that is most often tested and broken is that of technology, and PURE has exemplified this with its utilization of the Poken, a device that works as a digital “business card” of sorts in which the Pureists at the fair can simply touch devices together to get each other’s contact information. After the fair, the attendees can simply plug the device into a USB port to download their new contacts made at the fair, which is a smart and high-tech way to streamline the networking process so that those of us in Aracari’s Marketing department, for example, won’t have to sort through a pile of business cards after the show.

Rest assured that PURE is not the first trade fair we’ve attended in 2013; we’ve been criss-crossing the globe to blow the proverbial Aracari trumpet.  In fact, aside from PURE, we’ve participated in fairs in 4 countries on 3 continents in total:

• ILTM Asia in Shanghai
• World Travel Market in Sao Paulo
• The Arabian Travel Market in Dubai
• The Adventure Travel Trade Summit in Namibia

Hold up there now. What is a “travel trade fair” exactly?

For those who haven’t followed, a travel trade fair is a convention that brings together companies and individuals from across the world who offer travel experiences to facilitate face-to-face contact between travel companies that otherwise depends on remote interaction. Additionally, these trade fairs provide a platform for companies to share their product and marketing discoveries and innovations. In the travel and tourism industry a product could be a whitewater rafting tour, a revamped hotel suite or a culinary lesson. Travel trade fairs are often focused on a specific regional destination like Latin America or Asia, or a type of tourism like luxury travel or ecotourism.

Today, Marisol will continue to present Aracari’s offerings along with a selection of partners from across Latin America. A trade fair like PURE gives Aracari the opportunity to meet current and potential peers and partners, to learn from them and to share with them our own insights and products.