WHERE THE WORLD OF TRAVEL CONNECTS
How RX travel shows drive deals, innovation & global growth
RX’s travel shows drive business and innovation for the industry, while boosting local and regional economies, from International Luxury Travel Market in Cannes to Arabian Travel Market in Dubai.
“Fashion has Paris, New York, London and Milan; luxury travel has Cannes,”
says Alison Gilmore, portfolio director at exhibition giant RX, which organises the world’s largest, most prestigious luxury travel show, held at the Palais des Festivals on the Croissette in the French Riviera city.
If you’re in luxury travel, you cannot miss the International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM), held in the first week of December in Cannes. Gilmore calls it the “kisses and champagne show”. Ritz-Carlton, Mandarin, The Goring, Sands, Four Seasons, Belmond, Raffles, they all come – by invitation only – because it’s where they get the work done.
ILTM has always been a buyer-led event, where the buyers are luxury travel agents and tour operators that cater to the luxury segment of the market. ILTM vets and pre-qualifies buyers before inviting them to meet a handpicked selection of exhibitors tailored to their interests. When the first was held 24 years ago, it was tiny, with just 120 curated exhibitors and the same number of buyers. Fast-forward to ILTM 2025 and 2,500 exhibitors and the same number of buyers held more than 100,000 meetings, up nearly 20 per cent on the previous year. And with the luxury sector looking at 6 per cent annual growth, there’s no sign of show fatigue. Hotels are booked out for the duration across Cannes and beyond, and exhibitors are now spending many weeks building elaborate pavilions to host visitors on the Mediterranean sands in addition to the enormous 35,000 square metre, three-floor Palais.
Among them is the French hospitality group Accor, which took 130 of its hotels to the 2025 event, up from 120 in 2024. Its most prestigious, including Raffles, Orient Express and Faena, exhibited in Accor’s beach pavilion, each with its own area designed to resemble the hotels themselves. Alongside them was a temporary restaurant capable of seating 200, with a dedicated kitchen and a concert-sized grand piano atop its own dais.
It’s the show Accor invests the most in, says Agathe Fabron, Accor’s senior vice president for strategic sales and B2B communications. “It’s the place we need to be. When you hear someone saying they couldn’t come to Cannes, you feel sorry that they’re missing out.”
Bringing key players together helps the luxury travel sector develop and advance, she explains. “The more I work in this industry, the more I see how much it’s about people. Here, we’ve created a space where you can make the relationships, you have the meetings. We can educate the buyers, they get to know our brands better, our values and that’s important because while luxury is growing, it’s getting more demanding,” says Fabron.
All this confirms that ILTM is a jewel, not only in the travel show calendar, but in RX’s portfolio of more than 350 events across 42 sectors in 25 countries. It’s also the one Hugh Jones, RX CEO, always attends with relish:
“It’s fun, but it’s serious. It’s wonderful and successful because our people are absolutely obsessed with creating more customer value than they did the year before.”
A coveted invitation
And so, attendees make space in their diaries for Cannes year after year, drawn by RX’s expertise in reading the market and finding new experiences, providers and destinations. For four days, they share enthusiastic greetings, champagne flutes in hand, knowing that RX will deliver the right contacts. For exhibitors, it’s buyers vetted to make sure they have the track record, resources and clientele to deliver the heads on beds; for buyers, the exhibitors offer the very best in luxury travel and the newest, chicest ideas.
This year, buyers from Internova, one of the largest travel services companies in the world, were looking for the Next Big Thing. In addition to more than 120 luxury travel advisors, the company sent seven buyers from their partner relations team, all with full diaries. They singled out what's new with hotels, shopping experiences, high-end cruises, private islands and yachts, as well as medical tourism, where luxury brands collaborate with spas with medical facilities to create getaways where clients can undergo both treatments and more complex procedures in the utmost comfort.
“We really use the show to not only maintain relationships with our partners but to also see what’s new and identify new products we can introduce to our advisors,” says Internova buyer Dennis Grunden. His meetings focused on new hotel openings including St Regis in London, Casa Angelina on the Amalfi coast and the Mandarin in Dubai.
Haisley Smith, his equally busy colleague, adds:
“No other show brings the choice and the mix of people. It also gives emerging destinations a platform before others do.”
Innovation & insights
With all the right people in the room, ILTM is a valuable investment for brands seeking to use it as a test bed and launchpad for new concepts. The feedback – positive and negative – from buyers like Smith and Grunden helps exhibitors refine their products, pricing and market priorities. It also draws start-ups testing the water. Last year, for example, French start-up Zephalto took a stand to introduce its low-carbon helium balloon trips into near space. In your $125,000 seat, you rise 25 kilometres above the earth into the near stratosphere to enjoy a view seen by very few. Says RX CEO Jones: “Companies trying something new test it at one of our shows. If it works, great. They invest and expand it. If it doesn’t, they shut it down quickly.”
In a similar vein, Gilmore says trends spotted at ILTM have helped drive the recent move by luxury hotels such as Waldorf Astoria, Belmond and Orient Express into offering “journeys” on “yachts” – an exclusive, high-end alternative to cruises on large ships. And with excellent timing, Orient Express’s Corinthian started pre-launch sea trials at the end of 2025, marking what Fabron calls “a new chapter for Orient Express, shaping experiences designed to feel both intimate and extraordinary”.
Attendees also garner insights from original research released at the show. In 2025 that included ILTM’s own independent research on cruises, presented in the specially constructed SAIL pavilion on the beach.
The research, which focused on individuals with at least $1m in investible assets, found that more people aged under 45 are booking on to luxury vessels than those over 45, blowing apart the preconception that cruises are for pensioners. Top of their wish list were private outdoor spaces (76 per cent had this in their top five), while 22 per cent were looking for a private butler service. Findings such as these help providers hone their offer.
Meanwhile, Matthew Upchurch, CEO of the luxury travel advisory group Virtuoso and a significant buyer at ILTM, was just one of many industry leaders who presented to 150 invited journalists on the boom in luxury travel. “Wealthy people pay advisers all the time. Now they’re turning to travel advisers. We hear time and again, ‘Of course I could do it myself. I just don’t want to’,” he told the press.
His hot tips included hyper-personalisation, unlimited luxe including customised private transfers, Michelin-level dining and whole resort buy-outs. To prove his point, he revealed bookings with Virtuoso of $50,000 or more are up 36 per cent year-on-year, helping the group’s growth significantly outpace that of the wider industry.
Digital enhancements
Another big draw is the way RX uses technology to make the four days more efficient and effective for buyers and exhibitors, saving time and creating more value. Its suite of tools – its Business Builder – is designed to help exhibitors attract the right buyers and capture higher quality leads. Its match-making tech suggests meetings ahead of the event, for advance booking, helping attendees plan their time. Once at ILTM, live feedback about the meetings is then used to track the resulting leads, suggest new meetings and benchmark exhibitors against their peers, all accessed through the Exhibitor Dashboard.
Another nifty app is Colleqt QR, which lets visitors scan QR codes on stands to access product information and leave contact details.
Wilson Ng, senior product manager at RX, explains: “Exhibitors often worry they might have missed valuable visitors during busy show days. Colleqt solves this by capturing the contact details and interests of prospects who… they couldn’t talk to.” It also means attendees don’t get loaded down with multiple printed brochures, making circulating easier.
But it’s not just technology that RX invests in to improve the visitor experience year-on-year. The latest edition featured a new section, Cannes X, a VIP design-led area that offered a more intimate space. Here exhibitors such as winemaker Chandon and Tyler Brûlé’s Monocle, the one-stop shop for luxury lifestyles, stood small but proud, attracting a steady stream of visitors. Meanwhile, in a nod to the ILTM comparison with Paris Fashion Week, RX unveiled Front Row, a premium service for buyers that guarantees them a room in one of the five luxury hotels that line the Croissette, along with other benefits including exclusive meetings. Given the intensity of the four days, being close to the action proved a priority for many, with the service selling out fast.
Outcomes, not just footfall
Beyond ILTM, Jonathan Heastie, travel portfolio director, says his priority when organising these shows is to live up to the expectations people have of an RX travel event.
“So many people around the world rely on our events to grow. Delivering on that takes an extraordinary amount of effort,”
he says, emphasising RX’s pursuit of meaningful business outcomes rather than simple footfall, including business generation, global market access and brand elevation. “The fact buyers are pre-qualified means they come with genuine purchasing intent and exhibitors leave with strong business pipelines that more than justify their investment,” he says.
The success of ILTM has also led RX to create regional spin-offs, including ILTM Asia Pacific, Latin America, North America and Africa. Beyond the ILTM brand, RX’s travel portfolio includes the World Travel Market (WTM), a series of shows covering all aspects of travel from luxury, leisure and business to technology, management, logistics and experiences, as well as the International Business Travel Market.
Alongside the WTM flagship, held in London in November and a giant of a show that delivered some £2.2bn in deals in 2024, the WTM brand has regional events including WTM Latin America and Africa, as well as a spin-off spotlighting emerging markets. “Clients trust us and gain so much value from our events that they increasingly want our support accessing emerging markets that will shape their future success,” he says.
And so in 2026, it is hosting WTM Spotlight Riyadh, followed by Delhi in 2027. For those delving further into Arabian destinations, there’s also Arabian Travel Market, which over three decades has helped position Dubai not just as a beach resort, but as a booming business hub and leading exhibition centre. Indeed, Arabian Travel Market 2025 hosted more than 47,000 people and generated some $2.5bn in deals.
“Our events help support economic growth across countries, opening doors to new job opportunities and bringing wealth to communities that may have never had access to such possibilities before,” says Heastie.
A catalyst for global growth
Around the world, exhibitions have time and again delivered enormous economic benefits to the hosting areas. Even for established cities like Cannes, that impact is vital, according to Régis Courvoisier, the Palais des Festivals’ marketing and communications director:
“Events hosted at the Palais des Festivals represent a key pillar of the local economy. They attract several hundred thousand business visitors annually, generate tens of thousands of hotel room nights and sustainably strengthen Cannes’ positioning as an international destination for conferences and major events.”
He estimates that ILTM alone generates economic benefits of around €50m a year for Cannes, supporting hotels, restaurants, transport providers and the events ecosystem.
“For an entire week, ILTM transforms Cannes into the global capital of luxury travel… creating a highly visible sense of energy and excitement throughout the city,” Courvoisier explains, comparing the show to the Cannes Film Festival, with both in the venue’s top 10 in terms of size and influence.
RX CEO Jones believes this local impact is often overlooked. “Too many policymakers are unaware of the exhibition sector’s strategic significance, often lumping trade shows together with concert tours and leisure travel,” he explains.
“We’re in the business of building businesses. Our vision is to be a catalyst for global business growth and innovation. We’re here to create value.”
RX CEO Hugh Jones at ILTM Cannes
With some 7m visitors attending RX’s shows every year, that’s a lot of purchasing power in terms of both deals and peripheral spending. Consultancy Deloitte suggests that for every £1,000 spent by a show visitor in London, a further £1,800 is generated in direct tourism. Visit Britain estimates that the average international trade show delegate spends £352 a day. Using these figures, RX calculates that WTM injected £200m into the UK economy in 2024, on top of the £2.2bn of deals for exhibitors.
The economic benefits don’t stop there, says Jones: “Think about the people who design, supply, build and populate the stands and pavilions. There’s the tax revenue on the spend – VAT, tourist taxes – and income tax, corporation tax – it all adds up.”
Indeed, those teams will soon be working on what they can bring to Cannes to make their mark at ILTM 2026. The leaders, luminaries and rising stars of the luxury travel world already have a December trip to the Riviera firmly circled in the diary.
What's next
As the luxury industry continues to evolve, collaboration has shifted from experimentation to strategic imperative. RX is launching a new global event in April 2026: The Luxe Convergence. Taking place in Cannes from 14–16 April at the Palais des Festivals, the two-day conference and creative forum will bring together pioneers from luxury travel, lifestyle, fashion, hospitality, fine art, beauty and technology to explore how cross-category partnerships are reshaping the future of luxury.
