Niche Luxury Travel Boom Creates Demand for Exclusive Trade Shows
Photo Credit: The Duco Travel Summit marketplace takes place in grand surroundings, like the St. Regis Florence. Duco Travel Summit
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Luxury travel during the past decade has taken off exponentially, driven by growing wealth around the world. It's a natural progression that niche trade shows are popping up to cater to the demand.
As the world of luxury travel becomes an established niche, there’s more room in the market for events that hone in on the high-end offerings of a single country or focus specifically on cutting-edge travel experiences. That’s where small, highly selective luxury conferences like Duco Travel Summit and Pure come into the picture.
Serge Dive, the creator of Pure, was actually the founder of ILTM. When that event launched in 2002, Dive said, “The perception had been that luxury travel was only the Ritz and The Dorchester and the Crillon, and that the market was too small to sustain a conference of its own.” But ILTM’s success proved that perception wrong.
Dive sold ILTM in 2004 and started thinking about his next venture. Luxury at that time was mostly about destinations and hotels. But a change was in the air. So again, Dive caught a wave and rode with it. “When Pure was created, we were looking at a market that was not very well-served. We realized that the actual des
