Serge Dive and David Hammond, the founders of ILTM, have joined forces with Reed Travel Exhibitions to launch an Asian version of ILTM, Asia Luxury Travel Market.

Asia Luxury Travel Market will allow exhibitors to interact with buyers from the whole Pan Pacific/Asian region and will take place 18 – 21 June 2007 in Shanghai. The event will consist of an identical format of ILTM. This means that all buyers will be fully hosted and will be carefully vetted to ensure only the best in the luxury travel business in the region will be attending.

"We always intended to eventually extend the ILTM portfolio into Asia, even in the early days of ILTM. We realised that because of obstacles of time and distance it wasn't possible to fully explore a market and its full potential from outside of the region, and indeed many of our established exhibitors have requested that this event happens."said David Hammond, Director, ALTM.

Purchase of luxury travel is growing significantly in Asia with those of High Net Worth Individual (people holding at least US$ 1million in financial assets) status growing by 8.2% in 2004 (twice the rate of Europe) and now their numbers are equivalent to the USA. China is particularly strong in its growth with annual 10% increments predicted annually for the next 10 years.