Exhibitors frustrated by WTM London technical issues
WTM London has promised to help reschedule meetings for attendees who were unable to access the virtual exhibition yesterday due to connection issues.
Attendees, who have paid £25 a head for the online event, took to social media to vent their frustration when the WTM London website allegedly ‘crashed’ several times on Monday afternoon.
Some resorted to switching their meetings to Zoom or Teams instead, others said they lost appointments.
A WTM spokesperson said: "As part of the WTM Virtual concierge service, our team is in contact with all clients who have approached us and are working with them to ensure that meetings are rescheduled – in case they were missed."
WTM London, one of the world’s biggest travel trade events, is usually held at the Excel Centre, which was recommissioned as one of the UK’s coronavirus Nightingale Hospitals during the pandemic.
The three-day event is being held online instead for the first time this year with guests able to attend a full range of conference session throughout each day. Virtual meetings with exhibitors can be arranged and held on the platform.
Several people said they’d enjoyed ‘attending’ the first day from the comfort of their owns, they posted positive comments on social media about not suffering sore feet at the end of the day and were relieved not to have got lost navigating their way through the vast Excel Centre.
But several people reported problems accessing the virtual event from mid-afternoon on Monday.
They complained that the connection was ‘sporadic’, another said she lost some meetings and had to switch others to Teams, one claimed the site crashed at 4pm and another said they’d been unable to access the site after 2.30pm.
One of the attendees said it seemed that organisers hadn’t factored in the amount of bandwidth needed to support so many simultaneous meetings.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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