I used to think that travel fairs are only for people who want to buy packaged tours. Personally, I do not like packaged tours because all activities are packed too tightly and I feel that I am shepherded around. But there are times when tours make sense.
Instead of continuing my bias about travel fairs, I visited the NATAS Travel Fair last year to see if travel fairs are useful for the independent traveller. Kind of surprisingly, my answer then was “yes” since the fair helped me with two out of three questions that I had about travelling.
This year, I visited the NATAS Travel Fair again but this time without any real goals.
Surprisingly, I found the visit even more exciting. Even though there were a lot of people, it was really fun seeing people getting exciting about travelling.
I wandered around the booths and spotted Travel Guard travel insurance’s booth. They were having a 40% promo then. After asking for a quote, I did an Internet check and found that it was slightly cheaper than World Nomads. I did buy it in the end.
I also found many booths of hotels selling vouchers. If you are planning any trips, it’s good to head down to a travel fair and see which hotels are selling rooms at high discount.
In the end, I managed to grab a lot of travel brochures for China, a few tour ads for a colleague and loads of Japan-related leaflets from the Japan booths.
YQtravelling 
Reblogged this on YQ travelling and commented:
Singapore’s Natas travel fair is happening this coming weekend.
Surprisingly as an independent traveller, travel fairs are very useful.