Notes From the Travel Convention – ABTA Tokyo 2019

Oct

We travelled to Tokyo to attend ABTA's 2019 The Travel Convention

Konnichiwa!

We flew to Tokyo last week to attend ABTA’s annual The Travel Convention. After a 12-hour flight, we shook off our jetlag and immediately immersed ourselves into the Japanese cuisine. There’s nothing like wandering a new city to stir up your appetite, and Tokyo has a million delicious ways to sate it.

The Japanese have a saying that translates as ‘one life, one encounter’ – it’s a reminder that every encounter is unique, and a call to seize the day. We tried to apply this motto everywhere we went during our time in Tokyo. Something that we found effortless given the wonderful hospitality of the Japanese.

Tokyo, here we go!

The convention was typically insightful and a wonderful opportunity to catch up with old friends, see some fantastic speakers, and hear some wonderful travel stories. Travelling is all about making new friends. Get a group of people from the travel industry together and you can imagine how easy that is at somewhere like The Travel Convention.

The Rugby World Cup was also on, so we went to the fan zone outside of Tokyo to soak up the atmosphere. The Japanese are a bit more sedate than us Brits when they celebrate, but passionate all the same. We can only assume the spectators in our immediate vicinity have recovered.

Sayonara!

During our down time, away from ABTA, we loved losing ourselves in Tokyo’s neon glow, gorging ourselves on food (including wasabi Kit-Kats), and learning as much as possible about Japan’s beautiful culture.

We’re still working our way through the jetlag, but that’ll wear off. What won’t wear off is the indelible impression Tokyo and Japan made on us.

Sayonara, ABTA. Sayonara, Tokyo. Sayonara, Japan. We’ll meet again.