BookingAgora 2022
We asked Murat Kahraman and Kadri Ciga, founders of BookingAgora, what they do to maximize their return from the exhibition.
BookingAgora, which started their journey in Istanbul in 2016 with the goal of offering world-class service to travel agencies, has been exhibiting at EMITT since 2017. The platform, which pivots its services around their professional team and high technology, exceeded their sales goals with their first participation to EMITT.
This kind of success from the exhibition is possible with serious planning.
BEFORE THE EXHIBITION
The duo says that they prepare for EMITT every year with the seriousness and excitement of a first timer and that it’s important to exhibit a few times to fully understand exhibition culture. They state that it was helpful to bolster brand value and to expand product range while exhibiting every year since these made them more equipped than the year before and enabled people to trust them.The matchmaking app, which allows exhibitors to schedule meetings with industry professionals, international buyers, tour operators and other exhibitors beforehand, also benefited BookingAgora in achieving their goals.
The founders of BookingAgora point out that they start communicating their participation to EMITT to their customers a few months ahead of the exhibition through their social media accounts and e-mailing efforts, and that they invite their customers and partners to the exhibition by sharing images containing information such as which hall they will be in and their stand number. Placing emphasis on announcements and publicity while highlighting the segments they perform the best in and analyzing and positioning the brand optimally are their advice to other EMITT exhibitors.
They exhibited with an 18 square meter stand back in 2017 on their first time but the duo almost quadrupled that in 2022 and the reason behind this is to be able to reach as many people as possible and to make sure they were able to attend to each and every visitor that visited them. They also add that they will keep increasing the size of their stands and that they put great emphasis in stand design.

DURING THE EXHIBITION
Touching upon the importance of training the team during the exhibition period, they say that they train their team according to their various goals such as communicating with clients, promotions and presentations. The duo reminds us that employees from almost all departments of the company are at the stand and that this allows them to attend to whoever stops by to visit them.Stating that they achieved an incredible acceleration with their first participation to EMITT, Kahraman and Ciga say that their exceeded their sales goals and how much of an affect it had that people started seeing them on this platform.

AFTER THE EXHIBITION
Implying that their work is not done when the exhibition is finished, they add that they analyze the exhibition afterwards and take necessary actions by prioritizing contacts and leads they collected during the exhibition.