COLORS OF THE WORLD Expo and Conference, April 18-20, 2025, Istanbul.
All the colors of the World, under the same roof!
The Colors of the World Expo brought together in Istanbul exhibitors from around the world under the common theme of Event Tourism. African and Central Asian countries dominated, as unfortunately a number of European exhibitors cancelled at the last minute due to the unstable political situation in the country.
Nevertheless, the conference on all three days of the C.O.W. saw keynote speakers and panelists from 22 different countries, who shared the common insight that events are a very good tool to bring lesser-known destinations and regions within a country into the center of attractions and to improve low season arrival numbers and overnights. Events let people stay longer, spend more money and make them more likely to come back in the coming year. Events will also keep more human jobs, when in other fields like hospitality most jobs will be taken over by AI, especially backstage.
For the Chinese outbound market events also offer a change of transformational experiences and active participation without linguistic and cultural barriers: Music and dancing are working without language, even instruction how to cook a local dish can be successful without a common lingua franca.
China was represented at the C.O.W. expo with a stand organized by the three Confucius Institutes in Istanbul and one of the most popular stands, offering short trainings on how to do make paper cuts and how to write Chinese characters. On the outdoor stage Lion dances found the interest of the visitors. However, strangely enough China as a travel destination or meeting Chinese visitors to Istanbul as a way to get closer to the Chinese culture were not a topic.
The organisers plan to repeat the fair in the coming years and even talk about creating satellite shows outside of Istanbul in other countries, as Event Tourism is one of the fastest growing parts of the industry.
For more information: https://www.colorsoftheworld.com.tr/