Amazing Adventures Denver brings in 8,000 attendees

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Company: Denver Post
Initiative: Amazing Adventures Denver
Key Executive: Sarah Weiss, Events Manager

Challenge:  Missing from the Denver Post's first major expo, Amazing Aging, as it turns out, was enough content on travel and leisure.

According to Sarah Weiss, events manager, "Attendees were saying 'I wish you had this'...or 'I wish you had a cruise planner here.'"

A little competitive checking showed that there had not been a travel expo in seven years in the Denver market.

Strategy: Weiss staged the first Amazing Adventures Denver, featuring "all things in travel and leisure" the following June. 

Booth and sponsor categories included travel and tour companies, cruise opportunities, airlines, destination cities in the Colorado area, bike trails, kayaking, canoeing, trucks, rental cars, zoos, aquariums, theater, tourism for kids, summer camps, hotels, and airport parking.

Sponsorship packages started at $1,800, including Title, Premier, Gold, Silver, Specialty, Double Booth and Single Booth.

Title sponsors included Mike's Camera which hosted a smaller photography expo inside the event; the City of Golden, Colorado, who sponsored parking and used the opportunity to promote their travel site; a racquet sports store, Game Set Match and a casino. 

Unlike Amazing Aging, which relied on a panel of 45 free, mostly health and finance related speakers, this time the company booked and promoted one key celebrity: Rick Steve, PBS discovery channel's European tavel guide.

Steve, who owns a travel company and has authored 50 travel books, gave two talks, "Europe through the back door" and "Travel as a political act" at the event, and two book signings.

The event was free and held at a popular destination, Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. Activities also included food samples, raffles, giveaways and free space simulator rides for children.

Mike's Camera acted as a partner, hosting the Colorado Photo Expo inside the expo, with 17 high end camera companies and 24 guest speakers on two separate stages in their area.

Results: 

Amazing Adventures Denver boasted 8,000 people in attendance and 100 booths sold, about two thirds the size of the Amazing Aging expo. LMI estimates revenues in the mid six figures. Interest for 2015's next expo has been coming from additional large travel destinations including countries.

Sara Weiss, Events Manager, Denver Post

The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and  MediaExecsTech,  developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine,  to showcases perspectives from around the  world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.

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