The latest trade show to make its debut in India, TREX – Travel Relations & Exhibitions, brought together agents from Tier-II, III, and IV markets of Maharashtra on a single platform. Designed as a niche concept to offer a common ground to the travel trade stakeholders of the interior regions of Maharashtra, it served as an effective medium for engagement, knowledge-sharing and networking.
Hosted at the Hyatt Pune, and the brain child of Siddharth Jain, Mehboob Shaikh, and Krishna Gopalan, TREX saw 34 exhibitors converging to showcase their products and services. While the first day saw a speed dating format, with 300 hosted buyers engaging with the sellers, the second day was a full-fledged B2B table top roadshow.
Commenting on the show, Jain said, “We wanted to reinvent the trade show format for Pune. The kind of volume and market size of Pune is huge. It’s the secondary cities of Maharashtra like Pune, Satara and Sangli that are major contributors to record GST collections, and therefore we want to bring major exhibitors to our city and connect with the travel agents from these regions.”
Sharing her experience, Aparna Thakurdas, COO, Odyssey Tours and Travels (Pune), said, “Pune has a handful of big tour operators, and many small and medium travel agents. Therefore the market is very fragmented. It is important we have a common platform in our city to meet with exhibitors instead of travelling to major cities.”
For exhibitor Shikha Khanna, Founder, Market Magnet Solutions (Siliguri), in-person meetings are important for the B2B business. “I found TREX as a great platform for me to sell the North East India. The way the floor plan has been designed for one-to-one meetings; it allowed me to meet quality buyers from across Maharashtra. Pune is huge market for travel to North East, and I have groups as well as FIT business from this market.”
According to Amit Kadam of Travels Association of Satara, TREX served as a platform for agents from the cities of Tier-III Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur from Western Maharashtra, for knowledge gaining. “We have customers travelling to Europe and the USA, and TREX proved as platform to gain ideas on opportunities, and share our challenges in selling outbound.”
Gopalan is hopeful, that the 2026 edition will allow them to bring in agents from the Konkan belt, and starting 2027 onwards, they can take the roadshow to multiple cities of Maharashtra. Shaikh is of the view that Pune is often neglected since Mumbai is the state capital, but the growing economy, presence of corporate offices, and the demand for travel, necessitated bringing the city into the limelight.