Read online.

 

24 April 2021


Fiets en Wandelbeurs Online Experience draws 4,500 visitors

Around 4,500 cyclists and hikers from the Netherlands and Flanders visited the first online edition of the Fiets en Wandelbeurs. For two whole days, on purchase of a ticket, they were welcome to an interactive event platform with digital stands, activities, online talks or presentations and workshops.


The Online Experience was an alternative for the actual, physical, Fiets en Wandelbeurzen in Utrecht and Ghent, which were unable to go ahead owing to the restrictions around the Cororona virus. For the online event the Fair concept was translated to the digital realm. Starting point for the online voyage of discovery was the digital Fair hall, from where you could click through to the stands of holiday destinations and travel organisations, the lecture rooms and the workshop room.

Almost sixty presentations

The lecture rooms drew a large online audience. The event hosted almost sixty presentations for visitors to choose from: from pilgrimage travel to Rome and Trondheim and hiking routes in visitors home countries, to reports of globetrotters’ expeditions as well as practical workshops about ‘The first cycling holiday’.

Online Experience

It was clear that exhibitors as well as visitors had to get used to the online experience. “Online chatting or video calls to exhibitors, proved to be quite a high threshold for visitors,” says Theo Jorna, director of Hicle Events. “For many people this was their first experience of an online consumer Fair, not everyone is immediately familiar with all of the online tools that were available. Another factor was that the visitors were neither ‘visible’ in the digital Fair hall nor on the stands. So there was none of the usual visual experience of full walkways and stands busy with visitors. Despite this, figures from downloads showed that many visitors found their digital way to the stands.”


In 2022 there will be another actual, live Fiets en Wandelbeurs on the agenda. The dates are 19 and 20 February in Flanders Expo and 25 and 26 February in the Jaarbeurs Utrecht.

 

 

     
 

 

Attachments
online_exhibition_complex_1.jpg