World Travel Market London — WTM London — is widely regarded as the most influential travel and tourism event on earth. Every November it turns London’s ExCeL into the global marketplace for the entire travel trade: destinations, hotel groups, airlines, tour operators, online travel agencies, technology providers and tourism boards from more than 180 countries, all in one place to network, source and do business.

This guide covers everything you need to plan for WTM London 2026 — the confirmed dates and venue, the important new ticketing rules, what actually happens across the three days, the new WTM Travel Tech hall, and a clear, step-by-step path to registering, attending or exhibiting, whether you’re travelling from Manchester, Madrid, New York, Dubai or Mumbai. It’s written to be the single most useful, up-to-date WTM London 2026 resource you’ll find.

What Is WTM London?

World Travel Market London is an annual B2B travel and tourism trade exhibition held at ExCeL London and organised by RX (Reed Exhibitions), one of the world’s leading events organisers. Running since 1980, it has spent more than four decades as the industry’s flagship gathering — a business-to-business marketplace where destinations, hotel groups, tour operators, transport companies, travel technology providers and tourism boards present their latest products to a worldwide audience of buyers, media and decision-makers.

What sets WTM apart is its reach and its intent. It is genuinely global — the 2025 edition drew participants from 182 countries — and it is unapologetically commercial. The show is built around pre-scheduled meetings, targeted networking and a vast exhibition floor designed to generate leads, launch partnerships and close deals across leisure, corporate, MICE and luxury travel. It is a trade-only event, open to travel professionals rather than the general public, and — new for 2026 — attendance requires a paid ticket booked in advance.

WTM London 2026 Dates, Venue & Hours

WTM London 2026 takes place from 3 to 5 November 2026 at ExCeL London, in the Royal Victoria Dock in East London. It runs across three days, Tuesday to Thursday. Unlike some other trade shows, WTM London has kept to its established early-November slot, so these dates are stable and confirmed on the official WTM website.

Venue: ExCeL London, Royal Victoria Dock, One Western Gateway, London E16 1XL, United Kingdom. ExCeL is in the Docklands, well served by the DLR and the Elizabeth Line, and is around 10 minutes from London City Airport.

WTM London by the Numbers

The scale is a large part of why WTM matters, and 2025 was its biggest and most successful edition to date. Here is what that looked like:

Those numbers explain the show’s reputation: more than £2.2 billion in business was directly attributed to WTM London 2025, off the back of over 40,000 confirmed meetings. Notably, the fastest-growing part of the show was travel technology, which expanded 55% year-on-year — the trend that has now produced a dedicated WTM Travel Tech event for 2026.

What Happens at WTM — How the Show Works

WTM London is far more than a hall of stands. Across three days it combines a huge exhibition floor, a respected conference programme, structured buyer–seller meetings and a dense calendar of networking. Here is how the pieces fit together.

The exhibition floor is organised into regions and sectors — national tourism boards, hotels, airlines, technology providers and travel services each cluster into areas, so buyers can navigate straight to the destinations and partners they need. The WTM Conference runs a curated agenda of premium sessions on the issues shaping travel now and next: sustainability and responsible tourism, evolving traveller expectations, destination strategy, digital transformation, distribution and the growing role of data and AI. Hosted buyer and pre-scheduled meeting programmes pair 5,500+ qualified buyers with relevant exhibitors by appointment, which is why WTM produces tens of thousands of confirmed meetings rather than chance encounters.

For 2026 the show also features several signature zones: WTM Travel Tech (covered in detail below), WTM TrendFest — an interactive zone of cultural showcases and dynamic exhibits, returning bigger and more central — and WTM TV, the show’s broadcast hub of stand tours and interviews, back with larger screens across the floor. For a first-time visitor, the key is to treat WTM as a planned campaign: identify the regions, sessions, zones and meetings that matter to you before you arrive, rather than trying to see everything.

WTM London is one of several major shows the ZentrumHub team attends each year — see the full calendar of travel events and shows where you can meet us, including our guide to ATM Dubai 2026.

WTM Travel Tech 2026

The headline addition for 2026 is WTM Travel Tech, a major new co-located event with its own dedicated hall and its own entrance. It was launched in direct response to demand: the travel-technology sector at WTM grew 55% year-on-year, and more than half — 52% — of visitors said they were actively seeking to meet travel-technology companies. In other words, WTM built a whole show around what its audience was already asking for.

At its centre is the Innovation Highway, an interactive route of exhibitors showcasing solutions across artificial intelligence, big data, IoT, biometrics, payments and sustainability technology — the tools driving dynamic pricing, predictive demand and smarter, more connected journeys. The Future Stage, a theatre dedicated to travel-tech content, hosts case studies, C-suite fireside chats and panels on AI, payments, data, distribution, investment, geopolitics and market disruption. Speakers on the travel-tech stages in the last edition included names such as Trip.com Group, Sabre, easyJet and Almosafer, and there’s a dedicated networking party at the end of day two.

For online travel agencies, bedbanks and platforms building on modern hotel API infrastructure, WTM Travel Tech is the most relevant part of the show. It is where the distribution and connectivity conversations happen — how AI, real-time inventory and smarter integration are reshaping the way hotels are searched, priced and booked. If your reason for attending WTM is technology and supply, this is the hall to build your schedule around — and it’s where you’ll find us.

Who Attends & Why Exhibit

WTM’s audience is a cross-section of the entire travel industry, which is exactly what makes it valuable. Understanding who is in the room helps you decide what to get out of it.

If you’re weighing up whether to exhibit, the case comes down to concentration and outcomes: WTM puts 46,500+ travel professionals from 180+ countries under one roof for three days, and the show reports over £2.2 billion in deals directly attributed to it. For a supplier, technology provider or destination, that density of qualified, budget-holding buyers is very hard to replicate through a whole year of outbound sales. Stand space in high-demand areas — especially the new Travel Tech hall — is allocated early, so the practical advice is to enquire well ahead and plan your presence around pre-booked meetings, not just footfall.

Tickets & How to Register

The biggest practical change for 2026 is ticketing. For the first time, WTM London is charging for visitor tickets from the start of the registration campaign, bringing it into line with other comparable global travel events. Previously, trade visitors could register for free; now a paid ticket is required. The upside is that booking early is significantly cheaper — buying ahead of the early-bird deadline saves up to 50% versus on-the-day pricing, and gives you full access to the conference and speaker programme, the complete WTM Global Travel Report, the thousands of exhibitors and the new WTM Travel Tech hall.

Registration is handled entirely through the official WTM website. The process is straightforward:

1. Go to the official WTM London registration page at wtm.com/london.
2. Choose your ticket / visitor type and take advantage of the early-bird rate.
3. Complete your business and contact details.
4. Pay and confirm — you’ll receive your badge / QR code for entry.
5. Download the WTM networking app to pre-arrange meetings before you arrive.

Two things to plan for wherever you’re travelling from. Book early to lock in the lower ticket price and, if you need one, sort your UK visa in good time, as processing can take weeks. And if you plan to exhibit rather than visit, that’s a separate process — submit an exhibitor enquiry through the official site to discuss stand space and packages, ideally well in advance. Always confirm current ticket prices and deadlines on the official site, as early-bird tiers change through the year.

Getting to ExCeL & Planning Your Visit

ExCeL London sits in the Royal Docks in East London and is one of the best-connected major venues in the city. Here are the practicalities.

By train: The Elizabeth Line stops at Custom House for ExCeL, putting the venue within easy reach of central London, Heathrow and Reading. The DLR (Docklands Light Railway) also serves ExCeL directly, with Custom House and Prince Regent stations at either end of the venue. By air: London City Airport (LCY) is roughly 10 minutes away by DLR; Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton all connect via the rail network, with the Elizabeth Line giving a direct Heathrow–Custom House route. Where to stay: there are hotels on the ExCeL campus and around the Royal Docks for walk-to-venue convenience, plus plenty of options in Canary Wharf, Stratford and central London along the Elizabeth Line and DLR. Because WTM draws tens of thousands of visitors, book accommodation early, as London hotel rates rise around the show.

Visas: many visitors need a UK visa or an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) depending on nationality, so check the current UK requirements well ahead and allow processing time. Early November in London is cold and often wet, so pack accordingly, and wear comfortable shoes — ExCeL’s halls involve a lot of walking across the three days.

First-Timer Tips + Free Planner

The single biggest difference between a productive WTM and a wasted one is preparation. A few things seasoned attendees always do:

• Set one clear objective — new suppliers, new buyers, technology partners, or media — and build your days around it.
• Pre-book meetings through the WTM app before you arrive; the floor is enormous and diaries fill fast.
• Shortlist Conference and Future Stage sessions in advance so you don’t miss the talks that matter to you.
• Wear comfortable shoes and pace yourself — three days across multiple halls at ExCeL is a marathon.
• Carry a digital badge and business cards, and follow up within a week while conversations are fresh.

To make that planning easier, we’ve put together a free, print-ready WTM London 2026 planner with the confirmed dates, opening hours, a daily schedule grid, a meeting tracker and a pre-show checklist. No email required — just save it or print it and take it with you.

Meet ZentrumHub at Booth S16-520

ZentrumHub will be exhibiting at WTM London 2026 at Booth S16-520, and our team would be glad to meet you there. We help online travel agencies, bedbanks and travel platforms connect to 100+ hotel suppliers through a single universal hotel API — reaching 900,000+ deduplicated hotels with sub-500ms response times, with connectivity, mapping and routing handled for you, so you can launch and scale without managing dozens of separate integrations.

Whether you’re an OTA looking to broaden inventory, a supplier wanting wider distribution through Zentrum Connect, or a platform evaluating 100+ hotel suppliers through one connection, come and see it live. WTM diaries fill quickly, so it’s worth booking a slot in advance — bring your roadmap and we’ll map your exact go-live path on the spot.

Frequently Asked Questions