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- [00:02]
A
Every day, the world presents you with hundreds of headlines. What do you believe? Who do you trust? The Financial Times cuts through complexity with clarity, accuracy and global perspective. Its journalism is guided by independence, not agendas. That's why leaders in business, policy and culture turn to one trusted source for facts, for insight, for what matters next. Source FT Read more and subscribe@ft.com you're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 6 November, 2025 on Monocle Radio.
- [00:44]
B
Is the United States really about to unleash its gunboats on Venezuela? Can you successfully transplant an American political campaign to Europe? And who wants to spend eternity with Doors fans? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle DAILY starts foreign hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Marta Lorimer and Andrew Thompson will discuss the day's big stories and we'll have a report from the world travel market as it closes in London today. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Marta Lorimer, a lecturer in politics at Cardiff University, and by Andrew Thompson, Latin America specialist and Latin news contributor. Hello to you both.
- [01:49]
A
Hello.
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C
Hello. Hello.
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B
Marta, you have recently been to Italy, which is not, to be honest, that unusual a thing for you to do, but specifically to Milan. What was the occasion?
- [01:58]
A
I was doing things and meeting people. That was mostly it. I was there for a university, a short university exchange, a networking visit to the Universita Statale.
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B
Where does Milan, because I know it is an Italian city that divides opinions somewhat, especially among Italians. Where does it rank in your list of favorite Italian cities?
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A
I had never spent more than three hours in Milan until now, and that is because I believed it to be the capital of evil, essentially in Italy.
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B
Big hello to all our listeners in Milan at this point.
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A
Hello. Ciao. Having been there, I think I still wouldn't necessarily want to live there, but it also, I think it feels a little bit like one of those cities that is not necessarily great to visit, but I can see why people like to live there.
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B
Yeah, that tracks. I think I'm just trying to see, is there a seamless link, Andrew, between Milan and Edinburgh? Not really, to be honest.
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C
Absolutely not.
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B
But you have recently been to Edinburgh?
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C
Yes, I've been spending a week in Edinburgh and I reckon this is a high powered diplomatic mission which involved me taking my 5 year old grandson to school for the first week of his school career with a few tantrums along the way.
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B
And did he behave himself, though?
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C
Yes, he did. Yes, he did.
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B
How do you explain all this to a 5 year old? I keep thinking of that old joke about the kid who comes home from his first day at school and his parents say, what did you learn? Get the reply, not enough, apparently. I've got to go back tomorrow. I mean, do you tell him, like, get used to it, kid. There's another 15 years of this.
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C
No, I think what was interesting was there was enough surreal things going on to kind of almost push those discussions to one side. He was very dedicated on collecting sticks.
- [03:58]
B
Sticks?
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C
The walk to the school. School was kind of like secondary. It's some sort of place, apparently he had to go to. But what he really wanted to do was add to his collection of sticks. His mother told me to throw them all away.
- [04:11]
B
Doubtless to the great excitement of any dogs in the vicinity. We will start properly in Venezuela and the prospect of the United States actually doing anything with the hefty US Navy flotilla which has gathered off Venezuela's coast in recent weeks. Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump appeared to step back from any intention of crying havoc, letting slip the dogs of war, etc. A Shakespearean reference. And we're just getting started. And seemed at any rate distracted by the idea of invading Nigeria instead. However, reports today suggest that maybe some sort of US action against the Bolivarian Republic might be imminent after all possible directed at targets believed or alleged to be associated with Venezuela's undeniably pestilential drugs cartels. Andrew, this is very much your bailiwick, obviously. How likely does this sound, the kind of convention.
- [05:06]
C
First of all, it changes every day, and this is the way with President Trump. Yes, Trump is changing his statements every day, but the conventional view, if there is a conventional view, is that there are now, I think it's 18 US Navy vessels in the southern Caribbean and parts of the Pacific, including this massive aircraft carrier. But that, that is not enough to invade Venezuela, which is actually quite a.
- [05:34]
B
Decent sized country with jungles and mountains, because you'd need.
- [05:37]
C
You need. I think there are about as much as 50,000 troops involved now, but you need various hundreds of thousands. So if it's not enough to invade Venezuela, it suggests that the Trump administration is planning a long period of destabilization and tension and that it will expand its current sea strikes on vessels which are deemed to be trafficking in drugs. It will extend that possibly by going on land and attacking some targets. And the idea of this would be that the United States is not officially upfront going for regime change in Venezuela, but it is making the situation more and more difficult for President Nicolas Maduro in the hope that the regime will eventually cave in or that elements of the army will break with Maduro and say to the United States, you know, let's agree regime change program.
- [06:36]
B
Martin Very much not for the first time in the history of American foreign policy, if that is the plan. That does seem like a plausible analysis. There is an amount of wishful thinking underpinning that.
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A
Yes, I would say the last couple of decades of American sponsored regime change haven't really given us some great success stories. And I find it particularly surprising by someone like Trump who is pursuing an America first policy quite openly to actually decide to embark upon a project of regime change. So it does seem more likely that he would try to, I suppose, do enough to encourage someone else on the ground rather than intervene. Because I doubt that there's any appetite in the US for another Afghanistan.
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B
Well, you would assume not, but he doubtless sees an opportunity here, Andrew and what I'm wondering, given your understanding of the region, is how well any such American endeavours would be received by Venezuelans. Because I think it's fairly undeniable that the regime of Nicolas Maduro is, it is unpleasant, it is repressive, it is crooked, it is inept and it is unpopular. But that doesn't necessarily demonstrate, as we've learned in a few of those previous American interventions Martyr was referring to, that US Troops would be welcomed with blizzards of rose petals.
- [08:04]
C
I think there's a significant proportion of Venezuelan opinion which would welcome American troops today. But that will always be, if you like, a temporary arrangement. And it will then depend what kind of a political settlement is achieved. And there are many ways in which that could go wrong. And the United States could find itself bogged down in intractable Venezuelan problems. And so Trump's promise of never repeating the so called forever wars of Biden and the Democrats would eventually fall apart because he would be getting stuck into Venezuela in a way that's very difficult to withdraw from.
- [08:48]
B
Marta Always a fun thing to drop on our guests, asking them to divine the thinking of President Trump. Is it clear why he has fixated on this? Because for all that we may joke about how the intensity of his attention to a particular matter may waver from one day or indeed minute to the next, the pressure on Venezuela has been building for some time. He does have a bee in his bonnet about Venezuela. He keeps coming back to this thing, as he did in his interview with 60 Minutes earlier this week about asylums emptying into the United States. I genuinely think he does not understand the difference between asylums as in where you keep the mentally ill people, and asylum as in the thing people seek. But he does have a fixation with Venezuela.
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A
So divining whatever Trump thinks is always very, very difficult. So I will suggest on the upside.
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B
Your guess is as good as anybody's.
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A
Yeah. Could it have something to do with the fact that Venezuela actually has oil and that this is a bit of a kleptocracy at this point from what we've seen. So I wouldn't be surprised if there was an economic motive, if not necessarily in his brain, in the brain, in the minds of those around him. Because we also know that Trump is quite easy to sway and tends to change his mind depending on who the last person he spoke to is.
- [10:19]
B
Because just finally on this, Andrew, to be clear, to remind our listeners, it's not just that Venezuela has oil. Venezuela has lots and lots of oil. Obviously Russia and China have taken an interest in that fact as well. And that being the case, is it necessarily an illegitimate preoccupation for the United States to have?
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C
Perhaps not. But I think what also needs to be said is that Venezuela has the world's largest shale oil reserves, known reserves. But the Venezuelan oil industry has for decades been mismanaged, stolen from fraudulently lost funds, so that the entire oil sector is in a state of crisis. So long term strategic, it's still interesting, but someone will have to invest more than $10 billion to get the oil industry back into some kind of functioning order.
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B
Well, to France now, the politicos of which seem no more likely than usual to join hands and roar a hearty chorus of whatever the French for kumbayard is. While criticisms of French President Emmanuel Macron are nothing new, are indeed as much a French national pastime as idly flinging small balls towards one smaller ball. In between squeezes of tiny accordion eye are arching towards bere hems at criticisms made of Macron by his former advisor and mentor, Alain Mink. Maenck has declared Macron the worst president of the Fifth Republic and called him a narcissist, a Frenchman pleased with himself. Imagine that Marta is worst president. A bit much. I mean, the Fifth Republic hasn't been going that long, there's not that many to choose from.
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A
But nonetheless, it's an interesting statement. I suppose you could still make the claim that Hollande was probably a worse president if Only because he didn't manage to get reelected. And you could say the same thing for Sarkozy. At least Macron can say that, look, my first mandate went well enough that people were willing to give me a second chance.
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B
He could also say, I am not, as of this broadcast, in prison.
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A
That is also something that he has that he can say, which is quite good. So I think he might not be the worst, but he certainly presided on a serious, really serious institutional crisis in France, and particularly on the rise of the National Rally. This is the president that ran on the message that he was going to be the bulwark against the radical right. We are now in a situation where last week, for the first time in French history, the parliament voted for a motion that was proposed by the radical right. So this is really unprecedented territory, and Macron is really, if not completely to blame. He certainly bears a large part of the responsibility for it.
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B
How much, though, Andrew? Because, I mean, Marthe's right, that was very much Macron's pitch. And he was a relative unknown when he sought France's presidency, but that was his thing. I am the Le Pen buster. I will keep National Rally out of the LSE Palace. And he has twice. I mean, he has actually done what he said he was going to do in that respect. Is it necessarily his fault that even after all that, the French people still seem inclined to think, no, we'd like.
- [13:44]
C
To give that a go to a certain point. I don't think it is his fault, but if you ask, turn the question around a bit, you know, could he have done more to avoid the direction that we may be moving in? I think the answer would be yes, he could have done more. And he could have. And perhaps Marta will kind of add to this, he could have done more in terms of forming a political coalition to stop the extreme right, which at the moment, the, if you like, the non extreme right parties seem quite internally divided.
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B
He is doing, though, Marta, legendarily, one of the least possible jobs in Western politics. I mean, everybody who has attempted to govern France has remarked upon the fairly hefty degree of difficulty involved. Is it not arguable that, say, the last presidential election had gone the other way and Marine Le Pen had spent the last few years being president, that French voters would now be clamoring for a stolid, reliable centrist instead?
- [14:51]
A
I think the problem is that we need to remember that the job of the French president is not really to govern France.
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B
True.
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A
Right. That is, and this is the real issue right now, is that Macron is trying to govern France when he doesn't have a parliamentary majority to do that. The parliament right now in France is divided between three broad groups, none of which really care too much to work with each other. But he isn't really helping by essentially saying, well, look, this Parliament should be doing what I wanted to do, rather than trying to work with each other, which they're still going to be completely unable to do. Right. So I think that this is part of why I say that Macron has a big responsibility in this. In selecting his various prime ministers, it was always him picking the candidate and picking people who he liked and that were close to him. Instead of telling the parliament, you do this, and this is where I think this is where my view, and I realize this is my view, is that his original mistake was to never give the left a chance to fail.
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B
Is it arguable, building on that, Andrew, that he hasn't done enough in the way of succession planning? We still don't know who the next prospective Le Pen buster is going to be, if indeed Le Pen is able to stand. There is some doubt about that. And certainly the bookmakers currently have Jordan Bardella of the National Party installed as favorite to be the next president of France.
- [16:27]
C
I don't follow French politics as closely as I'd like, but I can certainly say that there doesn't seem to be an obvious successor and someone who can say he or she represents continuity with what's been done during the eight years or so that Macron has been in power.
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B
I mean, on the specific criticisms made of him by his former mentor Marta, he says that Macron, and I quote, will leave a political landscape that is perhaps permanently unstable in France, to which you can only retort. As opposed to what?
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A
There was a time in France where there was slightly more stable politics, in a sense that you had to.
- [17:15]
B
There's been a fair few times when there was a lot less stable politics.
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A
Exactly. But I think that this is, in this sense, this is not entirely Macron's fault. What we are seeing is, and this is a broader trend across Europe, we are seeing a splintering of the political space. So it was never the case in most of Europe that you had two parties. You always had more than two parties. But what we're seeing is really the multiplication of parties and increasingly of political parties that will not work together. So France isn't unique in this respect. What probably is Macron's more specific failure is that, yes, he hasn't been able to create a more long term project because we don't really know what happens with an march in the meanwhile. He's destroyed everyone else in the prospect. The only people he hasn't destroyed is the national rally.
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B
Andrew, just finally on this one, as a general observation, the other criticism made of Macron by his former adviser and mentor, though he is not alone in this, which is that Macron has become somewhat consumed by hubris. Does that ever not happen? I mean, if you spend the thick end of a decade being commander in chief of a nuclear armed superpower, you're going to end up being a bit full of yourself, aren't you?
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C
Yeah, I think I'm modifying my position on narcissism. I think in general narcissism is a bad thing. But you have to ask what makes politicians run for office in the first place. They have to have some degree of narcissism to motivate them. So I'm now thinking that certain big international political figures like Donald Trump and in this case Macron, I modify my position to say they are too narcissistic and they should tone it down a bit and think about other people and coalition building and other such things as a different form of leadership. Really?
- [19:17]
B
Well, on a related subject, circa 2008, phalanxes of wide eyed European political advisor types of the center and center left returned from the United States demanding to know why their party could not do what President elect Barack Obama's Democrats just had. The answer was usually your party's leader is not Barack Obama. Nevertheless, a similar delirium already seems to be taking hold following the victory in New York City's mayoral election of Zorah Mamdani, a 34 year old Muslim immigrant who ran and won as an out and proud Democratic socialist. His campaign was assiduously followed and in a few instances joined by operators from across Europe attempting to distil his secret. Marta, Is the problem with this approach going to be your electorate isn't New York City?
- [20:08]
A
Yes, that is a major part of the issue. Your electorate is not New York City. We are talking about a giant like a really big city with huge issues in terms of inequality, as happens in most big cities. And that is probably open enough to diversity to be willing to consider the fact that you could vote for an immigrant as your mayor. So I'm going to be really curious to see what lessons European parties, left wing parties, learn from this because this is certainly a unique situation because it's, you know, again, it's New York City and it's also a local election. Let's not Forget this. You can't really extrapolate from what happens locally to the national level. So I wonder if the lesson that they're going to take is just, oh, we need to communicate better, or if they're actually going to realize that there is something that left wing parties can do and that is talking about the economy.
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B
Was that all there was to it, though? Andrew, just going back to what you were saying earlier about how a degree of narcissism, though that's possibly a harsh word in this context, is probably a prerequisite for embarking on a career in public life. I think it is probably fair to say that Zoram Mamdani does not strike one as somebody who is displeased by the view in his shaving mirror. And I'm sure, I'm sure that's even more the case now. But again, is any of that transportable or transferable? Do you either have that charismatic leader or just not have them?
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C
I think they're a combination of things. Either you have the leader or you don't. That's part of it. The other is a question of technique, which I notice in a number of commentaries are highlighting that his campaign was both old fashioned. He went out and got his supporters knocking on doors and, you know, cutting edge in the sense that they were doing a lot on social media, TikTok and so on. And I would say then the third thing to consider is his actual policies, because of course he's shown he's brilliant at getting himself elected. That's a major achievement. But he's made a number of big and expensive policy promises along the way, including free bus transport and various other things, freezing rent. And he's going to have to find some way of funding that. So if you like to put it crudely, his European admirers need to come back in a year's time to check how it's going and whether he's encountered difficulties or not.
- [22:51]
B
Which is a partial answer to another question I wanted to put to you, Mata, which was basically exactly that everybody is now excited about, like trying to run a Mamdani style campaign and find a Mamdani style candidate. But should everybody maybe take a deep breath and say, let's see if this guy can actually govern?
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A
Surely that's something that is worth thinking about. But I think that the left has a much bigger issue, which is that they all need to get together, put their heads together and think about how do we do politics in a way that is not just neoliberalism, but rich written in red And I think that this is what they're really, really struggling with. It's saying they, I think the left generally realizes that we're past third way. We've moved into a new era where you need to be thinking about economics differently again, because voters actually still care about economics. We've got this in our mind that all they care about nowadays is immigration. That's not right. And a lot of left wing parties are really struggling with how do we do left wing politics in a world that is economically averse to it. And that's also where local politics might not really be able to teach you much because again, it's not what works at a mayoral level. What works in a city doesn't necessarily scale up once you have added economic pressures.
- [24:17]
B
And Andrew, for all that you were saying about how what Americans would call his ground game, was important that they did actually go out pound footpaths, knock on doors, speak to actual human beings, et cetera. And I think that is a good observation because I think that has been undervalued in the coverage of Mamdani's campaign. Do we nevertheless have to brace ourselves as citizens of democracies for lots and lots of excruciating video grabs being made by awkward middle aged politicians trying to be cool on TikTok?
- [24:49]
C
In a word, yes. I think, I think the other thing just worth mentioning was that the two governors who were elected in New Jersey and Virginia were both women who had previously been in the US Military. So that's a slightly, you know, they won victories which are possibly as important as the one in New York. But if you like, their kind of platform was somewhat different. And you ask yourself it goes back to what kind of a coalition do you have inside the Democratic Party and how good will it be at fighting the fight, you know, in the midterms against Trump? What does this tell us about that?
- [25:32]
B
Well, back to France and exciting news for people who fancy spending eternity in the company of woebegone teenage goths. Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, final repose of many great artists. And Jim Morrison has plots for sale. €4,000 gets you planted in the same paddock as Oscar Wilde, Frederic Chopin, Marcel Proust, Edith Piaf and Marcel Marceau, among others. But there are a couple of catches. One is that you have to further undertake bazing to restore one of the cemetery's more dilapidated headstones. The other is that plots will be allocated by lottery because demand is so high. Yes, people are dying to get in. Andrew, are you tempted by this? Would you spend €4,000 on a plot in Pere Lachaise.
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C
I want to read conditions much more carefully first. Because what I want to know is if I spend my money to get a plot, do I get the right to put flashing lights on it? Or to put bits of my own poetry or pictures of myself embraced with Jim Morrison or whatever it is? Do I have to follow certain kind of rules of decorum?
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B
Are these already arrangements you have made? Do you. Do you want the flashing lights?
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C
I might. For argument's sake, I might want that.
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B
Okay. These are fair questions which have not been addressed in any of the reporting I've seen. Good spot. Marta, what about you? I should point out that there are the consolations on offer of a spot at Montparnasse. You could be with Sartre, Jacques Chirac, Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir. Or at Montmartre where Degas, Zola, Truffaut and the bloke who lopped the head off Louis XIV all are.
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A
So I visited all of these cemeteries.
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B
Was this when you were a woebegone? Teenage goth?
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A
No, it's when I was living in Paris, as we all do. So I've been to all of these cemeteries. They're good cemeteries. I think out of the three, I would quite like Montmartre because I feel a deep emotional connection to. I think her full name was Amandine du Plessis. She's the inspiration for La Damo Camellia, which then is La Traviata. So that's kind of. It's got this artistic flair to it. But if I had to pick a cemetery where I would like to be buried, I saw some wonderful places in Shetland where you're just absolutely remote. Sea view, nothing but sheep. I think I would quite like that.
- [27:57]
B
See the one I have my eye on, there is a sort of family plot attached to my mother's side of the family. This is much less grand than it sounds. It is in an isolated spot. The closest thing you would call a town is called Gumbagna, which is about a two hour drive further into New South Wales from Warren Wagga Wagga. Seriously, you run out of sealed road a long time before you get there. What I really like about it, it's where some of my family, including my mother, are buried. So we visit there at least once a year. But if you walk all the way down the back of the cemetery and then turn left into a bunch of bushes, there is somebody buried there. What can only have been his own insistence. So already this place is in the middle of nowhere and he's picked the furthest corner of it. So what I'm going to specify is I want to be buried right next to that guy because that' annoy him. Andrew, have you picked anywhere? No, I closed the show on a cheerful note over here.
- [28:53]
C
Well, just to keep it cheerful, I was hoping I'd be incinerated and thrown out to sea or something like that, but I haven't, I haven't made my mind up.
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B
If you had to pick somewhere though, you don't fancy any of these fancy cemeteries in Paris?
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C
No, I go for sort of. Yeah. Simplicity.
- [29:12]
B
Yeah. No, that. These are quite fancy cemeteries, aren't they?
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A
There's another one that I have in mind is where my mother grew up on a prison island off an island in Italy. And there's still this like the cemetery there and that is also quite lovely because again you're remote, you're in Italy, it's an island off an island. Now it's a natural, natural park though, so I don't think they'd let me stay there.
- [29:32]
B
Are we, are we both descended from criminals? Martyr?
- [29:36]
A
No, my grandfather was a doctor.
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B
Yeah. I cannot claim the same about any of my ancestors. Marta Lorimer and Andrew Thompson, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, the World Travel Market in London has us joined just this hour come to a close. The three day event drew over 46,000 participants and 4,000 exhibitors from 180 countries. The man behind the event is Chris Carter Chapman, the new event director of World Travel Market. Chris joined Monocle's Tom Webb at the market to talk more about the success of this year's edition.
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D
So I joined RX Global who run World Travel Market earlier this year and I have just been and handed out an award to a, a Spanish journalist who has covered World Travel Market for 40 years back to back. So my speech was very clear. You've done 40, I've done one. You're winning. But he was delighted to receive the award and you're.
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E
This is the halfway mark.
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D
Would we say this is the halfway mark? Yes, I have many plasters on at this point. I think I did 28, 500 steps yesterday. But we are halfway through World Travel Market 2025.
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E
You're holding up well. You don't look tired which is amazing considering we say this every year. Unbelievably, this is again the largest ever.
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D
It is the largest ever and it's wonderful to break that record once more. One of the big steps we've taken this year on numbers is that we're 9% up at this point on buyers. And of course, buyers are the lifeblood of what makes World Travel Market so successful. So to see that number and to see buyers coming here in record numbers is really fantastic.
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E
That's a huge marker of success. I wonder how you were able to achieve that this year.
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D
So I think we really prioritize this year the value of World Travel Market as somewhere for the global travel trade to do business. There are lots of wonderful features, as you will know from having attended World Travel Market in the past, the networking, the myriad of different activations and travel offerings, but it's the ability to come here and to sign deals. And at last year's World Travel Market Market, we signed over 2.2 billion pounds worth of deals over the course of the three days at the show. And it looks like we're going to surpass that number quite significantly this year. So it really is an economic powerhouse in London in November.
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E
It's always such a mistake to come here without booking yourself in because every stand there are meetings taking place. Everyone is back to back for the entire day. Do you have any sense of what kind of numbers we're at in terms of meetings yet?
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D
We don't have the exact number, but I know that we are 30% up year on year on meetings. So, again, a really wonderful number. We've got a dedicated meeting zone in the middle of the show where people are able to have meetings off stands, because, as you say, there are sometimes so many meetings on the stands that people are queuing up to have a beating. So there's various places people can do that. We've also introduced for the first time a number of VIP lounges. We're in the travel industry, after all, so very similar to an airport lounge where people are able to. To step away from the hustle and bustle and have a meeting privately, which. And they've been very popular.
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E
And the moment you step in, you are greeted by a huge Moroccan stand. It's a. It's a lovely place to visit. Are they one of the big players who's making a big splash this year?
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D
They are certainly one of our very big clients. And as you could see, just as you come into the show, you're greeted by visit Morocco. Saudi, of course, have got Saudi land, which is first time they've done that at World Travel Market, I think, is really symptomatic of their commitment to the show. Egypt have obviously got their very beautiful museum of Antiquities, which they've recreated here on site. It's well Worth a look if you haven't had a chance to pop over there. And I think Spain has the largest footprint it's ever had at the show. So, yeah, it's wonderful to see lots of our destinations investing and then we've seen growth in some other areas, which is really interesting. Certainly travel tech is 55% up year on year in terms of their footprint. So we're seeing private sector investment in the as well as destinations dramatically increasing.
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E
And the Middle east have had a terrific year. They're looking ahead to another big year. They've got a fantastic presence here once more.
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D
They really have. And I think the sports tourism piece is really interesting. And our trends report that came out yesterday has pointed out that many, many people now, of course, are building entire travel itineraries around travel to big sporting events. And certainly the Middle east are benefiting from that in a very real way.
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E
Now, do you have a theme this year that's tying everyone together? Is there a slogan? Is there a motto?
- [34:07]
D
It's travel in a changing world. And it's trying to help everybody make sense of, you know, a fractious international landscape and how meetings like this are real cultural exchanges, bringing lots of people together, building a genuine bridge. And it's just Wonderful. We've got 182 countries here at the show this year and obviously a. There's. There's not many more countries left in terms of growth on that one. So it's just wonderful to have so many nations represented in one place.
- [34:33]
E
And it's a tricky thing for you to do coming into this role because you've inherited such a successful market. What is your approach? Are you going to keep it as is or are you going to shake things up?
- [34:46]
D
So I think I've come in and inherited what's probably one of the crown jewels in the events calendar in the UK and actually, indeed globally. I mean, world travel market this year is going to deliver around 300 million pounds to the London economy alone during the course that it runs. So I'm under strict instructions to do nothing to jeopardize that for anyone involved. So really I'm looking to continue all the things that make the event so special, but then to introduce some new features. So this year we've got TrendFest, which is our experiential travel zone, really bringing to life the adventure tourism, gastronomy tourism, wellness tourism in one space and allowing people to interact with it in the way that, that, you know, they want to. And we know that more and more consumers are prioritizing those authentic travel experiences. They want something a little bit different. They want a memory that they're really going to remember forever. So that's been a launch for us this year. And WTM tv, which is running around the clock, broadcast online, broadcast across the show, just allowing people to connect to the content wherever they are, because, of course, it's a bit of a beast in terms of how big it is, and people always feel like they're missing out on something, so they're able to engage with the network. So I'm just, just think I'm taking everything that makes it special and trying to enhance it in any way I can.
- [35:56]
E
Finally, we are in London. We can't ignore London as a host. Why do people come here? Why is it so important that this is the capital that hosts this event?
- [36:04]
D
I mean, it's such a center of global tourism, of global aviation, of global transport. And, you know, we were really pleased this year to have visit Britain as our premier partner. And last night, the UK government hosted a number of travel leaders, brought us all together to celebrate, I think, the UK's ambition in terms of global travel. And, you know, I've spoken to so many people who visit and they really look forward to their trip to London every year in November. And from my perspective, long may that continue.
- [36:34]
B
That was Chris Carter Chapman, event director of World Travel Market, with Monocle's Tom Webb. And that is all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Marta Lorimer and Andrew Thompson. Today's show was produced by Tom Webb and researched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was Steph Chungoo. I'm Andrew Mullahan in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
- [37:15]
C
Sam.