Last week’s World Travel Market, marred by the non-attendance of several Iranian exhibitors due to visa delays by the Tehran British Embassy, saw industry experts still pondering how to cope with the lingering effects of the global recession.

London played host to some 5,000 tourism and travel professionals, whose main concern was consolidating the faint ray of hope ahead after the first three quarters of 2009 were disastrous.

For the period up until the end of August, international travel and tourism was down by around 7% worldwide compared to 2008. The impact was more so felt in Europe, where the European Travel Operators Association (ETOA) claimed figures were closer to 8%, and up to 11% in Eastern Europe.

The ETOA Executive Director Tom Jenkins said that the crisis had without doubt hot the tourism industry particularly hard. The Inbound sector for European travel was still suffering while strong markets such as the US and Japan are not the major travel groups in Europe.

However, Jenkins noted that 2010 has a number of encouraging signs for the industry, including the Shanghai’s World Expo and the Football World Cup in South Africa which will boost passenger numbers.

The London conference also discovered that while numbers may be down, European travelers are still going to the same places, with Spain, France and the United States still the top draw cards. The latter part of 2009 has also seen traveler numbers on the rise again, fuelling hope for the future.

With the first signs of an industry recovery being shown in recent months, there is a groundswell of optimism for 2010. Though the market is in a constant state of flux there is still a steadily growing demand. It was also noted that average earnings in the tourism industry still made more than 2 billion euros per day.