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You could call it speed dating for the luxury travel industry. But Virtuoso Travel Week is so much more than that. The event, taking place August 8 to 13 in Las Vegas, is the U.S.’s largest event for buying and selling travel. Over four days of intensive meetings, an estimated $450 million in luxury travel sales happens at Virtuoso Travel Week.

We create every issue of Virtuoso Life to inspire you to travel and explore the world, and we tap our network of professional photographers to bring stories to life with their images. One of the most important (and most debated) decisions of each issue involves determining the cover image. For the May issue of Virtuoso Life , we knew the image would show a Virtuoso hotel – it’s the Hotel Issue, after all, and the feature “Small Wonders: 20 intimate hotels, villas, and lodges worth adding to your short list” provided options aplenty. Our editorial and creative team consulted with the Virtuoso Hotels and Resorts team to help us choose which of 1,200 hotels to include – in fact, half of our hotels have fewer than 100 rooms. The editorial team presented three top contenders to Virtuoso’s Member Marketing Committee, an elected group of advisors that essentially serves as our publications’ editorial advisory board. “The advisors loved all of them for different reasons,” says editorial dir...

Tourists love to shop. Studies by the U.S. Travel Association and the Department of Commerce show that shopping and dining are the top two activities of travelers. In fact, travelers spend one-third of their total travel funds on retail purchases. Shopping tourism is appealing to all kinds of travelers Shopping Tourism On the Rise According to Ian Stazicker, tourism director – global marketing at Virtuoso partner Value Retail, shopping tourism account for 40 percent of global luxury spending. Value Retail operates nine Chic Outlet Shopping open-air designer villages outside European hubs such as Paris and Madrid, as well as one in China. Retail tourism is growing so fast, says Stazicker, that “between 2008 and 2012 we have seen an increase in visitors of more than 43 percent to 30 million.”

The first-ever Virtuoso Week (formerly known as Travel Mart) shattered old records for attendance and relationship-building meetings, and drew the network together with a new focus on creating the ultimate client buying trip. More than 3,900 people experienced the in-person benefits of being part of the network at Virtuoso Week August 11-17.  The event was historic in several ways: • The highest attendee total ever, breaking 2011’s previous high of more than 3,700 • The highest member advisor total – 1,859 – was up 11.5% from last year’s attendance, and every member region sent more attendees than last year • The highest number of suppliers – 1,695 – up 6% from 2011