Blumar DMC at TTG Travel Experience 2026: Brazil at the Heart of Italy's Global Tourism Marketplace

For three days in October, the global tourism industry had a single address: Rimini. Blumar was there. From October 14 to 16, Juliana Rodrigues, our Head of Sales for the Italian Market, represented Blumar DMC at TTG Travel Experience 2026, the 63rd edition of Italy's leading B2B tourism marketplace, meeting operators, agencies, and buyers from around the world at the Brazil stand hosted by Embratur. This is what happened in Rimini, what the edition revealed about where the industry is heading, and why Brazil arrived at this particular fair in its strongest position on record.

An Edition That Changed Scale

Photo: Disclousure / Embratur

TTG Travel Experience, organised by Italian Exhibition Group, has been the reference point of Italian tourism for six decades. The 2026 edition, its 63rd, was the largest and most international yet: 2,800 exhibiting brands, more than 1,000 hosted buyers from 75 countries, 28 pavilions and 140,000 square metres of exhibition space, generating around 15,000 business meetings over three days. Alongside the marketplace ran a dense conference programme, with roughly 200 events across nine thematic arenas and more than 400 speakers.

The most telling numbers were the ones about origin. Foreign exhibitors grew 11% and the international exhibition area 8%. IEG's leadership summed up the shift neatly at the closing: for years the world came to TTG to buy Italy, and now the world comes to Rimini to buy the world. For a Brazilian DMC presenting a long-haul destination to European buyers, that change is not a detail. It is the whole reason to be in the room.

EXIST: the Theme That Named the Moment

Every TTG edition carries a theme, and 2026 chose EXIST: an invitation to stop crossing time distractedly, as the organisers put it, and to recover the value of what is actually lived. It was a response to a market where travellers are more demanding, more conscious, and more interested in authenticity than in checklists.

That framing lands close to home for a destination management company. Designing a journey that a traveller will remember for life is not a matter of assembling services; it is a matter of understanding a place well enough to know which moments will matter. It is the argument we make in our guide to what a destination management company in Brazil does, and it was, in Rimini, the argument the fair itself was making.

Brazil at the Brazil Stand

Photo: Disclousure / Embratur

Blumar exhibited at the Brazil stand hosted by Embratur, the Brazilian Tourist Board, in Pavilion A7-8 at the West Entrance, Desk 8. Collective national stands have a particular value at a fair of this size: they let a buyer compare a country's operators side by side and leave with a complete picture of the destination, rather than a fragment of it.

Juliana's agenda over the three days covered the full range of what Blumar operates: tailor-made journeys for individual travellers, groups and series, incentive programmes, and congresses and corporate events through Blumar Congressos & Eventos. The conversations with Italian and European operators returned repeatedly to the same questions, which are the right ones: air access and internal logistics, safety, seasonality, and how a country of continental scale is actually run on the ground.

Brazil Arrived in Its Strongest Position on Record

Photo: Disclousure / Embratur

The timing could hardly have been better. Brazil closed 2025 with 9,287,196 international arrivals, a 37.1% increase over the previous year and the highest figure ever recorded, generating US$ 10.45 billion in revenue from international visitors, also a record. Embratur projects around 10 million arrivals for 2026, which would be another historic mark.

The European contribution matters particularly for a fair held in Italy. European arrivals rose 19% in the opening month of 2026 alone, and the first quarter closed with 2.33 million arrivals by air, up 19.4% year on year. These are not abstract numbers for an Italian operator weighing whether to build a Brazil programme: they describe a destination with proven demand, expanding air capacity, and a promotional apparatus behind it.

What Italian and European Buyers Are Looking For

The conversations in Rimini confirmed a pattern. European travellers heading long-haul are not looking for a tour; they are looking for a reason. Brazil answers that well, because it offers range inside a single itinerary: Rio de Janeiro's icons, the natural scale of Iguassu Falls and the Amazon, the beaches of the Northeast, and the cultural depth of Salvador and Minas Gerais.

What turns that potential into a sellable product is operation. Distances are continental, internal flights need to be designed rather than booked, and the difference between a good programme and a flawless one is almost always local knowledge. That is where a DMC with four decades of in-house operation earns its place, whether for leisure, for incentive programmes, or for congresses, as detailed on our company profile.

Closing a Year on the World's Stages

TTG closed a 2026 in which Blumar made a deliberate point of being present wherever the industry meets: ITB China in Shanghai, FIEXPO Latin America in Costa Rica, the 82nd IATA Annual General Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, where Blumar Congressos & Eventos served as the official agency, Virtuoso Travel Week in Las Vegas, PlannerConnect in the American Midwest, and now Rimini.

Six stages, six markets, one purpose. Being in the room is how we build partnerships, hear where demand is heading before it shows up in the numbers, and bring that knowledge back to the clients who trust us with their travellers.

From Rimini to Your Next Brazil Programme

Rimini confirmed what the numbers already suggested: the appetite for Brazil in Europe is real and growing, and the operators who move first will be the ones selling it in 2027 and 2028. To the partners who sat down with Juliana at the Brazil stand, thank you for the conversations. They continue now.

To design a Brazil programme for your clients, or to pick up a conversation started in Rimini, visit the official Blumar DMC website.