This week the great, good and not so good of the global travel business descended on London for the World Travel Market to peddle new aviation routes to destinations exotic and dusty; promote tarted-up hotels with fresh carpets and chairs you’ll never sit on; and sell package tours to countries still glowing from the Arab awakening.

Travel fairs are funny beasts: part modern-day theme parks with elaborate pavilions fronting for countries you’d never want to visit alongside mock-ups of new aircraft interiors with their latest long-haul business-class seats; and part moveable mall with their collections of international brands and discount offers.

Wander the exhibition halls and you’ll see plenty of countries, cities, provinces and super-regions touting their best features, the latter always being the most suspicious as they’re often a concentrated grouping of places that aren’t particularly interesting on their own and become even less so when suddenly turned into a collection of dull places with a bad logo.