Capital mystery tour for tourism chiefs

Thousands of delegates to the world's largest travel trade fair were delayed for up to two hours yesterday as they struggled to reach its new venue in the Docklands in east London.

The journey to the World Travel Market should have taken 40 minutes from central London. But problems arose when two trains on the Docklands Light Railway broke down and chaos was caused when the main DLR station serving the venue, Custom House, was closed because of overcrowding.

The disruption caused considerable embarrassment to the organisers who had switched the event to the Excel Centre from Earl's Court in west London, saying it was too small. Excel is not served by London Underground and, despite putting on extra trains, the DLR had difficulty coping with the 5,000 people attending the four-day exhibition.

Hara Pyrpasopoulou, who was representing the Halkidi Hotel Association of Greece, said: "I had a terrible time getting here. I was actually on the Tube at Holborn [in central London] at 9am but it took me two hours and 10 minutes to reach Excel.

"Our Docklands Light Railway train broke down and we were stuck for 45 minutes at Westferry station. It was then impossible to get on the next train and we had to fight our way on to the one after that. Even then, it took another 30 minutes to reach the exhibition centre."

Ms Pyrpasopoulou added: "There is more room here but they will have to do something about the transport next year."

A British travel executive said: "What sort of a message does this send to overseas tourist chiefs?"

Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, who opened the show, said he had not experienced any problems in his journey to the Docklands from Cricklewood in north-west London.

He added: "Excel is an excellent venue that I would recommend other organisations to use in the future."

Tom Nutley, managing director of Reed Travel Exhibitions, said two trains in a row had broken down and this had caused the problems.

He said he was confident Excel would be a good venue for the exhibition and was able to provide 12 per cent more space than Earl's Court.