PURE luck

This month’s gratitude email is about PURE, the trade show we’ve been attending since 2014.

Do you recall how Pawan, our Nepalese godfather, said he goes to WTM in London to help his country but gets business from PURE? 

Clueless about he meant, I took notes and checked everything out. 

I remember finding PURE’s website and feeling confirmation. What we set out to do, customized trips to Romania, was not such a crazy idea after all. 

This was a niche; there were many others doing it and, more importantly, clients for exactly this kind of offering. 

I told my business partner about it and when he saw it’s in Marrakech, he called a friend who at the time was working in Morocco. We thought it’s a no brainer to take part. 

It turned out that PURE actually had a very strict application process. 

How could we, 3 newbies to the field, from a country like Romania, get in? 

I still have the letter we used to persuade them that we were serious, that we had backgrounds (INSEAD, McKinsey, international exposure, etc.) that qualify us to enter the hospitality industry and that despite how it might look like, we were such a perfect fit for their event. 

In support of our application, I also sent a book with some of the nicest properties in Romania at the time. 

Shortly after, I remember being called and asked if the pictures were for real, if those properties really existed in Romania. 

I got their surprise. These hidden gems, like so many other things about and in Romania, were just not known. They still aren’t, but I like to believe that we changed something about this in the past 10 years. 

To this day, I don’t know how their decision was made, but they invited us to attend. 

We’ve been attending since 2014 and I don’t know if we would be here to tell this story had it not been for PURE. 

At PURE, we established some of the partnerships that we still have today and got into the world of bespoke travel. For real. 

In the story of our company, PURE played a huge role. They were open to trust that we could do a good job. 

I wish I could tell you that this has been the case in other situations, but it wouldn’t be true. Not all doors are open to a small company from a destination that doesn’t have a lot of demand. 

And for this, for being brave and open, I am grateful to the team at PURE that, in early 2014, gave us a chance. 

Raluca