DRT Show Shanghai

DRT Show Shanghai is positioned as a large, highly international diving-focused marketplace in Asia, combining B2B deal-making with B2C traffic from active divers and travel-oriented consumers. The abbreviation DRT reflects the show’s core scope—Diving, Resort, and Travel—so the exhibition is built around the full customer journey: destination selection, equipment and training choices, and booking-ready resort and liveaboard offers. The Shanghai edition is scheduled for March 6–8, 2026 and is promoted as “the largest diving expo in Asia,” which signals a strong intent to concentrate supply and demand in a compact three-day format. For exhibitors, that format is valuable because it produces high meeting density and supports direct conversion from discovery to negotiation. For professional visitors, the show typically functions as a fast vendor-scanning environment where you can benchmark competing destination offers, compare equipment and services, and secure partner relationships for the next sales season.

The show’s positioning emphasizes effectiveness as a “B2B2C platform,” which is a practical indicator that the event is designed to deliver commercial outcomes rather than only brand exposure. Diving brands, resorts, and travel operators typically use the exhibition to launch seasonal offers, activate distribution, and build partnerships with agencies, clubs, training organizations, and media communities. The organizer highlights a strong international footprint, reflecting an intent to bring overseas participation and cross-border destination marketing into the same halls as local demand. This matters for buyers and industry partners because it shortens the sourcing cycle: instead of negotiating across fragmented channels, stakeholders can align on packages, sales terms, and collaboration mechanics onsite. The Shanghai edition also integrates underwater photography culture through dedicated showcases, which supports higher-value consumer engagement and helps exhibitors communicate differentiators that directly influence purchasing decisions, such as destination uniqueness, service quality, safety standards, and experience design.

DRT Show’s published positioning highlights substantial international participation, reflecting a platform that attracts exhibitors beyond the local market and supports cross-regional business development. The show’s narrative references extensive coverage across multiple Asian cities and a long operating history, which typically increases the probability of meeting experienced operators with established products and repeatable service delivery. For the Shanghai edition, the participant mix is usually shaped by three demand centers: professional buyers seeking partnerships, dive communities and clubs evaluating seasonal travel programs, and consumer visitors planning trips and upgrading equipment. This mix is commercially useful because it enables exhibitors to work multiple channels in the same event window—wholesale cooperation, retail sales activation, and community-led promotion. It also supports a pragmatic meeting structure: brands can identify distribution partners, travel operators can close group travel leads, and content creators can coordinate collaborations that drive measurable demand before and after the show.

The exhibition scope is anchored in the diving travel ecosystem, meaning visitors should expect a wide spread of equipment, destination offers, and services needed to plan and execute diving activities at different skill levels. On the product side, this typically includes gear and accessories that divers compare on reliability and fit, while the travel side focuses on resorts, liveaboards, and destination marketing packages that compete on experience quality, safety, and logistics. The platform’s commercialization emphasis suggests that exhibitor offerings are presented with actionable next steps—booking pathways, partnership proposals, training and certification options, and service bundles designed for clubs and group travel. The show also integrates underwater photography content as a value layer, because imaging is a major driver of diver engagement and influences consumer purchasing across both equipment and travel. For professional buyers, this ecosystem approach reduces procurement risk by allowing direct validation of service capability, support conditions, and delivery readiness in one place.

DRT Show Shanghai 2026 is scheduled to take place at the Shanghai World EXPO Exhibition & Convention Center (SWEECC), a venue aligned with large-scale consumer and trade events that require strong visitor circulation and reliable onsite operations. Venue choice matters for a B2B2C show because the event must support both structured business meetings and high footfall from consumer audiences. SWEECC’s format is typically suitable for this dual requirement, enabling exhibitors to run pre-arranged partner discussions while still maintaining a continuous flow of walk-in visitors interested in destinations, equipment demonstrations, and travel planning. In practical terms, this supports a high-conversion environment: exhibitors can handle lead intake efficiently, schedule follow-up meetings during the show days, and run product and destination presentations without disrupting business negotiations. For visiting teams, the venue also simplifies logistics because all major activities are concentrated in one complex over three days in early March.

The organizer’s official narrative states that DRT SHOW was founded by Mr. Jason Chong in 2009 with the aim of supporting business partners and encouraging responsible diving communities, and that the first DRT SHOW was successfully held in Hong Kong in 2010. The brand is presented as having expanded across multiple Asian cities and having organized a large number of diving expos over time, reinforcing its positioning as a mature platform with repeatable operational capabilities. Published headline figures also emphasize scale and international reach, including “65+ countries,” “2,500+ exhibitors,” and “350,000+ visitors,” which are used to signal the show’s broad market access and demand-generation power across the Asia-Pacific region. For exhibitors, this history is a proxy for stable audience formation and a reliable business environment. For visitors, it suggests a higher likelihood of finding proven operators and internationally oriented suppliers rather than a purely local, limited-scope marketplace.