The New York Times Travel Show provides local travel enthusiasts with a great way to plan for a visit to Spain or anywhere is in the world.

The New York Times Travel Show is the big travel show of the year. Held this past weekend, it was the place to learn about how to get more out of travel. Fortunately, I was able to make the trek to the show.  This was my 2nd time at the NY Times Travel Show.

In addition to seminars by travel gurus, the Travel Show featured an exhibit hall where tourism boards around the world were answering questions and handing out literature.  I even saw the Tourist Office of Spain there with a booth. Guides provided advice to the many travelers who visited the booth to ask questions about Spain.  It's like Spain came to New York!

Surprisingly, this year's show seemed busier than last year's.

With all of the problems of today's economy, one would expect the show to be a ghost town. It wasn't. Every seminar room was full and some people had to stand in the back. Navigating through the throngs of people walking through the exhibit hall was anything but easy – just like walking down Las Ramblas in Barcelona on a warm summer evening.

My time at the show was divided between exploring the exhibit hall and watching presentations by travel gurus Rick Steves, Arthur Frommer, Pauline Frommer, Andrew Zimmern, Samantha Brown and Patricia Schultz.

Travel enthusiasts who attended the same seminars as myself were rewarded by lots of tips about how to get more out of world travel in 2009.

In a short series of upcoming articles on AboutSpainTravel.com, I'll further explore what the travel gurus say and how it relates to Spain travel.