Creating Engaging Video Content – Mike Henderson
Travel marketing is really experience marketing. Experience has much more long term value than objects, but the value of experience is only realized, or obvious after the fact when it can be relived through memory. Web video is the best way to get people to visualize what that value is going to be in advance, and match the immediate persuasiveness of a shiny object on a shelf. But producing videos that are watchable enough to be engaging on the web is a wholly different matter than producing TV spots. I will present some of the best experience marketing videos of then last year and talk about why they work to generate interest in travel and social media interaction.
Inbound Marketing: Attracting Customers with Great Content - Colleen Dalton
In this workshop, learn how the adoption rate of social media is leaving a wake of demand for great content to engage and attract customers instead of paid advertising. See example businesses and learn tricks and tips about sharing and empowering your target audience with content that positions and differentiates your brand as the experts.
Facebook for Business – Milena Regos
With many local and national examples and case studies from the travel and tourism industry on who’s doing it best, this presentation will keep you awake and entertained while you learn best practices on Facebook, ways to increase your network and improve your engagement score, measurements, cool and affordable Facebook apps, pros and cons of advertising on Facebook and examples of social content that fuel word of mouth.
Emerging Trends in Immersive Multimedia – Greg Murtha
As the web evolves from the written word and still images to videos and other interactive media, engaging web visitors in an a rich immersive environment is an effective way to show your destination or property. In this presentation you’ll learn about the evolution of the virtual travel space, from the first QuickTime virtual reality (VR) to Everyscape, Motion VR and Google Earth to the current state of the art in virtual tour technology.
Managing Your Online Reputation – Kyle Duffy
Whether you know it or not, your hotel is being discussed in online channels every day–review sites, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and forums. It’s the new form of guest satisfaction. It’s crucial to monitor what’s being said about your property to make operational improvements but being that these channels are public, you must also get engaged to respond to guests, whether it’s posting a management response to a TripAdvisor review or replying to a tweet. These channels are increasingly influential–learn best practices and the tools available to manage them to drive more bookings and revenue! (this session is focused on hotels but a great resources for any marketer)
Mapping Media + Technology to the Buying Process - Rob Gaedtke
Useful and impactful media and technology requires a core understanding of the travel buying process. This presentation outlines the steps every potential customer goes through when purchasing a product or vacation and shows that by aligning the social needs of customers with technology and media solutions, you empower the user and provide a natural, human centric user experience.
The Future of the Guest Experience – Jake Fields
With a maturing web, and the rapid adoption of smartphones, the guest experience is quickly be transformed into a more interactive experience. From trip planning to arrival and stay, people are interacting with places like never before. This session will focus on current trends and how the guest experience will continue to evolve in the near future. Topics covered will include researching & planning trips, on location activity discovery, the new technology ecosystem (web, mobile, kiosks), how guests interact with friend & family while on vacation, how guests share their experience with friends, the new technologies will they encounter, and how you can become part of this experience.
