World Travel Market’s social media revolution
World Travel Market is for the first time reaching out to the global online travel community with the launch of a new travel blog, a number of social media webinars and an extensive social media programme taking place during the exhibition.
The all encompassing WTM Social Media Programme has been designed to connect with the thousand’s of people and companies that make up the online travel community, to encourage interaction year-round and especially during World Travel Market 2011.
The World Travel Blogspot will go live in September, encouraging the travel communities around WTM to share, tweet and comment.
The blog will look to cover travel related topics of interest to the international travel community drawing on WTM’s rich content and official programme of events.
WTM have also identified a demand within the travel community for education on how to develop, launch, manage and measure effective social media campaigns.
The paid for social media webinars that will be published during October, will feature an underlying theme of ‘Social Media Business Class – how to future proof your travel business’.
During the four days of WTM - which this year takes place from November 7th-10th - an extensive programme of social media activities have been planned to educate and engage participants.
Programme Highlights
The highlight of the programme is the two day Social Travel Market (STM) taking place Wednesday November 9th (North Gallery Room 10) and Thursday November 10th (North Gallery Room 4/5).
The STM will be made up of competitions, keynote speeches, panel debates and practical workshops covering a range of topics such as:
The ROI of paid travel blogging.
Video – Your most important social media tool?
The Perfect Travel Tweet
How to supercharge your blog.
STM (@socialtrav) is free to attend for WTM visitors and is organised by travel writer Mark Frary (@markfrary) and The Sunday Times Online Travel Editor Steve Keenan (@stevenkeenan).
“Social Travel Market is aimed at bloggers, digital marketing executives, PRs and anyone in the travel industry interested in tools such as Facebook, Wordpress, Twitter and the next generation of networks such as Google+,” said Frary.
“We have a cracking line-up of speakers confirmed already, including Fortune Cookie’s Justin Cooke, Granturismo’s Lara Dunston, VisitBritain’s Pleasance Coddington and Juantxo Llantada of the Valencia Regional Tourist Board with more big names to come.”
On Monday November 7th, the International Federation for Information Technologies in Travel and Tourism (IFITT) Conference will be hosted at WTM with keynote speaker Professor Dimitrios Buhalis, e-tourism specialist from Bournemouth University.
The workshop is set to discuss Technology and Social Media enabled Real-time Service Management in Hospitality and Tourism.
Tuesday November 8th, Platinum Suite 1, 14:00 – 15:00 plays host to Genesys, The Travel Technology Consultancy and their session on Making the Most of Social Media.
Paul Richer, senior partner of Genesys will discuss how to make social media work for your organisation.
Also on Tuesday November 8th, Travel Bloggers Unite will be presenting case studies to help demonstrate the best practice for working with travel bloggers and how they can provide impressive ROI for your organisation.
This is taking place in North Gallery Room 8 from 15:30 – 16:30.
World Travel Market exhibition director Simon Press said: “Social media continues to grow in its influence over all industries.
“Tourism being very consumer led needs to embrace, engage and utilise the tools that are available.
“WTM is looking to help educate the industry with the expanding Social Media programme and input from some of the leading companies that specialise in social media.”