On Monday, February 13th, ITTN was in attendance at the one-day networking event for the international travel trade and travel media. Meet the Media connects media from all over Ireland and the UK (print, broadcast, online, digital, bloggers, and influencers) with worldwide travel suppliers including airlines, hoteliers, tourist boards and tour operators.
This year, the event was held at Radisson Blu Hotel, Dublin city centre, and it played host to over 30 trade suppliers, and the media from UK and Ireland was in full attendance as well.
The morning started with registrations and a very insightful session for those in travel media. Known as the media talks, the first session Ask the Editors with Sarah Slattery (The Travel Expert/online) and Rachel Beresford (The Irish Daily Star/print) proved to be very relevant for media professionals. Both Sarah and Rachel took questions from the audience – in terms of the kind of content they feature and concentrate on, pitching to editors, and also touched upon travel writing as well as their own individual journeys into the travel writing niche.
Then, the event was open for the 10-minute networking slots. Much like speed-dating, it gave suppliers and media professionals a lovely 10 minutes to have a conversation, discuss services and collaborations and much more! As a media professional, one would go on from one table to another, from Spain to Flanders, so to speak, checking your appointment diary and making sure you didn’t go past your 10-minute slot.
What can one do in a 10-minute slot? Plenty if you ask me.
In between the networking sessions, and over lunch and other talks, media professionals also took the opportunity to talk to each other. As expected, conversations centered around travel, travel related stories, features as well as the latest trends and developments in the field. (It was a lovely sunny day, so some conversations did veer towards the weather!)
Everyone took a break for lunch, which was soup and sandwiches. Plus there were two very interesting sessions to choose from during the lunch break. Both the sessions were on simultaneously at 1 pm, so you had to choose the one you wanted to attend.
I chose ‘SEO for Travel’ with SEO Expert, Sue Palmer. The other, equally enticing session was ‘Creating Scroll-Stopping Travel Content’ with Cloda Scanlon and Jess Glynn. There was a bit of a FOMO feeling amongst the participants; no one wanted to miss out on either session! Sue gave some very valuable tips on SEO, including the importance of About Us & Author Pages.
Another equally sought after service was ‘the photo stand.’ Meet the Media 2023 offered all attendees the opportunity to get a complimentary professional headshot taken at the event. Photographer Rafael Kostrzewa (@DublinHeadshot) put everyone at ease, as he teased out the most warm, professional and pleasing shots out of all those who availed of his service.
In between all the ‘table-hopping,’ coffees and conversations, it was soon time for the event to end. However, as tradition goes, the party continued. Attendees gathered for drinks and finger food (and more networking, albeit of the informal kind) after the main event in Sheehan’s Pub, Chatham St, Dublin 2. Some of them had also met each other on the previous day, on Sunday 12th, as Michael Collins (founder and managing director of TravelMedia.ie, and the man behind Meet the Media) had organised a little walking tour of Dublin.
As the day ended, and guests made their way out of the venue, and towards the pub, they were all armed and energised with the new connections that were forged during the event.
