One of the advisors on the UK ‘Apprentice’ show will speak at this year’s World Travel Market seminar ‘Talk Business: Fight to Survive’. Karren Brady will be joined on the panel of guest speakers by Steve Byrne, Chief Executive of Travel Counsellors; David Jones, Chief Executive of European Tourism Action Group; Chris Photi, Partner at White Hart Associates; and Caroline Rifkind, Senior Manager, PwC Travel Division.
British Airways Chief Executive Keith Williams will also deliver ‘The Big Talk’ and, for the first time, there will be sessions on social media. WTM will launch a new travel blog and a number of social media webinars and an extensive social media programme will take place during the exhibition.
The WTM Social Media Programme has been designed to connect with the thousands 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, which 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 (Monday 7 – Thursday 10 November) an extensive programme of social media activities have been planned to educate and engage participants. The highlight of the programme is the two-day Social Travel Market (STM) taking place Wednesday 9 November (North Gallery Room 10) and Thursday 10 November (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 Mark 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 7 November, 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 8 November, 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 8 November 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”.
Delegates will be encouraged to tweet and submit questions during the panels and presentations. For the full WTM Event Programme, including dates of sessions and timings, visit www.wtmlondon.com/eventprogramme
