World Travel Market, the leading global event for the travel industry, has unveiled the line-up of experts for its most extensive blogging seminar programme yet.
Organised on behalf of WTM by Travel Bloggers Unite (TBU), the four seminars feature top bloggers, along with travel marketing specialists, debating topical issues for the blogging and travel sectors.
The seminars take place across two days of WTM – two on Tuesday 4 November and two on Wednesday 5 November – and all are moderated by TBU founder Oliver Gradwell, who has overseen previous WTM blogging programmes.
The first session, ‘Bloggers & tour operators: A recipe for success?’, sees Gradwell joined by three speakers – Neil Lapping, the founder of walking and cycling holiday specialist Macs Adventure; Lauren Aloise, founder and a tour guide at Madrid Food Tours; and Kate Kenward, Executive Director of the Association of Independent Tour Operators.
Starting at 2pm, it will discuss two best-practice case studies and the commercial opportunities that can be gained from such collaboration.
It will be followed at 3.30pm by an hour-long discussion called ‘Looking beyond travel blogging…’.
It will discuss how brands with a specific niche product could work with bloggers outside the travel sector, and features two family bloggers: Sally Whittle and Mark Richards.
Back in 2009, Whittle founded the Tots100 online community, which now features more than 7,000 UK parent blogs, while Richards writes the ‘Best Dad I Can Be’ blog, looking at the funny side of family life from a dad’s point of view.
They will be joined by Gemma Seager, who blogs about travel and fashion under the name Retro Chick, and Verity Ramsay, representing Tourism Malaysia.
On Wednesday 5 November, the blogging programme kicks off at 2pm with an hour-long session dubbed ‘Real time storytelling: More than just “stunning”.’
It will provide travel industry marketeers with guidance and examples of how real-time blogger content can be used.
The speakers will be blogger Sarah Lee, Editor of the Live Share Travel website; Steve Dunne, Chairman of travel industry marketing and PR specialist Brighter Group; and Martina Jamnig, a press officer with the Austrian National Tourist Office.
From 3.30pm to 4.30pm, the final seminar will be ‘Video blogging and the future of travel content creation’.
Participants will examine how and why travel marketeers should adopt video blogging as part of their marketing strategy.
Two of the speakers are bloggers who use videos on their websites: Cailin O’Neil of Travel Yourself and Steve Hänisch from Back-Packer.org.
They will be joined by two PR and marketing experts: Debbie Hindle, Managing Director of travel PR and representation experts Four bgb, and Jody Diamond, Chief Executive and President of Diamond PR, which specialises in travel, tourism and lifestyle.
All the sessions will take place in the South Gallery, rooms 23-26.
World Travel Market, Senior Director, Simon Press said: “This is the fourth year of WTM’s blogging programme, and it grows each year, reflecting the expansion of this dynamic sector.
“We’re expecting our 2014 programme to be very popular again, especially as we will have plenty of bloggers at WTM for other events, such as our new WTM Bloggers Speed Networking and a session at our Travel Tech Theatre, called ‘Turning Experiences Into Successful Experiments & The Social Travel Summit White Paper’, both of which are on Thursday 6 November.”
Furthermore, WTM Bloggers Speed Networking takes place on Thursday 6 November at entrance S11 at 10.30am.
