10 lessons from Social Travel Market

by Steve Keenan

For those of you who don’t know, myself and Mark Frary created Travel Perspective as our trading name in 2011. And the first project we put together was to create Social Travel Market, a seminar programme covering all aspects of social media and travel, and to run at World Travel Market.
(Actually, we wanted to call it World Travel Fringe but the people at Reed Exhibitions finally baulked at the idea of promoting WTF!)
Reed went for the project and STM ran over two days at WTM’s South Gallery last November. The room was too small and the queues embarrassingly long. But after the keynote speaker, WTM brilliantly managed to double the size of the room to 180 spaces. This year, there will be room for 300+ on the Wednesday sessions in the South Gallery, and 200+ when we take STM on to the floor of WTM on Thursday.

You’ll find the complete rundown of seminars planned for Nov 7-8 this year below (No 10). But to give you an idea of what to expect, we’ve put together 10 links to reflect some of the highlights of 2011….

1. How Social Travel Market at WTM 2011 was born - Travelllll.com
The background to how STM came about, and was realised for the first time in 2011
2. The figures from Social Travel Market, 2011 - travelperspective.co.uk
The first year in numbers
3. All the sessions at STM 2011 on video
The sessions were filmed by World TravelMarket - and are still available to view. The most watched session has been Blighter v Wrogger: the new travel content providers
4. Supercharging your travel blog - Darren Cronian, Travelrants
Darren’s annual travel blogcamps were a inspiration for STM. So it was only right we should ask Darren to speak - here are his notes from his presentation How to Supercharge a Blog
5. Social Travel Market and The Silk Road Ch@llenge
The Ch@llenge was a tough task to organised in 2011 - but we’ll be tackling it again in 2012, with vastly more experience. Read the background here.
6. Social Travel Market proves to be a real draw - WTM London
Blogger Kathryn Bullock writes up the keynote address from KLM’s Catharine van Dijk
7. My day at Social Travel Market - Travelbug
Blogger Lynn Sheppard gives her take on the first day of STM in 2011
8. Frank opinions on bloggers and their clients - WTM London
Another excellent session report from Kathryn Bullock, this time reporting on the presentation by blogger Andy Jarosz and two of his clients, RTW Flights and Sunvil.
9. Seven takeaways from Social Travel Market 2011 - Travelllll.com
My take on the most salient points that stuck with me after two days of the show
10. The sessions at this year’s WTM Social Travel Market
OK, now to get ready for 2012. Our sessions run on Nov 7 and 8 - all are listed here with two caveats - the 1.30pm session listed on Wednesday (Travel Marketing is Dead) and the 12noon session on Thursday (Whitepaper) are extraneous sessions and not a part of STM.

We are very pleased to announce our partners for WTM Social Travel Market, Siren Communications and Gogobot: