It’s time for the digital travel conference season…

By Steve Keenan

The holidays are over and the travel industry is getting back to work. It is the season of analysis, reports and conferences, looking back over this summer and forward to an industry increasingly dependent on digital marketing, online content, social media and SEO.

World Travel Market looms large and we at Travel Perspective are busy putting the finishing touches to our social media seminar programme for the November 4-7 show at Excel in London (photo, 2012 sessions). There is also a strong blogging seminar series being put together by Travel Bloggers Unite (TBU) under a widened Tech Show umbrella.

Elsewhere, Tbex gathers travel bloggers together in Dublin in early October, while TBU convenes again, this time in Jerusalem on Oct 21-22.

It means there will be more conferences and seminars dedicated to travel blogging and social media this autumn than ever before. And that’s before the Professional Travel Bloggers’ Association finalises a social event during WTM - the PTBA will also have a representative speaking at the TBU blogging seminars at WTM.

Putative travel blogger associations are being formed in Germany, Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Travel blogging and social media has come of age this year as digital has driven changes in consumer holiday research and booking patterns. And, as the new industry becomes established, so it is being addressed more professionally.

And it is not just being reflected in the number of conferences. Research into digital, social and mobile travel is also expanding fast.

Eye for Travel runs a series of digital travel conferences across Europe and this week released its social media and mobile in travel distribution 2013 report (at £1,200 per copy). “Social media and mobile have moved from hype to measurable and vital money making tools,” says the company.

The trends are driving disrupting changes in travel booking, it adds - a belief now ingrained in the industry, and a recognition that is rapidly attracting more and more research into the market. After all, travel is the most researched consumer product on the internet - but how best to tackle the evolving giant is still in the Wild West era.

Hence US-based news service Skift, which covers digital and social travel (akin to industry leader Tnooz), last week launched its first subscription service, a twice-monthly Global Trends Report series, “focusing on trends across various sectors of travel, from across the globe.”

And this week, another player stepped up its presence in the digital travel market. Greenlight, a UK-based SEO and PPC consultancy and technology firm, already produces quarterly holiday sector reports, which profiles search behaviour in the online holiday market.

And now Greenlight is to planning a travel blogger seminar in London on October 7. Provisional subjects include effective interface – how to deliver the journey; technology suitable for travellers; breaking barriers and expanding to new experiences, and content suitable for social media.

When so many seminars/conferences and so much research is dedicated to a subject that is just a few years old, you know that something big has happened. And it’s that the impact of technology has completely revolutionised how we research information, book and buy travel. Now we just have to understand how.

* Steve Keenan is co-founder of Travel Perspective, a journalistic consultancy that advices the travel industry on how to tell their stories in a digital and social way.