Thursday: WTM Social Travel Market is live!

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Come back to this page throughout today Thursday for extensive coverage of WTM Social Travel Market, 2012. The event was created in 2011 and is put together and run by Travel Perspective.

The hashtag is #STM2012 for the sessions, #WTM2012 for the show
Read the live blog from yesterday’s WTM Social Travel Market with speaker presentations
See ALL of the sessions from yesterday’s WTM Social Travel Market on the WTM YouTube channel

10.30am: Morning! We’re up and running again today - with a new initative for STM. Today, we’re broadcasting from the Turkey stand (EM800-850) as we go ‘on the road’ at WTM - and what welcome hosts the Turkish have been. There are 100 seats and 100 more standing spaces, with three big screens - and coffee and water available. A very welcome treat at WTM. Redmint Comms, which represents Turkey, said a few words about its connectivity (66 GSM users out of a opulation of 72m, ranked 7th in the world for FB) - and the crowds already building up.

 

10.50am: Chris Richardson of @RTWLabs tackling the near impossible - to build a WordPress blog using WTM wifi, which is usually sticky at best. But some very useful tips in what is quite a specialised seminar - with the aim being to demystify tech and show how easy it is to build a site. The theme is food and flavours along the Silk Road, so we registered the domain www.flavoursofthesilkroad.com - so you can see what we’re building. Oh, and bloggers can enter a food-related challenge on the Silk Road to win a trip to Armenia.

Chris and his helpers, Mary Frary of Travel Perspective and blogger Steve Whale, take some questions while Chris is building the site. A question from a woman from the BBC - which WordPress sites impress? Travelllll.com says Chris for design “but I still prefer sites for comment rather than design.” Adds Mark: “There is no barrier to entry in publishing now.” WP - it’s difficult to break and half of all top-rated sites use WP. Session winding up but we could have spent hours on this - still, showing what can be done in just 40 minutes is wildly encouraging to newbies. The woman sat next to me is now starting hers this week “for sure.”

 

11.35am: Second session underway - #travelfail: crisis management and social media. First crisis averted - moderator Andy Jarosz manages to get the United guitars video working. We’ve got journalist Jeremy Skidmore with us (I gave him his first job in travel, you know) and Sarah Rathbone from Siren Comms, both who have extensive experience in handling travel crises. Looking forward to this.

 
OK - here’s the story. Two guests have fallen ill at Hotel OK, where rapper 50 pence is also staying - then he falls ill. Press not onto it yet, nor the fact revealed that the hotel had failed a health check. How should the hotel be communicating with the public? Jeremy - on all fronts. GM in hotel lobby for a start. Sarah - post statement on website, message of reassurance, has doctor available (but don’t admit liability, yet, says Jeremy). Volume of inquiries getting higher, so respond quicker. I can see a lot of attendees taking copious notes…..

 

Crikey. One guest has died, 50 pence is stable but it’s on the national press and there’s an eye-witness - even a hashtag #hotelnotok. Companies shouldn’t attach with a negative hashtag, says Sarah, as they will be looking at your official feed anyway. Davy, the ‘eye-witness,’ is tweeting he saw a body being carried out the hotel - and is loving the attention on Twitter. Sarah suggests a senior hotel exec should contact Davy to explain latest situation - knowing he will retweet everything. Fascinating stuff - really makes you think how things can get out of control quickly. And really top-notch responses to any twist in the crisis from Sarah and Jeremy.

See Andy’s presentation here.

 

12.15: Enrique Ruiz, UK director of the Spanish National Tourist Office, now on stage speaking about marketing in an era of austerity. He is presenting the ten commandments of country branding.

1. A country is a brand.
2. Country brand is owned by consumers not governments.
3. Create a long term strategy.
4. Differentiate. Focus on 1 or 2 points.
5. Focus on emotions.
6. Create a story.
7. Content is king. Producing relevant content and getting your consumers to produce relevant content.
8. Only relevant content is king.
9. Digital marketing ia not an option, social media is not a trend. No division between online and offline.
10. Big ideas replace big budgets in times of austerity.

 

In 2009, Spain’s marketing budget was €96 million worldwide; it is now €10 million. Last year, produced a €250,000 Bollywood movie with Spain as the setting - it has now been seen by 60 million people. We wrote about his approach to social and digital earlier this year. The country is refocusing its Facebook efforts, looking not at the number of Facebook fans and Likes but instead to engagement. What is coming next, he asks? Flashmobs, blogger outreach (he namechecks our table football challenge at Bar Kick last night - cheers Enrique). Spain has also just launched a social media newsroom.

Enrique now sharing an anecdote about someone called Thomas Cook who approached the company of the same name to ask whether he could get a free trip because of all the teasing he had endued through his life because of his name. Thomas Cook refused but a low-cost holiday company stepped in and took him on holiday, generating huge amounts of social media publicity in the process.

See and download the presentation here:

1.05: Hotfooting it to the Tech Theatre for our last three sessions of the show. Having been initially in favour of staying in one conference room, interesting to see the ebb and flow of attendees on the floor of the show. The last stage no exception, with in excess of 150+ seating and dozens more on the fringe.

 
They are, of course, intrigued to hear the Facebook session and yet again, plenty of notebooks (paper ones) in evidence as delegates absorb the talks from Neasa Costin of FB Global Marketing Solutions and Alfonso Giménez, Marketing director Europe, Palladium Hotel Group - which last year used wristbands to check in to FB at a ‘pod’ in one of its hotels in Ibiza - and has now moved onto fingerprints, and developing other options. As Ed of Siren says: @Ed_Siren “Paying for drinks at a hotel using your finger prints! @socialtrav has gone seriously high tech this afternoon!”

Neasa’s Facebook presentation is below:

Neasa has kindly shared this great list of 10 tips for creating compelling Facebook content.

Also relive Alfonso’s presentation here:

1.40pm: Have really been looking forward to this one - Dr Frank Cuypers, who worked with Flanders this year on The World’s Biggest Blog Trip. They invited ‘storytellers’ who would recommend Flanders for its festivals, rather than direct marketing. It’s not about number of followers - it’s about their place in the network: hence, the storyteller tag. Fascinating. Got 10k people who liked Flanders is a Festival on FB, and some old-fashioned radio and print coverage (interesting to hear the on-off-online cycle so strongly at WTM this week - both merging now, rather than competing). Went heavy on Pinterest. So, the results! Of 94 bloggers who visited, asked for results from 82 (as others haven’t finished posting). Got 12m unique visitors from 273 posts. It cost 300,000 Euros - but ‘conservation value’ is 30m Euro. New measurement! The top keyword is Ghent (923). Results showed somebody in Ghana mentioned Flanders 301 times but they don’t know who!

See the presentation here:

2.30pm: Right - the final seminar and we’re in competition with the Ecuador drummers. Take back what I said earlier about enjoying being on the floor. Mark Frary trying to shout above the noise with a video from Finnair using Angry Birds. Phew - drumming has stopped, just in time for Simone Kurtzke who a PhD in online video! She runs social for Visit Scotland. As this is a session on DMO innovations in 2012, she’s talking about a photo comp she ran this year - which generated as many images as Visit Scotland had collected in 40 years. Only showed best pics with credits on social - “but people are saying use my images. It’s like an open door,” says Simone.

Next up, Tori Pearce of Think! Social Media, the agency that helped create the Flanders project. Think! did a FB campaign for The Wood Chipper of Fargo (search it), another to put the town of Vulcan on the map (guess? then search it) and another shout for Norway - that’s twice I’ve heard Visit Norway being spoke of in high terms.

Kylie from the Japan National Tourism Organisation reminds us of the earthquake - and how they bounced back with a Wow! moment campaign, sharing photos in six categories - with trips to relevant places in Japan. Learn ninja fighting, go the geeky district, sushi - you get the picture. Runs til February and Japan, like Scotland, spent only seed money in traditional media to get it going.

Now! Miquel Alabern of the Catalunya has moved on from photo competitions - and invited a group of 11 Instagram users from seven countries to Spain this year (between them, 500k followers). Lots of coverage in traditional media (marketeers still love that, don’t they? Another recurring theme - using new media to get coverage in old), the invited entries from locals - and the 240 best are currently on display in Barcelona. There are now 64,000 #catalyunaexperience photos on Instagram - nice work all round.

 

Two to go - and it’s Nicholas Montemaggi from Emilia Romagna and his Blogville project. Heard a lot about this. Instead of a tight, pre-scripted press/blog trip, bloggers were invited to spend as long as they want (well, more than two weeks might have been a bit naughty) in an apartment in Bologna or Rimini - then give them what they wanted (fashion/food/wine/fishing - who knows?). They got 50 bloggers, spending 83 days of love blogging and 20 organised trips. Veeerrryy interesting flexibility but backed by professional local contacts. More than 250 blog posts (like Flanders) so far and 3,000 shared photos (which many bloggers let the tourist board use - like Scotland).

And finally, finally - after two days and 13 sessions, our 36th and final speaker - Rachel, the Fan in a Van.

And the biggest applause went to…… Nicholas!

Thanks everyone - speakers, attendees and the people behind the scenes - for making #stm2012 such a great experience and, hopefully, a worthwhile experience.

And of course to our event partners Siren Communications and Gogobot, who wanted to share this video clip with you.

WTM Social Travel Market is live!

Brought to you by our partners

Coverage of Day 2 of WTM Social Travel Market now LIVE ON OUR BLOG + here are Thursday’s sessions at WTM Social Travel Market, 2012. The event was created in 2011 and is put together and run by Travel Perspective.

See ALL of the sessions from Wednesday’s WTM Social Travel Market on the WTM YouTube channel

 

WEDNESDAY

See the line-up for Thursday

10.30am: The room, with space for 350, is filling up nicely. First on at 10.45am is Omid Ashtari of foursquare - which yesterday announced an update to its iOS app. Will be plenty to talk about - when he gets here. He forgot his badge so will be a few minutes late starting up.

Mark Frary kicks off proceedings by asking how the wifi is - predictably, it’s slow “as molasses,” says Alastair McKenzie of Travelllll.com. Sorry about that. And a quick presentation from Arman Khachaturyan of the National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia - which is giving the prize of a trip to Armenia in the Silk Road Challenge we are running with the UN World Tourism Organisation.

OK! Omid is here and we’re off - a good half the room has used foursquare in the past month, which is surprising. Clearly a lot are here specifically for this session. The app has been used by Starwood, Lufthansa and United among other travcos; huge amount of work on redemption - and is absolutely ripe for the travel industry, says Omid. Doesn’t see Zagat or Yelp as competition - in fact, can see foursquare roaring away from them. Did you know 20,000 designers use the foursquare API?

You can see Omid’s Foursquare presentation on Slideshare here.

11.40am: Running a few minutes late but Allister Frost (@allisterf) now on, talking about the psychology of social media.

He says that advertising is now defined as “the cost of being outside the conversation” and that over the past two decades we have moved from the scarcity of spectrum (i.e. outlets such as TV, radio and print) to a scarcity of attention (so many different channels - which one do you use?).

Allister has now moved on to neuroscience (yes really). He says that people’s brains are manipulated by the perception of scarcity and is showing an example on BA’s website saying there are only two seats left at a particular fare. You want it, right?

That very much in demand presentation is below.

12.30: On to video and different ways of cutting it - and James of Inside Japan talks about how they ran a comp to find two bloggers to visit Japan - you can read the feature we wrote about it here. Now up is Nicola Frame from Intrepid, whose Vietnam video with food bloggers The Perennial Plate was hoped to reach 20k views at a cost of £4,000 - it ended up getting 300,000 and was picked up by HuffPost and New York Times. She has now commissioned Perennial Plate to visit 16 countries - with proper PR and social media campaigns around them, and also at around £4k a film which, she says, Intrepid couldn’t do for that price.

His presentation is below.

In a different way of getting video, Matt Carroll of Media Ark worked on a project (see presentation below) with MSC Cruises, whereby six bloggers had film crews at their back and call - as a result, MSC got 19,000 views of the video produced.

2.20pm: Stranded! Couldn’t get to the laptop during the last session on mobile with Kevin May of Tnoooz and Kelly from Gogobot - will file later. Right now, we’re looking at jobs in social media for 2013 - and we’ve got Jason Geall of The Student Room and Joanna Matloka of 77 agency. Jason saying social media needs full-time attention - so create roles for graduates to come into. “I think it’s a full-time job - content and community is going to be key.” Joanna says new media courses at her alma mata college, Bournemouth University, are booked up until until 2014. She sees a big role for community management in future for those who understand online marketing and knows how to integrate PR and social - it can be pushed into unlimited levels. Universities are undertaking a lot of work on making students ‘work-ready.’ Alice, a student, says from the floor that she is on a one-year paid internship and is creating a social media strategy for her travel firm “to help push her past all the other graduates coming out next year.” Alice had a blog pre-work, vital for SM students says Joanna.

4.15pm: Whoops! Moderating another session on bloggers v blaggers (very interesting - will report later) so didn’t update blog. But now into final session of the day - best blogger innovations of 2012. First up: Janice Waugh of Solo Traveller, talking about the launch of The Travellers Handbook series - 5 books about styles of travelling (food, solo etc.,) with more to come. Pricey tho: £12.99 for book version, less online. As @karenbryan says: “Seems a bit strange that #travel bloggers are producing printed books thought we were new media?” But why not? Doing off and online content seems perfectly natural.

Her presentation, if you’d like to see it, is below:

Sarah Lee talks about 4×4, a project to film on four continents in four months - and the TV series that has spun off. Another fine example of diversification. Sarah points out travel industry understands TV and video as it’s old media - so why not milk that while developing new lines of content?

See her presentation here

Nellie Huang next up with her digital magazine. She set up her Wild Junket blog in 2008, moved into travel writing, then set up her latest idea to “expand beyond the website and reach audience in an interactive manner.” Can be found on different platforms, also on an app. Her husband Alberto uses Indesign and is a photographer - which is handy. Is launching a new website for the mag - www.wildjunketmagazine.com - and selling on different platforms. Interrogator Jen Howze asks the killer question - how much do you pay writers? Nellie - “We usually pay $150 for 2,000 words.” Making 80% of revenue from magazine sales - aiming to make it 50/50 with advertising. Have 115,000 subscribers, 1.6m unique views each issue and publish quarterly. Aiming for 10m. Sell it for $10.99 for four issues a year. Impressive.

See her presentation and magazine below.

Kash is next, with his passion of (good) hostels (see presentation below). He started a project to visit 50 of the best across Europe - a guide to luxury hostels. Private room with element of an hostel - he’s done 43 so far. Hostels pay a fee to be involved (£250-£300 to cover expenses), his readership is the people who stay in (good) hostels, he’s got 6 sponsors. Producing e-book for April, 2013. #luxuryhostels has generated millions of hits. And he’s getting old print coverage - interesting to see so much cross-over. Has raised £11k so far but it’s about getting the brand out - then hope to capitalise.

Gary Arndt - it’s about earning enough to give me the lifestyle that I want. He’s leading two photographic tours in 2013. “Build a big enough audience and the money will come to you.” He has a literary agent, business agent and assistant - “but I do all the travelling.” He’ll gross six-figures this year. “There will be more and more opportunities out there.”

Lastly, Matt Kepnes - Nomadic Matt. One questions people ask if how do you make money? I sell a lot e-books - but you have to sell a lot at $20 to make money. So in June, launched an “expensive” course for 10 people teaching them how to build an online business with mentorship (higher premium). He doesn’t wants ads on his site but wouldn’t mind a sponsor or two, and wants to sell his knowledge more. Like a concierge site. And in 2014, maybe do something else.

Critics Mark Hodson and Jennifer Howze on the projects: Stand by!
Janice - like the collaborative approach and interesting project. Sarah - colloborative again, but with video ahead of the curve. Nellie - nice looking, pro magazine. It was the numbers that impressed. Kash - a really useful resource, a genuine gap in the market. Gary - presentation struck to the heart: audience, focussed, business model. Matt - planning selling his knowledge in a bespoke way.

Who go the most claps and cheers? As recorded on Mark’s phone and app - it’s Kash!

That’s it for today - but maybe more from the table football challenge tonight!

Midnight: Thanks to the 80+ who turned out for the table football challenge tonight, with special thanks to partners Tbex, Hotels.Com and the Spanish Tourist Office. You can see the excellent photos from the Spanish NTO here - Great night all!.

Blogging and the Silk Road: win a trip to Armenia

Photo: Norovank Church, Armenia
 

by Mark Frary

Two blogging projects built around the Silk Road featured at the heart of this year’s WTM Social Travel Market, which took place within World Travel Market on November 7-8, 2012 at London’s ExCeL centre.

Both projects were put together in conjunction with the UNWTO’s Silk Road Programme, a collaborative initiative designed to enhance sustainable tourism development along the historic trade route between Asia and Europe. The programme aims to maximize the benefits of tourism development for local Silk Road communities, while stimulating investment and promoting the conservation of the route’s natural and cultural heritage.

Today, we are launching the 2012 Silk Road Ch@llenge, a competition for bloggers from around the world with a prize of an all-expenses paid trip to beautiful Armenia, one of the jewels of the Silk Road.

Launched last year at WTM Social Travel Market, the first Ch@llenge was won by Sophie Collard for her entertaining video on sampling horsemeat on the Kazakhstan stand at WTM. This year the theme is again about food - but we are allowing bloggers until November 30 to put together their entry, with ideas from from the Silk Road stands at WTM, a trip done to the Silk Road in the past 12 months - or an inspiring post on why you should visit the Silk Road.

Bloggers should post on their blogs using text, images, video or audio. The winning entry should also try to demonstrate the cross-border nature of the Silk Road, show inventive use of multimedia and encourage tourism to the region.

Bloggers should register here.

Blogs should be publicised using the #silkroad2012 hashtag on Twitter to ensure they are considered by our judging panel, made up of representatives from WTM Social Travel Market organisers Travel Perspective and the UNWTO.

Enter today to stand a chance of winning this amazing prize, which will include visits to Armenia’s most outstanding tourist attractions as well as unique experiences involving Armenia’s rich and diverse food and drink heritage.

One of the most eagerly awaited session of this year’s WTM Social Travel Market took place on Thursday November 8 on the Turkey stand (EM850), another of the countries of the Silk Road.

This interactive session saw Chris Richardson of RTWLabs put together a blog on the theme of Flavours of the Silk Road. The theme was inspired by the recent UNWTO Flavours of the Silk Road Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan where delegates heard how traditional and contemporary food and drink could be used to promote tourism to the Silk Road’s countries. The video of the session will be available here shortly.

Air France: How many Facebook likes is enough?

By Mark Frary

Air France has this week announced that it has achieved more than one million Likes for its Facebook page . It has achieved this number in a shade over two years, having started on the network in July 2010. The main source countries for these likes are France (20%), Brazil (9%), Italy (8%), India (6%), Tunisia (6%) and Japan (5%).

Much of the recent growth in Likes has come from a campaign the airline organised which involved a vote between 5,000 fans who could use the network to choose which destination on the airline’s network would benefit from a two-day 30% discount.

Another recent popular campaign on Facebook and Twitter was a competition to see which of the carrier’s social media fans could make the best paper plane. (As an aside, the airline has 250,000 followers for its 23 international Twitter accounts and 4,600 followers on Instagram, where it has shared 10,000 photos in the course of six months.)

The airline uses Facebook to good effect – asking fans for guidance on which advertising campaign to use, sharing photos of gorgeous French food, in fact anything that can create an interaction between Air France and its existing and potential passengers.

The milestone comes just shortly after Facebook announced the launch of Global Pages for brands that work globally, like Air France. What this means is that companies working in lots of different markets can work with Facebook to establish separate pages for each of these markets.

Crucially, the brand can just have a single Facebook URL and Facebook does the work behind the scenes to direct users of the social network to the appropriate page for the market. Statistics, such as Likes and Talking About, will reflect the overall global figure rather than the figure for the individual market.

One travel brand that has already worked with Facebook and global Pages is the hotel chain Holiday Inn. See where it takes you - for me in the UK, it redirects to Holiday Inn’s UK Facebook presence. For others that will be different. It is a great step for brands that want to offer localised content that is relevant to their important overseas markets.

Anyway, back to those million Facebook Likes. Just how relevant is a number like that? I was at a conference recently where the head of a major travel industry association bemoaned the fact that his country did not have as many Likes as Dubai, despite being much larger and with a bigger tourism industry. I pointed out it is all about quality not quantity.

A million Likes means nothing if they are not engaged with your brand and have only gone there because they have been “bought”. Luckily, Air France seems to have understood this.