WTM Travel Perspective: Day One sessions

November 4, 2014

By Steve Keenan and Mark Frary

10.10am: First session of the day is Lee McCabe, Global Head of Travel at Facebook. Slight delay until heavy handed security let guests cross the show floor to actually reach our rooms (South Gallery 23-26.

10.15am: Our Mark outlines sessions for the next three days. So many to recount - all listed on the site here

Lee kicks off: Mobile and personalisation. “Mobiles becoming the remote control of our lives,” says Lee, pointing out that 79% of us keep our mobiles with us for all but two hours of the day. Businesses can’t keep up with pace of change.

“We’re experiencing a service revolution.” Uber is his example, and it’s going beyond travel. “It’s the Uber-isation of everything.” IN San Francisco, he can get a cleaner visit to schedule, or pick up his post. “There’s a service for everything.”

Apps are here to stay. We only have an average 26 on our phone so there will be aggregating - airlines, for example, rather than each having their own app (TP: a One World type of app?) “There is a land grab. If I were a travel company, I’d get an app developed and installed on as much real estate as possible.”

From desktop to laptop and now mobile, people have control. Everybody is now a travel critic; people are at the heart and want a two-way transaction. But brands can also target people very specifically. “Mobile is a big deal for Facebook with 700m using the site on mobile every day (23m in the UK),” - this will be a recurring theme of our seminars this week.

Better tech emerging to better identify customers, not just from cookies. And using Big Data better - to better target customers. So in future, you’ll be shown one hotel rather than hundreds on an OTA or other travel site - because that site knows you so well. “It’s a long term thing and a challenge for Facebook as well.”

He emphasises simplicity, and personalisation. “I think we have lost our way in that, a little bit.”

10.45am: Great first session. Lee now taking questions

10.55am: Running 20 minutes behind schedule (Surprise!) but now up is Will Hayward, European boss of Buzzfeed. This is going to be interesting – haven’t heard a Buzzfeed speaker before.

Three-quarters of Buzzfeed’s traffic comes via social referrals. So they must be doing something that people like sharing. Three years ago, had scale and started doing serious stuff as well as GIFs about first sexual experiences. Today, has staff in Liberia covering ebola. Had a scoop in Ukraine on the Russian soldier posting content from the wrong side of the border.

We’re in the third generation of the web, he says, where people demand more. But brands are not putting enough effort into getting their content in front of people: the number of home page views of The New York Times has halved in the past two years – “they’re not putting as much effort into getting on to your screen as they did to your doorstep.”

Buzzfeed is excited about video. “We haven’t done anything with travel companies yet – there’s so much you can do.” Takeaways: home pages aren’t what they were. Great content wins everything. We’re in a golden age of social. He prefers cat videos to dogs. If you’re going to write a headline, make it more than ’10 things…’ and always an odd number. ’31 things…’ works well.

“It’s not about lists, it’s about trying different things, experimentation. Others copied our funny things but reaction shouldn;t be to copy, it should be to experiment and erode the seriousness which publishing brands bring. Particularly with travel – you should have fun.”

It’s like Facebook was saying: everything is moving towards more personalisation, about knowing a great deal more about individuals and working hard at finding good content that is shared - which builds your data. His talk goes down well - I suspect a lot of people in the room to find out more about Buzzfeed. A lot of talk with Will afterwards.

11.30am: “Britain is a society brought together by crumpets and OS maps,” said Bill Bryson. That may have been so. Ben Scott-Robinson is head of mobile/innovation at Britain’s Ordnance Survey and he’s taking 230 years of mapping into digital. It’s a huge job but mind-blowing in potential. “There is no bigger challenge than to put this information on mobile.”

The OS has contours (which is why Minecraft bought its data for use last year) and makes 10,000 changes to its database daily. Google doesn’t, he points out, and is not so rich or immersive. It’s good, of course, as is mapping sites Citymapper and Recce - among others - but people spend four times as long on OS as they do on these other sites. “There is emotive engagement. It is a fun thing to see.”

It could be crumpets and 3D OS maps on flexible grapheme platforms in future: the OS launches its first (un-named) digital mobile product next May and, at the same time, open up its APIs to developers. Fun times.

12.20pm: A panel on building a social community - and maintaining it. Remember, many destinations or companies haven’t even started on social yet - but it has become necessary, says Sarah Rathbone of Siren Communications. “Join the conversation, use your common sense, have fun and don’t say anything on social that you wouldn’t tell your Mum.”

Without good content, “You will be shouting about nothing,” says digital journalist Mark Henshall. “Start with quality - video, a blog post - and you’ve got something to start with. And stick with it - don’t abandon a campaign halfway through.”

Instagram gets the thumbs up from Sarah, Mark and Enrique Ruiz de Lera, director of the Spanish Tourist Office in the UK.

Spain has built a huge community. “We had a great foundation for building a community because travel is inherently social. When I see banks trying social, it’s pitiful,” he says. Lifestyle, sports are icons of Spain’s social media - the day after winning the World Cup, Spain gained 200,000 likes on Facebook.

“What we have been doing in past three years in UK is building an audience, but smaller with more engagement. What works? We came up with three ideas: Inform, inspire and offer deals. Deals didn’t work - nobody will ever sell anything on Facebook. I’m very sceptical about FB in a commercial area. Instagram works - much more engaged. We’re all about inspiring people now.”

Inspiring, yes from all. Quality content, too. And engagement with locals, says Bart van Poll, of Spotted by Locals, which has 300 locals in 57 cities in Europe and North America. They provide up-to-the-minute information from their cities, can meet up, and create that all important community.

Added Enrique: “First thing you need is a decent website that people like to go back to. Now, I would start with Instagram rather than Facebook - but as we have 1.2m on FB, it’s too late.”