Travel blogger, Kash Bhattacharya (@BudgetTraveller), headed up a panel of expert bloggers talking to French exhibitors and visitors on the France stand at World Travel Market on Weds 9th Nov 2011. It was an un-scheduled event put together at short notice.
On the panel (L – R) were Cailin O’Neil(@CailinONeil), Adventurous Kate (@adventurouskate) Kirsten Alana (@KirstenAlana), Katy Stewart (@SEtravels) and Dylan Lowe (@TravelingEditor).
The whole session lasted an hour.
Part 2 – 18′ 02″
Part 3 – 20′ 01′
Part 4 – 17′ 01″
UPDATE
The videos of speakers at this year’s Social Travel Market events at WTM are now online. We’ll post links here as they appear.
| Weds 9 November | |
|---|---|
| 10:45 | Introduction session |
| 11:00 | Keynote |
| 11:30 | The ROI of paid travel blogging (Head-to-Head) |
| 13:00 | Video – Your most important social media tool. |
| 13:40 | Blighter or Wrogger? The new travel content providers(Panel) |
| 15:10 | The perfect travel tweet (Panel) |
| 16:30 | Is just blogging about travel enough? (Panel) |
| Thurs 10 November | |
| 11:00 | Introduction session |
| 11:15 | Supercharge your blog (Presentation & panel) |
| 12:30 | Canada Case Study – Tourist boards and bloggers (Head-to-Head) |
| 13:35 | The Perfect Mix – Where social media fits into travel marketing |
| 14:30 | Case study – Do blog press trips work |
| 15:20 | Summary session |
Post Revisions:
- 25 November, 2011 @ 18:04 [Current Revision] by Alastair McKenzie
- 12 November, 2011 @ 10:00 by Alastair McKenzie
A really great impromptu event during WTM. It was an honor to be on the panel as well, talking to professionals from my favorite European country. Thank you Kash for organizing and Alastair for seeing to it that it was recorded.
Pleasure :) I thought you were excellent BTW
What Alastair said ;)
So kind. Thank you Dylan and Alastair.
Thanks to Kash for including me at the last minute! and thanks to Alastair for filming! :)
I am now open for any speaking engagements that someone might want to book me for… :)
As first-timers to WTM and relatively new bloggers, it was great to hear the panel talk about working with DMO’s and why they should work with travel bloggers in the future. Awesome job by everyone involved!
So great to have you there Kieron!
Thanks a lot for taking an hour out of my day!! Seriously, that was very interesting and helpful. Thanks for taking the time to share it.
Was an absolute pleasure and honour to be part of this panel! Thanks Kash for the invite and Alastair for the video!
I really think, between the six of us, we’ve packed so much information into 60 minutes about working with bloggers that anyone from the industry seeking to work with bloggers will get much out of having a browser of these clips. Game-changing stuff this is :)
I can only echo what Dylan, Cailin and Kirsten have said above, I was delighted to be part of the panel. Thanks Alastair for the video. It was a great opportunity, I think times are very exciting indeed for Travel Bloggers :)
It’s such a shame I wasn’t there, because, DUH, traveling in Europe and living in France is my niche. But I am so honored that Kate mentioned me and I really hope I can make it next year.
I’m really curious to see what next year’s conferences about travel blogging are going to be about – same old questions about how to work with bloggers, or will tourism boards/bloggers be proactive in 2012? Exciting developments ahead.
Interesting panel, but I’d quibble with one comment:
Traditional journalists don’t necessarily arrive at a destination with a predetermined angle. Or, if they do, they often find themselves adapting to the realities on the ground. (As do their editors when word gets back that the beach on Widget Island is washed out or there aren’t any WMD in Iraq.)
I’d also like to ask a question, based on something that was said in the opening presentation: Do most bloggers think of DMOs and travel vendors as “clients”?
That’s true…. ish, Durrant. Traditional journalists *might* not arrive with a predetermined angle, but they should.
This is all about self-publishing v commissioned work. If I send a traditional journalist or a blogger to do a job/trip, I give them as detailed a brief as possible. That’s what editors do. So yes, as you say, it might have to get changed later, but they most certainly should be arriving in destination with a predetermined angle. A self-publisher can make it up as they go along.
Agree with your picking up on the word “client”. The only ‘client’ a blogger might have is somebody who pays them (to blog for them, to advertise them, etc). DMO’s and travel providers might be referred to as “partners”, or possibly “sponsors” (as in ‘sponsoring a trip’) but for my preference, simply “hosts”.
I shall confess that it was a bit of a cock-up on my part – that word was a slip of the tongue. My bad. I totally agree with Alastair: ‘client’ does imply a business relationship in which the services of the blogger is exchanged with monetary reward. That certainly was the wrong word to use in this context.
But then, is that the general progression of our industry? There’s been a lot of talk about bloggers should be charging for their services – some even advocating we should get paid to go on trips. Are we striving to move towards a client/service-provider relationship? Indeed, I remember hearing rumours that several bloggers are working with their ‘clients’ to construct brand/destination exposure campaigns – these guys are getting paid. And getting sent on trips. Are bloggers merely sent on trips not deserving pay? Or is ‘merely’ the wrong word – participation in a blog trip AND subsequent promotions of the visited destination are services with a price tag?
It’s an ongoing debate that had gripped several travel bloggers conferences I’ve attended. It hasn’t been something I’ve pondered until this serendipitous mistake – but then I guess only time will tell us whereupon the future of press/blog trips – and their monetary value – lies.
I think Alastair answers this really well Durant but what I want to add is simply thank you, as always your comments are thought-provoking in the best way.
In all my time writing, I’ve done different types of writing – one is factual, information based piece that gives people information that they need (i.e. travel news, travel deals, etc). The other type of post I write is one that is written from an experience and a personal perspective. This type of post also shares factual and informative information about a destination. However, it is not meant to be objective journalism.
I used to think this is all there was to writing. However, two things opened my eyes to what Durant is saying. I wrote a very personal post on my experiences at Auschwitz for yTravelBlog and what I realized is that I had no preconceptions to Auschwitz before I went there. While my writing is very personal, it is also something that allowed myself to experience in the moment once I was there.
However, what Durant is saying really hit me when I started my travel project – the College Football Travel Tour. I went to the University of Washington with absolutely no idea how the weekend would turn out. I basically let the stories happen – and man did they! I had no preconceived ideas about UW but I learned so much about it because I was there in the moment and let the stories develop on their own. I had no angle whatsoever for this project other than a couple of things that I knew I would feature. Now I completely understand what Durant is saying.
I hope to be able to use this mindset more when I travel as it allowed me to experience things I never could have if I already had an angle or story I wanted to go after. I would have missed all the other things that I experienced.
“This is all about self-publishing v commissioned work.”
Sure, but it’s important to remember that not all traditional journalists are freelancers or staff writers, and not all bloggers are self-publishers. Even bloggers who are self-publishers may have a predetermined angle: I know a woman who publishes a “spiritual travel” blog, and if she shows up in Santiago de Compostela, the tourist office can assume that her visit will be more about pilgrims than about Galician cuisine.
Re “clients” vs “partners” vs “hosts”: Your astute comment reminds us that precision is important when writing or speaking. Words can be revealing, and using a word that raises eyebrows in a given context (such as “clients” when speaking of DMOs that lay on press trips) can lead to questions about objectivity and motives.
Eeek if bloggers are calling tourist offices “clients.” In exchange for money (i.e. they hire me to write for their site) absolutely. In exchange for a trip…. I don’t think that is right.
Dang, lines blur….
Sorry, slip of tongue. Fault is all mine. My bad :p
This was a great surprise at WTM — many thanks to my favorite Bengali for the panel, to Alastair for the filming and post, and to Atout France for hosting us. I think the best part was seeing how eager the different tourism boards within France and especially the board for France itself were to work with bloggers. In the world’s most visited country (or has it since dropped to second?), which clearly isn’t hurting for tourism, let’s hope that it’s an approach that other destinations will follow.
If you watch as far as video 4, I can’t believe how diplomatic you guys were when talking to the lady from Nice who asked if she could just send you a press release about her hotels as her budget was so limited. I’m afraid that in that situation I hit the delete button immediately – if I stayed even 1 free night in her hotel I write a post & make a video – surely that’s worth the €100 or so it would cost her?
Sorry for delay, Heather. Just found you in the Akismet folder!
Hi Heather
Given the amount of unsolicited email and press releases I get from PR’s, I totally understand your point.
However if any small hotel owner like the lady in question/ or PR has taken the time to read my blog and send me a press release I wouldn’t fob them off.
I’d explain to her what I would be looking for, see if it ties in with my plans and objectives for the blog and send them my media kit.
Maybe I could have put this across better.
I spoke to her later and told her with her minimal resources , best bet of creating a buzz would be to work with the tourism board , invite bloggers and host them- she took it onboard, lets see..
Thanks Alastair and Travelllll.com for sharing this.
It was a great honour to be given the opportunity by Jacqueline from Atout France UK to present to their partners at World Travel Market.
I am really glad that I got Cailin, Kate, Kirsten, Dylan and Katy onboard at the last minute to present their perspective and overall made it more interesting -response was fantastic.
Definitely feel a big shift and interest in working with bloggers during WTM this year.
I heard a lot at WTM this year about working with travel bloggers versus print ads etc. Most of you that know me probably know me through Travellerspoint, but I also own a more traditional ‘offline’ student travel agency. I thought I’d share a marketing experience from earlier in the year there.
A fashion blogger wrote a post on her blog about how one of our trips looked pretty awesome. This was someone totally not on my radar whatsoever (go figure, I don’t tend to follow blogs of 20 year old girls writing about what they wear), but she absolutely blew up our analytics. It just so happened that the week after we were featured for a full week above the fold on Norway’s biggest newspaper, and with her one post she still managed to generate more traffic than that kind of coverage.
Now I know a lot of you are happy to hear this kind of blogger versus traditional media victory, but it’s also testament to the fact that *anyone* can blog about travel. You don’t need to be a *travel* blogger to write a post about a trip you’ve taken or are thinking of taking. In fact, there’s a lot to be said about objectivity being better when someone normally doesn’t write about travelling and then all of a sudden throws out a post on the topic.
The real key here for a company like ours is not who is posting what. We want a good mix in our marketing and that means FB (both paid and unpaid), Google (paid and unpaid), blogs, and heck, I even throw some (Scandinavian focused) travel mags a bone every now and then if the deal is good enough. The key is reach and more importantly how targetted and qualified that reach is. The fashion blogger in question has over 25 000 *unique* visitors per day (keep in mind, ALL Norwegian, a country of 4m), all in the age 16-25 or so, so essentially all extremely qualified traffic from our point of view. I’ve heard a lot of travel blogger stats, but I’m yet to see one display that kind of traffic, let alone one focused on a specific age group and country. And she is not even the most read fashion blogger in Norway…
I’m not sure what the takeaway here is for travel bloggers (other than the obvious shoot for a ton of traffic or go super niche but preferably have both), but I certainly found it food for thought in terms of where we look for interesting advertising opportunities. Obviously we got in touch with her and made sure her trip happened :)
Nice share!! I am glad to see the video.