Today TBEX has announced that TBEX Europe 2012 will be taking place at the Girona Auditorium and Conference Centre, in the Costa Brava region of Spain on 21-22 Sept 2012.
The deal with the Costa Brava Girona Tourist Board, who will be hosting the event, was signed in Spain last week by Blogworld’s CEO & Founder, Rick Calvert, who said:
We are thrilled to have the Costa Brava Tourist Board hosting TBEX Europe 2012 in Girona Spain! This is an amazing city in the heart of the beautiful Costa Brava region of Spain. The conference will feature first class educational sessions and the one of a kind networking opportunities our community has come to expect from TBEX. But they are going to find some amazing content in Costa Brava as well.
I would add, we were blown away by the hospitality of the Costa Brava team and how excited they were to host this event. They are definitely one of the leading destinations in the world when it comes to blogger outreach. It would be hard to think of another destination that is as well prepared to host TBEX than Costa Brava.
Jaume Torramadé, president of the Costa Brava Girona Tourist Board said:
We are delighted to host TBEX in Girona, Costa Brava. I think it’s a win-win-win relationship, between TBEX, bloggers and Costa Brava. This event is another step forward in our marketing strategy. Costa Brava Girona Tourist Board will organize pre and post blog trips to the event, so bloggers can discover new experiences in the area and be inspired to post new content. We are excited to take them on an adventure they will never forget.
In the past,TBEX has been primarily located in North America – the next one is in Keystone, Colorado, June 15 – although there was a ‘TBEX Europe’ event in Copenhagen in 2010 and plans for a second European TBEX in Prague in 2011, which later had to be dropped.
Jaume Marin,Marketing Director for Costa Brava Girona Tourist Board is also really pleased about welcoming TBEX back to Europe:
This event is another step forward in our marketing strategy. We have believed from the beginning in blogtrips, and in turning bloggers into digital amabassadors. We don’t want just to organise a blogtrip and that’s it. We believe that bloggers are our loudspeakers, with more audience and credibility around the world. So we keep investing in ways to make Costa Brava part of their story.
Costa Brava Girona Tourist Board will organise pre and post blogtrips to the event, for them to discover new experiences in our area. I genuinely believe that they will post their experiences during this event, and we will try to make it an experience that they will never forget.
TBEX are using the #TBEX hashtag for TBEX Europe “to keep the chatter all in one place”. More details about speakers, the programme and tours will be posted here as they are released.
So, TBEX in Girona in Sept – are you up for it?
Image: Costa Brava Girona Tourist Board
Post Revisions:
- 24 April, 2012 @ 15:23 [Current Revision] by Alastair McKenzie
- 24 April, 2012 @ 14:54 by Alastair McKenzie
I was in Girona last week, it’s a fantastically pretty little town! May have to think about this one…
Very cool! I love Spain and would love to attend TBEX in September. Will have to see how much flights work out to be though…
Wow we were there at the same time Laurence! Sorry we missed you. I have been to lots of beautiful places in Europe but this trip really surprised me. I could spend a month in Girona alone. There is so much to see in the center of this town. It took us about 2 hours to get oriented to the entire city. You can walk everywhere and it seems like something new and wonderful around every corner.
BTW We didn’t even talk about the food. Every place we visited was gourmet quality from Tapas on up. Did you have a similar experience Laurence?
The food was incredible! I was only in Girona as a day trip from Barcelona, but the food everywhere we went in Catalonia during our week there was incredibly affordable and really tasty, with such great attention to detail :D Also can say that the Barcelona tourist board were a joy to work with as a blogger also, so nice to hear that the Girona chaps are on top of it :)
Would love to be there and will be happy to promote it through http://www.thisisspain dot info etc
Girona is a magical city!
Enjoy!
Thanks Steve! shoot me an email rick at blogworldexpo dot com. We will talk.
Would love to be there as well… but have a presstrip to Berlin just till the 21st. Might fly directly from there, have to think about it. But it would be my first conference on TB ever!!! Que bueno que esta en Espana, podria practicar mi espanol tambien. Entonces, hasta luego ;-)
I got to practice quite a bit of my spanish last week as well Doris. It will be well worth it!
I’m actually more excited by TBU than TBEX. And I am not available on these dates – fingers crossed for TBU.
Well we hope you decide to join us if your schedule frees up Marie.
Keith (Jenkins) has a nice post on Girona. :) http://velvetescape.com/2011/08/stroll-girona-photos/
It’s really amazing for us as a hosts!!! we will try to make the most enjoyable experiences for you. We will have experience blogtrip before and after the event. so, please keep in touch!!!!!!
We would love to welcome you all in Costa Brava Girona!!!!!!
That is awesome!
My mother lives in Sta Coloma de Farners. I can’t miss this one!
Ens veiem aviat!
I’ll be there for sure! Looking forward to it.
It’s a BEAUTIFUL time of year to go to Spain! I was in Spain this time a few years ago and loved it. Not sure I can make this one because I already have travel plans. But this will be awesome for the European bloggers!
If all goes to plan we’d love to be there!
I can confirm that Travelllll.com will be in attendance ;)
I was at the first TBEX in Copengahen in 2010. Glad to see they’re coming back to Europe
Thanks Monique. Hope you can join us 8)
This is very exciting news and I really want to go! Looking forward to more news about The event!
So TBEX is effectively now going head to head with TBU- the battle of the travel blogger conferences begins.
Whether you like Oliver or not, I think he organises a good conference and despite the odd hiccups along the way, TBU Umbria was a great event and a step up from previous conferences thanks to the fresh involvement of Dave and Deb who were brilliant, Jeff and also the fantastic keynote speaker Jodi Ettenburg.
Ideally be nice to see a life where TBEX and TBU could coexist but this aggressive move from just spells trouble.
As a community we exist, strive and evolve – divided, am afraid we fall.
While in the end one may fail, the loser ultimately is the blogging community.
Only Rick and Kim can answer that one Kash. I had a conversation with them at ITB about not conflicting dates and they all agreed. I then said my next event will be early Sept. Me and Rick then shook hands.
When they changed the dates on the TBEX site for the Europe event to Sept, I placed a call to Rick and his co-founder to remind them of our agreement.
A subsequent email was sent as well.
No reply has been received and nor has any acknowledgement been made.
As you say Kash…. it is a shame
Not sure where this came from Kash – or why you’re drawing Oliver’s character to question? TBU and TBEX aren’t community events, they’re industry events – that’s why so many companies want to sponsor them and get involved with them, because there’s money in it. In an industry, competition breeds innovation.
If TBU and TBEX pose competition to each other, then surely that will drive them both to be better? In my eyes, that’s a very cool thing.
The best inventions in the world often come from people looking at something which already exists and then saying “Hey, I can do that better” …
Let me give you an example:
Back in 2003 there was a blogging platform called b2 (otherwise known as “cafelog”) – lots of people used the platform, and it powered some of the earliest blogs around. After a while though, the development slowed and new features were few and far between. A young teenager at the time called Matthew was using b2 and said to himself “I can do that better”.
Because b2 was an opensource project, he was able to take the code and modify it into a new platform. He created a competitor to b2, which eventually became its successor. On May 22nd, 2003 – Matt wrote a post announcing the launch of his new blogging software. He decided to name it WordPress.
So here’s my question to you – would any of us be here right now if Matt hadn’t decided to introduce a little competition to the market? ;)
I don’t just hope that TBU and TBEX continue to push each other, I hope that more people come into the space and push it even further. Ultimately, this is amazing news for conference attendees who will undoubtedly see a continuing rise in the quality of future events.
Hey John
Where did it come from? It’s rare that anything appears from a vacuum.
I am not suggesting that TBEX TBU competition is a bad idea-in any industry. It’s a sign of a healthy, thriving industry. Generates debate, brings new people to the fold and spurs innovation.
While being an industry event, TBU has been built around people and the travel blogging community which is one of it’s strengths – the bloggers, their passion and knowledge is why people enjoy it.
At the same time I know that for TBU to prosper , evolve and be more credible, needs a stronger industry led approach which is where TBEX has it’s strengths.
From the feedback I’ve heard from bloggers who have attended TBEX so far …it seems they there is a lot of cliques and there is not the sense of sharing of knowledge that exists in TBU.
Same time TBU while setting up a great event with good speakers and having a great host in Umbria, clearly needs an assistant and help on the ground to organise the event better.
There is room for improvement and scope for both to do things better- TBEX under the expert management of Blogworld , will be interesting to see how things pan out.
TBEX definitely has with Costa Brava, a brilliant host who have worked with bloggers so a big plus there. I’m sure their blogtrips will be pretty awesome.
TBU- a challenge for Oliver is to see how he can take things to the next level and also respond to the challenge of TBEX.
Definitely will be an interesting to see how things pan out in months ahead.
Both of them can learn a lot from each other and grow.
If that happens, then great- the blogging community wins.
Hi Kash,
I don’t understand your comment about us announcing our 2012 European show as an aggressive move. When we discussed hosting our event in Costa Brava with Jaume and his team, these were the dates that worked best for them. They work for us as well.
We host one event per year in the US in the late spring early summer and one in Europe in the late summer early fall. We plan to continue this pattern for the foreseeable future.
We cannot block months out of our event plans simply because someone else might host an event near our dates or location or views it as some kind of threat. Of course we will always avoid conflicts whenever possible. Sometimes schedule conflicts are unavoidable. In the US our BlogWorld events compete with dozens of other related conferences. We don’t view other organizers plans as threatening to us. Quite the opposite, we collaborate with many events in the US and plan to do the same in Europe.
You can ask anyone who has ever dealt with BlogWorld as a company or me or my business partner David Cynkin personally. I doubt anyone would call us aggressive.
I agree with Peter’s comment below. Public bickering are not good for our industry and are unprofessional. I am only addressing this since you made the comment.
We host no ill will toward TBU as a business or Oliver personally. I have only met him once at the bar during ITB and spoke to him for less than 15 minutes. We wish him and his event the best of luck and will support it whenever possible and beneficial to both entities and the industry as a whole.
Sincerely,
Rick Calvert
CEO
TBEX
CEO & Co-founder
BlogWorld & New Media Expo
I don’t think public bickering is good for any industry! But if there is more than one conference on at a time and they are not located near each other, there are more than enough attendees out there to make them both worthwhile.
I loved Copenhagen 2010 and can’t wait for this one!
Thank you Melissa, we can’t wait either!
We’re based in Spain (The Spain Scoop), two of us here in Barcelona. Love Girona. Nice choice. We’ll be there!
Thanks Regina. See you in September 8)
I couldn’t make it work to come to TBEX Keystone this summer, but September is better timing for me. I will put it on the calender and see what happens (always looking for another excuse to go to Spain!)
We’re looking forward to meet you all there!
Very much hoping to go to TBEX (first time) in Spain – hope it’s not too late to get ticket. Love that part of the world (bro lives in Menorca) and sure the Spaniards will host brilliantly – they really know how to enjoy work & play!