Mumbrella Travel Marketing Summit
By Tilma's Event Guru: Claire
I was very excited to be attending the Mumbrella Travel Marketing Summit and Awards and had very high expectations of the conference due to the notable calibre of presenters. Further, I was more than 1,200km from home and had paid a large penny to be there including flights and accommodation.
Q&A Sessions at Mumbrella Travel Marketing Summit. Image: Mumbrella
The Summit was run as a series of Q&A Couch Sessions with 4-5 presenters. Each session was approximately 45 minutes in duration, which meant each presenter only had the ability to discuss the topic asked of them by the moderator and spoke overall for maybe 5 minutes.
It was also disheartening to find the questions were regularly about what the presenters were doing in their current roles (responded to like a job interview) rather than giving valuable insights into their marketing ideas and achievements.
Sadly, the Summit was not as I expected and I felt a bit disappointed when coming home at the lack of inspiration and education provided. Maybe that was my overly high expectations letting me down, but I can honestly say that I have received more valuable insights from locally run Workshops and Conferences in the Toowoomba Region than I did at this big-named Summit.
Regardless, there were a few sessions I loved and had some great ideas and thoughts I will remember in my marketing content and strategy going forwards. Here are a few of my take outs from a day with Mumbrella.
KEYNOTE - How Hawai’i Tourism and Expedia are Using Technology to Drive Consumers Down the Path to Purchase with Leslie Dance and Noah Tratt
Digital Trends are growing for travel purchases with an increase of 44% in the UK and USA. This equates to 121-161 internet sites visited before a purchase is made. 33% of these sites are OTAs with DMOs having the lowest percentage visited.
20% of Australian’s travel more than 1.5 times per year (this makes them a frequent traveller).
82% of people want to travel internationally to experience something different.
*this research was focused on location-based decisions rather than experienced-based
Innovation is the key to staying competitive
Make more partnerships – try and partner with larger budgets if your budget is low
Get specific and go back to your roots – be authentic
WORKSHOP - Getting the Message: Reaching Consumers in a Mobile World with Douglas Nicol, Katie Rigg-Smith, Paul Nahoun and Matt Granfield
Digital Marketing can be used with TV and Print media where results can be difficult to measure. Ideas included a QR/Scan Code on print media or scheduling Social Media ads during TV commercials.
Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion are the sales process steps of the customer. Always make sure you are marketing to the step of the process the customer is experiencing. Paid advertising has the most return on investment at the Conversion step.
When using Social Media use the following content for each stage of the travel purchase process:
* Dreaming – video
* Planning – Canvas/Ripl (slideshow type video)
* Further Planning – carousel (list of photos)
* Conversion – single photo and booking list
WORKSHOP - Providing a Customer Experience and The Science That Sits Behind It with Bri Williams
Human Behaviour follows the path of least resistance. For effective conversion, you need to overcome the human behaviours of Apathy, Paralysis, and Anxiety