HSMAI Europe 3rd Annual Digital Marketing Conference will take place on Thursday November 6th at WTM, South Gallery Rooms 23-26. Registration from 9 AM and the educational programme starts at 9:30 AM and lasts until 4 PM.See the agenda below and register now for HSMAI Europe 3rd Digital Marketing Conference on emerging trends in hospitality digital marketing and take advantage of the generous offer. HSMAI Europe 3rd Annual Digital Marketing Conference is expected to attract executives from the travel and hospitality industry interested in the latest trends and developments in their field of expertise. Content for the day will therefore cover the latest in online analytics, increase of direct conversions and metasearch.
I am delighted WTM is hosting the HSMAI Europe’s Digital Marketing Conference. The event tops off a jam-packed final day for WTM — Simon Press, Senior Director, World Travel Market

Agenda
09:00–09:30 Arrival and registration
09:30–09:35 Welcome
09:35–10:05 The Future of Digital Marketing
Terri Scriven
Industry Head Travel, Google

10:05–10:35 Effectively managing digital marketing budgets in order to secure the best ROI
Effectively managing & measuring digital marketing spend – with marketing budgets increasingly moving towards digital, understanding how much to spend and where you are getting value for money is more important than ever.

In this talk, Sam & Chris from Occupancy Marketing shall go through how to determine whether you are setting the right budget for online marketing, which channels to consider utilising dependant on your needs, and how to then measure whether your marketing is performing well and generating a return on investment. This shall also include a look at Attribution Modelling and how this can be applied to different marketing channels for a clearer reflection of their impact on your business. Sam Weston (Senior Account Manager, Occupancy Marketing),Chris McGuire (Operations Director, Occupancy Marketing )

10:35–11:05 Conversion Optimization Case Study
Frank Reeves (Co-founder and CEO, Avvio)

11:05–11:20 Coffee break and networking
11:20–12:15 Panel discussion “Metasearch – Online travel game changer, or a new step in customer ownership?”
We explore the role that Metasearch sites from Google, TripAdvisor, Trivago, Skyscanner, and many others play in online travel and how this will impact share shift between hotels and new types of short-term accommodation, customer acquisition, customer ownership and future revenue strategies. Representatives from the major Metasearch players discuss the future challenges and opportunities.

Main Topics:
Acquisition Costs, CPC
Technology Integration
Consumer behavior
Nikhil Gupta (Director of Hotels and Car Hire, Skyscanner), Daniel Holl (Global Sales, trivago GmbH), Maud Larpent (Director, Direct Connect Development, TripAdvisor), Terri Scriven (Industry Head Travel, Google), Riko van Santen (Vice President Digital Strategy & Distribution, Kempinski Hotels S.A.),Moderated by Ullrich Kastner (CEO, Myhotelshop)
12:15–13:15 Lunch and networkingLunch at the Boulevard Bar&Grill and possibility to visit WTM
13:15–13:40 Roundtable discussions – Concurrent sessions led by specialists in their field. Three 25-minute sessions. Session 1. Choose from:
Option 1 Responsive design and workflow has been hailed as the future of web development.
This requires an understanding that the diversity of screen sizes and devices require a new way of interpreting content along with new methods of collaboration. But it’s important to remember that there are limits to what responsive design can achieve on its own.

This session will provide multiple perspectives, based on real-world experiences in hospitality, on what responsive design can do, what its limitations are, and what its future might hold.
Niklas Schlappkohl (Director, eCommerce, The Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group)

Option 2 Review and Reputation Management
The rapidly increasing trend of travellers to consider reviews as part of their booking decision has quickly changed consumer habits in the hotel industry. This means that review management is a core function of a hotel’s management and marketing strategies.

Guest reviews act as both positive and negative multipliers for a hotel. It’s for this reason that he want to empower hoteliers and decision makers by giving them the insights necessary to actively use and manage guest reviews. He will cover why guest feedback is important and how to constructively respond to it.
Torsten Sabel (Chief Operating Officer, Customer Alliance), R.J. Friedlander (CEO, ReviewPro)

Option 3 How guests feedback should dictate operational processes and marketing strategy.
Séverine Obertelli will open a discussion on the opportunities arising from collecting and using guests feedback and ratings to drive quality and operational processes across broader hospitality organizations: hotels, serviced apartments and vacation rentals. In particular:

The role of customer feedback, either via social media, independent sites or internal reviews, in driving quality across an organization
The value of complaints; threat or marketing opportunity?
Using feedback to continuously improve services and enhance overall brand – image of the company, employees loyalty, guests but also wider community
Séverine Obertelli (Head of Sales & Marketing, Europe, Maxxton)

Option 4 Communicate better with your guests and drive increased revenue with Mobile technologies
Mews Systems is a technology company trying to redefine the customer journey. Combining a powerful Cloud-based Property Management System (the Mews Commander) with a guest-facing concierge application (the Mews Navigator), as well as a host of other application which make it easy to manage both your property and the relationship you have with your guests.
Richard Valtr (Founder and Chief of Product, Mews Systems)

13:40–14:05 Roundtable discussions, session 2. Choose your second option.
14:05–14:20 Coffee break and networking
14:20–14:45 Roundtable discussions, session 3. Choose your third option.
14:45–15:15 Best practices in online success measurements – It’s time to challenge the metrics.
The current use of Analytics and online metrics such as visits and “conversion rate” does not live up to the demands of today, where a person-centric understanding of peoples behaviour is needed. With better data infrastructures and cloud data comes a possibility to significantly change the way data is used to make decisions.In this inspirational talk, Kristoffer will focus on the possibilities now available to us – better metrics for success measurement, better understanding of the why (not just the what), and examples of what data modelling can do in the hospitality sector. Kristoffer will use (anonymised) examples from hotel and airline industry to share the inspiration.
Kristoffer Ewald (Group Director Digital Intelligence & Analytics DNA by NetBooster and Group Management)

15:15–16:00 Analytics Best Practices
A common complaint among digital marketers is that analysts provide data, but not insights. Today’s analytics tools give us the ability to track detailed actions of our customer on our websites and across a wide range of devices. With so much data available, how can an analyst find the story in the data?

This presentation will provide tips for how to tell stories with data. Whether you are an analyst who provides data and insights to your organizations, or if you are a marketer who needs to rely on data to effectively run your business, this presentation will give you valuable insights into how you can use data to understand the story about your company’s performance and your customers’ behavior.
David Nelson (Global Practice Lead, Digital Analytics, eClerx Digital)

16:00 Closing of conference