The NAJ Group’s eTourism  Summit—the “See Tomorrow” travel industry conference for digital marketers of destinations and attractions—will be the venue on October 23rd in San Francisco for a general session that will explore the relationship between the hotel industry and Airbnb, the young website that lists and rents apartments, rooms and  homes made available by their owners worldwide but has incurred the wrath of traditional hoteliers by sometimes avoiding the collection of occupancy taxes from those who use the site’s listed properties.

Entitled “Strange Bedfellows,” the session will bring Airbnb’s Chip Conley (founder of Joie De Vivre hotels), Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy to the stage with Stefan Mühle, general manager at Hilton Chicago/Oak Brook Hills Resort & Conference Center. The two will explore “the now and the tomorrow” of the traditional and the sharing economy accommodation models.

As Airbnb becomes more hospitality-oriented and hotels move toward embracing deeper ties to “live like a local” themes, what comes next? Millions of travelers are engaging with the outside-the-box thinking that Airbnb has ushered into 21st century accommodation, while others say the playing field isn’t level. Conley and Muhle will address what this might mean for destination marketing.

The 16th Annual eTourism Summit takes place Oct. 22-23, 2015 at San Francisco’s Parc 55 Hilton. Platinum sponsors TripAdvisor and Expedia Media Solutions join Gold sponsors Viator, Sojern, Miles and Adara and Associate sponsor Simpleview to present the lineup of hand-picked thought leaders in fast-paced sessions. For more information and registration, visit www.e tourismsummit.com

 

Looking ahead to November 16-17 in Orlando, we want to keep you informed. We’re currently in the planning stages for this year’s RTO Summit and INBOUND Symposium—the later is the new name for all of the Summit’s first-day educational seminars and panel discussions. We’re updating the SYMPOSIUM program content as well as the mix of receptive operators invited to the one-on-one appointments to reflect the latest trends in the marketplace, including:
-New direct service from Emirates into Orlando means more lift and better access from India and Middle East to Florida and Deep South destinations. Forty percent of the passengers on Gulf airlines (Emirates, Qatar Airways, Turkish Air and Etihad) arriving in the USA are from India.
-Chinese tour operators, driven by the FIT and MICE market, are now expanding programs in Florida, and the Southeast
-Colombia is emerging as one of Latin America’s surprising new growth markets and little is known about this market.

 

Updates To RTO Summit Orlando—Inbound Symposium Topics:
-First, theRTO Symposium-Orlando has been rebranded as the INBOUND Symposium in order to leverage the INBOUND Report newsletter, which now has over 1,800 weekly readers.
How Gulf air carriers Emirates, Etihad and Qatar, are driving growth from India and the Middle East
– “In Conversation” with leading receptive tour operators about their business and perceptions of the industry
-Open Skies or Bust: While the three US legacy carriers try to limit competition from the Gulf airlines, inbound tourism will be the biggest casualty
-What Do Tour Operators Want? A selection of RTOs discuss their needs and answer questions.
-The state of MICE. What incentive operators are looking for in 2016 and 2017.
-Latin America updates from operators who sell in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico.
-How to manage international and PR reps.
-PLUS: MICE presentations to a panel of three tour operators, a la “Shark Tank.”

 

Updates to RTO-Orlando Marketplace:

-New! “Hosted-Buyer.” This outreach program will include LA- and NYC-based Chinese and India receptive operators interested in developing more product in Florida and the Southern USA.
-New! “Idea Factory.” In addition to their normal sales pitches, DMOs will be encouraged to provide operators with three new ideas for one-on-one appointments.
-New! “New Product Outreach.” Without receptive operator distribution, 95 percent of suppliers have no chance to sell their products through international wholesale channels, so we will initiate an outreach program for new attractions and hotels interested in expanding their worldwide reach.

“Our new approach for the INBOUND Symposium is to fill the void of international inbound information with the most current, up-to-date data and to educate the market about new opportunities by providing market intelligence with research and real time insights fom operators who have the most current information,” explained Jake Steinman, CEO of the NAJ Group. “In interviewing receptive operators, we’ve learned that they’re looking for creative ideas to sell aroud, so this eemed like the best direction to evolve the RTO Marketplace. After all, the best DMOs are actually the creative directors for their destinations and, in this competitive environment, it’s great ideas that sell.”

This year’s contest is the result of a decision made last month midst the sturm und drang of ipw in Orlando, when we saw nearly every single delegate equipped with a smartphone or easy-to-carry point-and-shoot camera that enabled them to record images of the event at any time and in any place. So, we were short on detail and long on our expectations as we announced the First Annual IPW Photo Contest.

Unanswered questions abounded. How do we distinguish between photos that were mementos and those that celebrated a new product announcement? How do we compute innovation in a shot taken in an exhibit booth versus one taken in the setting of one of Orlando’s famous attractions or theme parks with their built-in optical special effects? How do we select one image over another when one is a presentation or announcement that is formal in tone versus the whimsical shot of celebrants at a social function?

Answer: We don’t.

So, in order to judge entries that were different in substance, purpose and quality, we used the formula that film and theatre critics use to rate different, and sometimes unique, films and stage works: We ask ourselves the question, “What was the director trying to accomplish and how well did s/he accomplish it?”  And then we answer the question.

We will tackle the challenge of developing categories and other standards for next year’s Second Annual IPW Photo Contest. For now, here are the Top Photos of IPW 2015, as we made our selections by answering the question: “What was the photographer try to accomplish and how well did s/he accomplish it.” Our selections and comments follow.

The Winners—The Top Three Photos of IPW 2015

First Place

Disney’s Pluto helping the Flagstaff CVB celebrate Lowell Observatory’s “Year of Pluto.” With (left to right) Heather Ainardi, PR & marketing manager, and Joyce Lingenfelter, travel industry sales manager; Pluto, Ryan Kennedy, Little America Hotel Flagstaff; and Gina Leingang Courtyard and Springhill Suites Flagstaff.  The Lowell Observatory is a well-known tour bus attraction in Flagstaff and is widely known and regarded worldwide by scientists in the field of astronomy.

Lingenfelter explained to the Inbound Report, why it was important to seek out Pluto: “2015 is the ‘Year of Pluto’ at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona where the (now dwarf) planet was first discovered in 1930. This year NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006 arrived for a Pluto fly-by on July 14th. In planning for IPW, and knowing that we had a night at the Magic Kingdom, finding and shooting a photo with our planet’s Disney namesake seemed like a fun opportunity for the Flagstaff CVB delegation, and Pluto was happy to join in our celebration creating this shot when we shared our mission. It is thought that ‘Pluto the Pup’ was named by Disney, also in 1930, to connect to the excitement of the new planet’s discovery.”

In a queue at the ipw social function at Disney’s Magic Kingdom, the Flagstaff contingent spotted Pluto, set up the photo and had another individual (a delegate they did not know) in the queue take the photo on a smartphone. Only at ipw would such a promotional opportunity ever have a chance of presenting itself.

 

Second Place

Michael Parra, partner services rep, Brand USA (left) and Brand USA partnership manager Philip Joseph (right) pose with Frank Sinatra at the Hudson County Tourism booth. Hudson County Tourism held a contest to win a stay in the area in celebration of Frank Sinatra’s centennial celebration (Sinatra was a native of Hoboken).

The photo was submitted by Alessia Aron, director of marketing, Hudson County Office of Cultural Affairs and Tourism, who explained to us the story behind the photo: “We asked every appointment we had at ipw to take part in the contest. The more creative each person was, the better! The picture that was selected included two representatives from Brand USA, who we actually ended up doing business with! I was the one who snapped the shot. The winner of the contest ended up being a very funny tour operator from Japan. He said he had never won anything and we look forward to his visit to Hudson County in November.”

 

Third Place

Eunice Juliasz, of Brazil’s Viagem e Turismo (Travel and Tourism) magazine and friend at Madame Tussauds, submitted by Eunice Juliasz.

“Who could resist?” said Marjorie Magnusson, public relations manager and calendar editor at the Arizona Office of Tourism, in commenting on this entry after it appeared in the list of 10 finalists in the July 2 issue of the Inbound Report. And we could not. Taken on Sunday morning at ipw, following the press reception at Orlando’s I 360 attraction—it includes a branch of Madame Tussauds—the Brazilian journalist featured here captures the whimsy, the irreverence and the simple joy of the moment that one finds all about the social functions at ipw. Asked for a quote about the photo and why she had it taken, Ms. Juliasz told us only, “Eu sou o verdadeiro Einstein!” (“I’m the real Einstein!”)

(Editor’s Note: Feel free to submit your industry-related photos for consideration for publication in the Inbound Report)

 

The U.S. Travel Association’s senior vice president of business development and general manager of ipw, Malcolm Smith, was a little more than half way through his presentation on “What’s New for ipw in Orlando” (ipw convenes there later this month) when, at 10:17 a.m., there was a thunderous “Boom!” that caused the windows to rattle in the Crystal Ballroom of the Wyndham New Yorker hotel, where the Inbound Symposium at NAJ’s RTO Summit was taking place. The sound and the vibrations (and, according to some in the room, there was also a bright flash) were enough to stop everyone from taking our notes or checking our smartphones.

Smith paused, looked around and returned to his presentation. Then, about a minute later, there was another “Boom!” with the accompanying rattling and vibration that most of us felt. Smith stopped and waited. Jake Steinman, NAJ’s CEO, went to find anyone at the hotel who could explain what had just happened, and returned to the ballroom to tell delegates that there had apparently been a gas explosion nearby outside. Then, in a succession of announcements over the hotel’s PA system, delegates were told to remain where they were and, finally, to go down one floor to the hotel lobby and wait. Those who wanted could leave the hotel from its 34th Street entrance.

As it turned out, real-time news accounts that many delegates were able to access on their smartphones explained that there had been a subterranean gas line explosion right outside the hotel at the corner of 35th Street and Eighth Avenue that blew a manhole cover into the air and sent it flying. No injuries apparently. But there were numerous fire trucks, police cars and emergency vehicles we could see gathered in front of the hotel on Eighth Avenue.

Left unsaid was what many later on admitted to thinking about: Was this something far worse? No. But it was enough to give all of us pause to reflect upon what it means to gather in a very public place that is so close to so many very crowded venues.

Within 80 minutes it was all over. The Inbound Symposium program was adjusted so that presentation times were shortened, and nothing on the agenda was dropped. But it was no longer business as usual. Nor will it be.