Anthony Hadaway is our Sales Director - North America and always part of the action. He attended EyeforTravel Summit in San Francisco last week and we wanted to use the occassion and get a quick recap from him.

Anthony, tell us about the EyeforTravel Summit!

The EyeforTravel San Francisco Summit is a two day intensive summit with three tracks of speakers and panels; 3 in-depth Travel conferences on the key issues of 2017:

1. Mobile and Tech Innovation Strategies:  We all know mobile is fundamentally changing the way online travel brands do business. Mobile is not only fueling key shifts in consumer behavior, but it is also facilitating new business models and industry partnerships.
2. Social Media, Marketing and Data Strategies: The revolution in segmentation, targeting and personalization - and what travel brands and marketers must do to both understand and serve customers better in our new digital world.
3. The Start-up Village: A special bolt on program to cater to our growing start-up community interested in travel; complete with its own networking and a start-up competition.

Who should attend? 

Travel companies with a vested interest in being in the digital space. Whether your company is developing new digital products, using data driven personalization or testing the water with mobile marketing; this conference covered how to enhance a company’s brand voice and drive more business via digital channels.

What was the overall theme this time?

Innovation. Many of the speakers spoke about innovation and the ever-changing technology landscape that is the new norm.  Staying on top of innovation and the importance of thought-leadership in our space was also frequently discussed.  I personally participated mostly in the Social Media, Content Marketing and Data Strategies conference tracks and the theme here was data … data … data! Just having data doesn’t mean a thing … being able to draw insights, analytics and revenue form you data is important.

What session did you like best?

I loved the opening keynote “Mastering the Art of Tech Evolution in Travel to Win”. The speakers for this keynote were Daniel Houghton from Lonely Planet and Dan Christian from TTC.  I enjoyed it, because it was interesting to hear what these companies are doing in the space.  They set the tone for the conference.

What is your key takeway?

Innovate or die! Products need to be fine-tuned and constantly optimized to remain relevant. Having an actionable USP is a must otherwise you will become a commodity.