The Inaugural WTM Vision Conference – Milan has been hailed a great success by the travel and tourism industry.
Almost 100 delegates packed into the Italian Stock Exchange last Thursday to hear high-calibre speakers discuss the key issues within the European and Italian travel and tourism industry.
The conference started with the unveiling of the latest research from Euromonitor International. The company’s Travel and tourism Industry Analysis Angelo Rossini told delegates how the Italian tourism industry is set to outperform the wider Eurozone over the next two years. He also urged delegates to focus on the huge potential of the Chinese travel and tourism market.
The following session Bournemouth University Professor Dimitrios Buhalis told delegates about the power of social media.
“Absolutely everybody is now a journalist,” he said. “People no longer write letters of complaint to their travel supplier. They take pictures, write reviews and post them on the web saying; ‘You’re rubbish’.”
He added social media is not a fad and warned the industry his students communicate almost exclusively through social media platforms, described the phone as “so 70s” and email as “how 90s”.
The final session saw a distinguished panel discuss the Italian Outbound Market. The panel, including former TUI boss Dermot Blastland, concluded last year’s Ash Cloud Crisis has increased the popularity of the bigger, well-known tour operators as customers experienced the support-networks and infrastructure these organisations have in place.
World Travel Market Chairman Fiona Jeffery said: “I am delighted with the success of the inaugural WTM Vision Conference – Milan. We have delivered on the brands promise of offering high-calibre speakers, analysis and the latest statistics to the industry’s most senior professionals to help them run their businesses.”
WTM Vision moves on to Dubai on May 3 at WTM sister exhibition Arabian Travel Market before return to London on May 25.