E-business Conference

E-Business for Tourism and Hospitality Conference
12 October, 2010
Amman

Full conference presentations:

Tourism e-Business Overview
Presented by Damian Cook, E-Tourism Frontiers

Converting Social Media into Business
Presented by Damian Cook, E-Tourism Frontiers

Destination Management
Presented by William Price, South Africa Tourism

Reservations Solutions - a
Presented by Theresa Emerich, Nightsbridge

Reservations Solutions - b
Presented by Emad Salameh, SADDA

PAYNET Payment Gateway
Presented by Janti Abdalla, STS

Business Platforms - a
Presented by Rula Ammuri, Microsoft Jordan

Business Platforms - b
Presented by Wisam Daoud, Souq.com

Reservations, Channel & Revenue Management
Presented by Pantelis Hadjiathanassiou, Expedia

Mobile Marketing and Business
Presented by Amanda Forsythe - Mobiguides

Online Advertising and Conversion
Presented by Graeme Lipschitz, Clicks2Customers
 

Conference speakers and topics discussed

It is projected that in 2011, the global tourism online bookings will tap $170 billion and the tourism industry in Jordan need to be equipped with the right tools and solutions to be able to convert online business into profit!

Following the success of the Digital Marketing and Social Media training conference and workshops held in July by USAID/Jordan Tourism Development Project II, we are supporting Jordan’s tourism sector to rapidly embrace the use of technology for both marketing and sales. The USAID tourism project organized a second conference on e-business to provide the tourism industry with strategies and solutions, along with step-by-step support to develop and implement e-business programs. Several expert speakers from a variety of e-business organization spoke at the event.

The conference schedule, workshop topics and e-business expert speakers were as follows:

 9:00 – 9:20           Welcome and Introduction

 Opening Speech: H.E. Ms. Suzanne Afanah, Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, MoTA
 Keynote Speech: Ibrahim Osta, Chief of Party, USAID/Jordan Tourism Development Project II  

9:20 – 9:50 Tourism e-Business Overview
The internet has now become the primary source of information for 95% of travelers, and it is increasingly becoming a source not just of information, but of live bookings and sales; almost half of all travel now booked and bought online. Following on from our event on the importance of social media and digital marketing, at this conference we will discuss the actual business of selling tourism online. This opening session will look at consumer habits and trends and how travel is researched and bought online, including the important process of how a ‘looker’ becomes a ‘booker’.
Speaker: Damian Cook – USAID/Jordan Tourism Development Project II Consultant – Founder & CEO E-Tourism Frontiers

9:50 - 10:40 Converting Social Media into Business
This entertaining session will revisit the subject of our first Social Media focused conference, however this time we will discuss how social media can be measured in business and conversion terms and how powerful it can be for driving actual sales. We took the winner of the “48 Hours in Denmark” campaign featured at our last event - the ultimate connected traveler and social media super-geek Jesse Desjardins - on a trip around Jordan. He blogged, tweeted, updated, posted and uploaded as he went and now he will show us the responses, interest generated and results of his social media content.
Speakers: Damian Cook – USAID Jordan Tourism Development Project II Consultant – Founder and CEO – E-Tourism Frontiers
Jesse Desjardins – Digital Strategist

 10:40 – 11:10 Destination Management
Probably the most effective place to attract and deliver traffic to the tourism trade is through a destination website. During this session we will hear from South African Tourism, an emerging destination that has addressed these issues as they built their highly acclaimed destination website. They will describe their experiences and challenges of marketing the destination and supporting the trade and talk about their development of an interactive trip planner that matches consumer and product. They will also look at how they handled this year’s FIFA World Cup to maximize marketing value and deliver on the global attention.
Speaker: William Price – Global Head of Digital – South Africa Tourism

 11:10 – 11:30 Coffee Break

 11:30 – 12:30 Reservation Solutions
The first and critical step to selling your tourism products online is to meet market expectation by providing real-time access to your inventory, both for direct sales and indirect sales via online travel agencies. This means using a real-time reservation solution that can put your available rooms or tour places online and automatically update your inventory as clients book. This has to be achieved in a seamless, simple way that is easy to manage, easy to use and will ensure that you do not double book or resell booked products,  and also must allow clients to not just book but to also pay online. This session looked at international and local solutions that enable this to happen, and how they can be used by even the smallest tourism business.
Speakers:  Theresa Emerick – Founder and CEO Nightsbridge
Emad Salameh – Founder and CEO – SADDA

 12:30- 1:00 Launch of the Paynet Payment Gateway
Once inventory is available to be booked online the next step is to provide an immediate and secure online payment solution to allow your clients to pay for your product. Today’s connected traveler is used to making payments online, so forcing them to make offline payments can be difficult, time consuming, insecure and can potentially lose you clients. This session introduced the newly launched payment gateway for Jordan and explain how it can be integrated with real-time reservation systems to create a complete booking and payment cycle for your business.
Speaker: Janti Abdalla – Executive Director – PAYNET

 1:00 – 2:00 Lunch

 2:00 – 2:40 Business Platforms
Once tourism inventory can be booked and bought online- one of the best ways to attract and deliver maximum high value clients to tourism businesses is via high profile online portals that attract traffic interested in a particular destination or product and let client search for and access inventory. We look at current business platforms in the region and how they have worked as online business hubs and at possible future development of tourism portals and business platforms for Jordan, including solutions that can ensure even offline businesses and small to medium enterprises are not left behind.
Speaker: Rula Ammuri – Country Manage – Microsoft Jordan
Wisam Daoud – CTO – Souq.com

2:40 – 3:25 Reservations, Channel & Revenue Management
With clients now booking and paying online, both directly and indirectly, your business model becomes challenging as you have to manage how you allocate space for both direct and indirect sales, look at your rates and commissions to ensure clarity and consistency of price, and maximize your venue and profitability. Two of the leading online channels now talk about channel and revenue management and how tourism businesses can be sure that they are in the best sales position, optimize their revenues and use special and seasonal offers to increase profitability.
Speaker: Pantelis Hadjiathanassiou – Market Manager – Expedia Partner Services Group, Dubai, UAE

 3:25 – 3:45 Coffee Break

 3:45 – 4:15 Mobile Marketing and Business
As people are now increasingly accessing the internet via their phones there is no doubt that he future of online business lies in our hands, in the form of internet connected devices that can browse, buy and pay online but can also be used to access live content and media, and social media and direct location -based services. This session focuses on the travel guide of the future; and how video and multi-lingual content can be used by tourists as a means to discover destinations and access local businesses.
Speaker: Amanda Forsythe – CEO – Mobiguides

 4:15 – 5:00 Online Advertising and Conversion
Once interested clients can be converted into actual sales online, our approach to marketing must change; we need to consider how we can maximize our rates of conversion from simple interest to an actual sale. This session looks at this process in terms of how searches for travel can be delivered to you as traffic, which can then be converted into sales. We will look at how search works and how it can work for you, including keywords, Adwords, Adsense, YouTube advertising and much more.
Speaker: Graeme Lipschitz – Market Manager – Clicks2Customers

Workshop Program: Digital Marketing for Conversion and Sales

Facilitator: Damian Cook – USAID Jordan Tourism Development Project II Consultant – Founder and CEO – E-Tourism Frontiers

9:00- 10:00 Marketing & Selling Online
How the introduction of online reservations and payment systems changes the way you market your business. This overview session will highlight the business implications of taking real-time bookings and sales- and the challenges this can present to a business. We will identify the critical areas of focus when introducing online reservation and sales tools to a tourism business.

• The importance of establishing a conversion process
• Tools to maximize and measure conversion
• Cross-selling and Up-selling
• Personalization of booking processes
• Database marketing and CRM

 10:00-11:00 Online Sales Tools
This session will individually identify, demonstrate and explain the critical tools and essential changes businesses need to make to incorporate bookings and sales into their websites and management infrastructure

• Website restructuring for sales
• Booking Buttons
• Availability tools
• Offline Options
• Managing Promotions on your site and others

 11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break

 11:30-12:30 Advertising and Managing a Campaign
This session will demonstrate practically how a tourism business can use digital marketing to create, interest, drive traffic and then maximize the rates of conversion to sale. This will be via a sample walk through of tourism marketing campaign.

• Creating a package
• Targeting your market
• Selecting Ad Channels
• Identifying Keywords
• Creating Landing Pages and Conversion Tools
• Implementing, Measuring and Re-Evaluating

 12:30- 1:30 Integrating Sales into Social Media
The final session moves beyond direct advertizing and looks at using Social Media to optimize and maximize sales conversions- and how strategic use of social networks can increase your numbers of client and user referrals.

• Bookings via Facebook
• Bookings via Blog Posts
• Video advertizing and conversions
• Twitter Offers & Campaigns
• Optimizing reviews
• Referral sales