About Digital Travel
   European Commission's six-part series of Live Events and kicks off Part One
 Year in Digital Travel
These events are a series of webinars that aim to provide support, insight and guidance on digital issues to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the tourism industry, as well as practical advice on the day-to-day running of a business.
These six webinars have been specifically designed to meet the needs of tourism SMEs.
They will examine recent trends in tourists' use of technology to discover, plan and share their travel experiences. Each webinar will be led by an industry expert on one of the topics below.
To engage with the speakers, experts and industry leaders on the day of the live event, simply use Twitter and the hashtag #MyTourismBiz to share your feedback and experiences.
Find links to the events and recordings of past events below.
Digital Travel Six-part series of Live Events 2015
1. Your Business. Todays Visitor
This seminar is an introduction to the series and offers a complete insight into what it means to be small and medium sized businesses welcoming visitors in 2015. We will look at the change taking place in the industry and offer businesses wanting to get-ahead and succeed the opportunity to understand what’s driving change and how to embrace it.
3. Managing Your Online Reputation
This seminar is aimed at helping established businesses understand the importance of ‘reputation’ online. It will introduce them to the importance of opinions, recommendations and reviews and provide practical tips on how to shape these to perform better as a business.
Exploring the core aspects of online reputation management, this seminar will show businesses how to get the most out of review sites, work with key individuals influencing their business and how to collaborate with bloggers to tell great stories which inspire others.
2. Marketing Your Business
Brought to you by the European Commission's DG Growth, this seminar gives a practical guide to marketing your tourism business. Whether an attraction, hotel, tour operator or even a destination, the seminar serves to run through key marketing basics.
It will explain the ‘visitor buying cycle’, with a particular focus on digital media and how technology is shaping and informing travel decisions, how a visitor comes to discover a place in the initial ‘dreaming’ phase, to deciding, booking, experiencing and sharing their experience with peers. This strategic approach shows the many opportunities at each stage and importantly, how businesses should harness knowledge of their business and customers to succeed.
4. Importance of Content
This seminar will explain the importance of content in tourism marketing and how to plan for, publish and disseminate great content to promote any business.
5. Succeeding in Social
This seminar aims to provide a ‘crash course’ in social media. Most businesses are aware of the importance of social media but many struggle to get to grips with even the basics. We will cut through the hot air and provide sound advice on how to effectively decide on and manage social media networks.
6. Thinking Mobile
This seminar introduces the topic of mobile and explains how mobile is already a part of and will increasingly dominate every aspect of travel. As something that businesses need to be aware of, the learnings will help them understand the changes taking place and help them prepare for it.