Last month’s OTM Forum 2019 highlighted the rise of experiential travel with a panel which was moderated by Nisha B., Founder – Elevated Consultancy Singapore. The co-panellists included Vijay Nair, Country Head – National Geographic Expeditions Aditya Bhat, Head – Jio Studios and Vikram Ahuja, Founder – Byond Travel.

Jio Studios has been doing active work within the travel industry among other sectors. Their dedicated travel team caters to 360 VR solutions in 25 countries working with mainstream travel companies like Cox & Kings, Thomas Cook as well as Incredible India as clients.

Nisha initiated the discussion with by emphasizing that Travel, in essence, is experiential, authentic experiences cannot be created. The people who are using the buzzword are faking it, using it as marketing product. Vikram also acknowledged that experiential travel is the most overused term in the travel industry these days, It is commonly juggled with transformational and immersive travel. At the heart of Byond Travel’s strategy has been the idea of building communities of travel, shared interests working with locals.

For Vijay Nair, 3 fundamental drivers according to driving experiential travel are:
– Evolving consumer – People looking at travel as the next social currency. NatGeo categorizes customer base from traveller to tourist to explorer and works with a team of experts in exploring, naturalists etc.
– Developing ecosystem – MOT had declared 2018 as the year of Adventure Tourism. Schools are now looking at experiential educational trips, looking at NASA etc.
– Technology advancements – AR/VR, small boutique agencies building to cater to these experiences.

People are looking at consuming products of brands which stand for purpose example single use of plastic, responsible tourism etc.

Watch the full panel discussion below:

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Last week we were at the OTM Forum 2019 in Mumbai, which is among the top rated travel tech events in India. This year’s event focussed on innovative business strategies and emerging technologies in the travel industry. This year’s forum curated by TravHQ in association with OTM team witnessed some of the hottest names in travel from Facebook, Kayak, Twitter, Booking, Lonely Planet, Indigo, Air Asia, National Geographic Expeditions, Jio Studios and many more.

The Panel on Digital Marketing and Social Media in Travel: Featuring Rachit Uppal, Head of Industry (India & South Asia), Twitter, Saurav Chakraborty Industry Manager (Travel), Facebook India, Abhijit Mishra Director, India & Middle East, Kayak and Girish Singh Head of Marketing APAC, Uber for Business and Daksh Sharma from TravHQ

The Panel on Influencer Marketing and its Role in the Travel Path-to-Purchase featuring Hitesh Rajwani, Sharanya Iyer, Priyanka Chandola,  Ajay Awtaney and Varun Vagish 

The Panel on Opportunities in Indian aviation – Making it big in the world’s most challenging aviation market featuring Chetan Kapoor Research Analyst – Asia-Pacific, Phocuswright Inc., Rajkumar Paranthaman Head of Marketing – India, AirAsia, Raj Sivakumar Senior Vice President – Network & Revenue Management, Jet Airways, Salim Khan Chief Security Officer (Specialist) – India, Emirates and Nitin Sethi – Vice President Digital @ Indigo

Naveen Perla COO, JetSetGo, Ruchi Lahoti Area Manager – India, Booking.com, Maitreyee Das Banerjee, Head of Marketing, Keys Hotel (Berggruen Group) and Todor Gerovski COO, 15toGO with Daksh Sharma in the Panel on How Millennials will Travel in 2019

The Panel on Future of Travel Content Marketing featuring Sesh Seshadri General Manager, Lonely Planet India, Abraham Alapatt President & Group Head – Marketing, Thomas Cook India, Bhawna Grover Head of Content, GoIbibo, Daniel Cheng Founder & President, RTM – Redefine Tourism Mixer and Daksh Sharma from TravHQ

Stay tuned as we bring you more updates, highlights and videos from the proceedings in OTM Forum 2019

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