That the tourism and travel market is dynamic, and it taps new trends very quickly, has been cemented after the pandemic withdrew its aftershocks. Many countries are now developing measures to build a more resilient tourism economy post-COVID-19. These include preparing plans to support the sustainable recovery of tourism, promoting the digital transition and moving to a greener tourism system, and rethinking tourism for the future.

TravHQ, in association with OTM, curates a dialogue exchange on similar themes at the OTM Forum 2022. In conversation with Daksh Sharma, Managing Partner at TravHQ and Iffort, are renowned figures in the travel and marketing sector. On Day 2 of the Forum, two panels discuss two very intriguing topics – first, ‘How to win the Next Billion Indian Travellers’ and second, ‘Hello New World: Digital Marketing for Travel Brands in an era of Change’. On board are speakers from biggies like Twitter, SaffronStays, Thomas Cook, Adani Group, TBO.com, and EcoRentaCar.

OTM Forum Day 2, Panel 1: ‘How to win the Next Billion Indian Travellers’

Mr. Nitin Sethi, a product of the University of Pennsylvania, has 21 years of work experience in Digital Transformation, Product Design & User Experience. Currently, he is leading Digital Transformation for Adani Group. He specializes in leading multi-functional teams and establishing the best user experience practices and processes in organizations. He has built robust monetizable products for the biggest Internet companies in India. He has great experience in handling large global platforms. Mr. Nitin has expertise in fields like Digital Transformation, Design Thinking, D2C Platforms, User Experience & Design Strategy, Information Architecture & Interaction Design, Online Consumer Experiences for web and mobile platforms, New Media/ Mobile UX, Building/Leading teams in different verticals, Managing ROI, Competitive Analysis, Creative Duties/ Leadership, Project Conceptualization, Evaluation, Planning, and Execution. 

Mr. Ankush Nijhawan, Co-founder of TravelBoutiqueOnline TBO.com and Managing Director at Nijhawan Group is a graduate of Boston and he majored in Marketing and Psychology. Today Ankush is thriving with his strategic vision and direction to the Nijhawan Group to be a leader in the travel industry. He was chosen by CNBC as a Young Turk for revolutionizing the travel trade through his B2B travel portal. Ankush today by far is one of the most successful youngsters in the travel trade. In 2021, Mr. Ankush was appointed as Chairperson of the FICCI Outbound Tourism Sub Committee. 

Mr. Aditya Loomba is Director at ECO Rent A Car, Europcar India (Global Ground Transportation services – Chauffeur Driven & Self Drive). ECO is proud to be the winner of the prestigious national award, given by the President of India, as the best chauffeur-driven Ground Transportation company. 

OTM Forum Day 2, Panel 2: ‘Hello New World: Digital Marketing for Travel Brands in an era of Change’

Devendra Parulekar is the founder of SaffronStays, a hospitality collective that has an inventory of beautiful private homes and villas in various locations. An entrepreneur, a visionary, a dreamer, and driven by a larger purpose – Devendra wants to change the way Indians holiday and celebrate their special occasions with their loved ones in a private vacation home. 

Ms. Neha Sharma Katyal leads Twitter’s regional business in India. She is a seasoned commercial and digital marketing executive with a proven track record in leading high-growth businesses and cultivating top-performing teams. 14+ years of experience amassed at Twitter, Star Sports, Disney+ Hotstar, BBC Worldwide, and Network18 group, managing large teams across diverse cultural contexts. Held roles in growth strategy, customer marketing, revenue creation, and general management while working alongside global leadership councils & India leadership teams.

Mr. Neeraj Singh Dev is heading the e-Business channel, and product marketing for India, Asia, the Middle East, and CIS country outbound holidays for Thomas cook India Ltd & SOTC Travel Ltd. He has experience across travel functions of mid-size and large-size travel management companies in offline as well as online environments. He is currently a part of the leadership team at Thomas cook India.

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As knowledge partners for this year’s OTM Forum, we are back with a round-up of exciting panels and discussion. OTM Forum is a knowledge-sharing initiative that brings together India and Asia’s most influential travel leaders on one stage.

We are curating a panel on Conversational AI and Chatbots in Travel: Benefits & Best Practices featuring Aakrit Vaish, Co-Founder at Haptik and Chetan Kumar, Strategic Partnership, WhatsApp.

Another panel, we’re hosting is Holidays and Experiences: The next great untapped market in online travel? The panel includes some of the leading names in India’s Holidays, Tours & Activities segment. On the panel, we’ll have Anirudh Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, Tripoto, Chitra Gurnani, CEO, Thrillophilia, Vaibhav Sisinty, Head of Marketing – India, Klook and Rupendra Yadav who is the Chief Business Officer – Holidays at MakeMyTrip.

The forum is being organized in Mumbai from 3rd to 5th February at Bombay Exhibition Centre.

The post OTM Forum 2020 is here, are you attending? appeared first on TravHQ.

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:

The post Rise of Experiential Travel, all you need to know appeared first on TravHQ.

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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