End of May I attended the Traverse Conference in Rotterdam, an event for bloggers, content creators, influencers and PR professionals. This was my first Traverse event, after attending their blogger sessions at the World Travel Market. This conference was aimed mainly at travel bloggers, and about 400 people attended the week-long event. It started officially on Monday the 21 May with mid-week events and the main conference took place on the weekend of 26 – 27 May. Additionally, there were co-working spaces for those who arrived earlier and wanted to get some work done. I arrived on Wednesday night, and stayed until Monday morning and that was the right time to experience the host destination Rotterdam and make the most out of my time there.

I think that the MICE industry can learn from what travel bloggers are doing as there are many overlaps. Bloggers are not only content creators, they are digital marketers who’ve build strong personal brands and communities. Similarly, event planners travel a lot; post photos from hotel rooms, food, incentives, so why not do it more strategically with the aim to sell their services or build a personal brand?

Therefore, I decided to share this post here with you to help you to showcase your work better online. As the lines between leisure and business travel blur, MICE suppliers should be paying even closer attention to what their leisure counterparts are doing when it comes to influencer marketing. The consumer journey begins early on social media, and the discovery starts. Social media plays an important part in how people will then interact and book their trips (business or leisure) and how they will spend their time at the destination.

But now let’s get to the content part. The content was excellent! It ranged from inspirational and creative tips for improving the blog to practical seminar sessions about how to improve technical aspects such as SEO, Adobe Lightroom, and perhaps the most exciting part for many bloggers, how to make money. There were four education streams simultaneously, and sometimes it was very hard to choose one!