The 10 Best Quotes from our Mobile Travel Summit

Yesterday was our Mobile Travel Summit, which brought together representatives from a wide variety of travel brands with key thought leaders from the mobile marketing world and beyond to explore and discuss the challenges and opportunities that mobile offers to the industry.

Mobile is the perfect device for travellers, helping them at every stage of their journey or holiday, from initial research and planning, to the trip itself. However, in order to meet consumers’ high standards, travel brands need a flexible but lasting mobile strategy that embraces agility and innovation.

If you werent able to make it to the Summit, you missed out on some fantastic guidance from leading industry figures, but you can still access some of the gems of wisdom here, with our top 10 quotes from the day.

Mobile Travel Summit

“The main objective is to drive traffic to our mobile app, not only acquiring new customers to the business overall, but also acquiring customers to the app”
Lorenza Pupillo, senior mobile marketing manager, Hotels.com

Our day was kickstarted by Lorenza Pupillo from Hotels.com, who provided an overview of how the brand has taken a mobile-first approach to its business, and how elements like a focus on dynamic creative and an aggressive approach to tackling ad fraud have paid dividends in securing a highly-engaged audience.

“What we’re finding is that there’s a different way of working your media now, and it involves optimising activity on a daily basis”
Rob Walk, CEO, Digital Innovation Group

Exploring the sometimes murky world of programmatic, Rob Walk explained how brands need to seek transparency when arranging their media buying strategies. With the level of data and analytics now available, savvy marketers can squeeze every last penny out of their media budget and dramatically increase their effectiveness.

“The days when we as museum curators put things in glass boxes and visitors were grateful is long over”
Antony Robbins, director of communications, Museum of London

When it opened in 1976, the Museum of London was the first major museum project in the capital since World War II, and as such has seen dramatic changes over the course of its lifetime. Antony Robbins walked us through some of the ways mobile has affected the Museum’s approach to connecting visitors with the history of London, and how it is constantly seeking to innovate.

“Context is so, so important. You might know that 90 per cent of the men in a certain pub in Mayfair are Rolex owners, but does that mean you should put an A4 poster up above the urinal?”
Joseph Harake, associate director, OMD

Joseph Harake from OMD took part in a fireside chat with Chris Childs, managing director for the UK at TabMo, detailing how mobile advertising has evolved from an agency point of view, and how the power of the smartphone means that campaigns are increasingly designed as mobile-led from the very start.

“Mobile is changing very fast. There’s such a high velocity of change, and I think businesses miss out when they’re not adopting new opportunities, not acting in an agile way”
Noran Eid, director of business development, Somo Global

During our panel discussion, Noran Eid from Somo talked about the need for brands to embrace an experimental approach to mobile marketing, trialling new technologies and approaches to find what works for them and not being afraid to run small-scale campaigns to build their confidence with cutting-edge developments.

“Social content isn’t hard for us – we get to focus on beautiful locations and cute kids”
Sebastian Zinke, performance marketing director, Family Traveller

Speaking about the power of the family holiday in travel, a $500bn industry in its own right that makes up 30 per cent of the total sector, Sebastian Zinke from publisher Family Traveller spoke about how mobile gave the firm a wealth of channels to reach its audience, and how partnerships with travel brands were increasingly focusing on mobile transactions.

“Apps like AirBnB and Uber, despite the fact that I hate how lazy they’re making everybody, they’ve made everything so easy for the end consumer”
Shanil Chande, head of agency sales for UK at TabMo

As part of our panel discussion, Shanil Chande from TabMo emphasised that no matter what innovations came along, mobile should focus on integrating smartly with existing marketing and supporting an easier, more engaging customer journey.

“Jakarta is learning from Rio, and every other city all around the world. Transport authorities aren’t hiring a lot of data scientists, but they should be”
Finlay Clark, UK country manager, Waze

Taking us through the story of mapping app Waze, Finlay Clark explained how partnerships with over 250 organisations not only gave the app early insights into congestion and traffic, but enabled those cities to tap into the platform’s crowdsourced data to make smarter decisions about their day-to-day operations.

“We use the word ‘connected’ because it’s moving beyond mobile, beyond tablet”
Noran Eid, director of business development, Somo Global

For her presentation, Noran described how, like many industries, travel needs to do more to keep pace with consumers, who are spending more and more time every day on their mobile devices, and already moving on to smart technology like the connected car and internet of things.

“We’ve experimented with some technologies that have worked, some that haven’t worked. We’re looking for anything that increases personalisation, but there’s a danger that we jump in too soon.”
Antony Robbins, director of communications, Museum of London

Speaking during the panel discussion, Antony Robbins warned that, while travel brands shouldn’t be afraid of experimenting with new technology, they should also take a measured approach and find the tools that are right for their business and their target audiences.