The friendly team at the Registration & Information Desk is available for badge pick-up, onsite registrations and to answer any questions you may have.
The friendly team at the Registration & Information Desk is available for badge pick-up, onsite registrations and to answer any questions you may have.
The Media Room is for attending media representatives only. Attendees, feel free to place your news releases or other pertinent information in this room.
First time attending GC? We’re glad you joined us! Connect with other first timers and allow us to welcome you and share our thoughts on how to optimize your time while at GC.
Catch up with industry friends and make new connections as we kick off GC19 with the Chairman’s Reception in the Marketplace.
The 2019 Chairman’s Dinner will feature the Florida Tourism Hall of Fame Award and the Flagler Awards (Flagler Awards sponsored by Madden Media).
The friendly team at the Registration & Information Desk is available for badge pick-up, onsite registrations and to answer any questions you may have.
The Media Room is for attending media representatives only. Attendees, feel free to place your news releases or other pertinent information in this room.
The opening breakfast is the official kick-off for the educational portion of GC. The session includes keynote speakers and welcome remarks by the VISIT FLORIDA Board of Directors and senior leadership team.
“The Real Travel Trends”
Doug Lansky, Award-Winning Travel Writer, World-Travel Expert, Travel Trends Futurist
This is not your typical data display. Much like Hans Rosling’s hugely popular TED Talks, Doug uses powerful images and a mix of animated bubble charts to make international data come alive. He shows the surprising indicators behind travel trends you’ve never seen before. How do female education rates in developing countries affect who your future customers will be? How close are various nations getting to becoming major international travelers? The world’s international population stands to triple in the next 25 years…once you can see where the growth is coming from, what these emerging travel markets want, you can better position your destination and the marketing to attract these new visitors.
“How to Escape Conventional Thinking to Become the Exception Others Love”
Jay Acunzo, Author “Break the Wheel”
We live in a world flooding with best practices, conventional wisdom, and trendy tactics. It’s all we can do to simply keep up, let alone take control. It’s like we’re trapped on this always-spinning wheel of reactive decisions and good-enough work. It’s time to escape this cycle. It’s time to break the wheel.
In this fast-paced, inspiring talk, Jay Acunzo hands attendees a sledgehammer. He’ll share lessons learned from telling over 200 stories of teams and individuals who broke from conventional thinking to do exceptional things — without ever feeling like it was risky.
While everyone around them merely survives, attendees will know how to thrive. Remember: Finding “best practices” isn’t the goal. Finding the best approach for you is. Jay’s presentation will inspire and empower people to do exactly that.
Attendees use this time to make new connections in the marketplace, take advantage of the refreshments and visit with exhibitors.
There are myriad different ways to market your business and all of them require time and money. In this session, we will review data from dozens of mid-sized travel companies to determine where exactly you should be focusing your resources. Using these successful travel companies as our guide, we’ll analyze their approach to marketing online and identify a few of the most effective marketing strategies. Perhaps most importantly, we’ll have this discussion within the context of a marketing plan so you’ll be able to take home a comprehensive framework for use with your business.
Join this informational workshop for an overview on local SEO and its importance to small businesses. Learn about what types of content gets visitors to your website, and how to improve your search engine rankings. Get insights on essential tips and tools to help manage your local listings. You will come out of this session with actionable, easy to implement tactics to get a superb web presence in your local market.
Right now, Facebook and Instagram are the social media darlings of the travel world, but their conversion numbers are bunk. PPC is not generating leads like it used to, and potential visitors are tiring from information overload. Learn two re-marketing techniques that capture visitors when they’re interested, hold their attention, and convert leads to sales with triple-digit success.
The interactive discussion will provide attendees with an overview of the LGBTQ travel market today, focusing on CMI’s 23rd Annual LGBTQ Tourism & Hospitality research study, as well as best sales and marketing practices to reach and serve this important segment. The primary goal of this discussion is to provide Florida destination marketing professionals, hotels and attractions with a foundation to build their LGBTQ initiatives:
• Understand the LGBTQ travel segments by demographics and relevant opportunities
• How to reach and market to them effectively, including destination case studies
• Learn how to maximize and measure ROI
This session includes the Iris D. Larson awards, Film Florida LEGENDS award, and the FAZA Florida Nature Conservation Award.
Join your industry friends and new connections for a refreshing lunch and general session featuring a top-notch keynote speaker.
“From Homeless Refugee to Living the American Dream”
Derreck Kayongo, Business Visionary, Global Soap Project Founder & Former CEO of the Center for Civil and Human Rights
The nobility and power of Derreck Kayongo’s story and how he used it to arrive at his innovative Global Soap Project will leave audiences awe-inspired. Kayongo believes that not every bad experience in life has to end up horribly — sometimes bad experiences happen so they lead us to a problem we need to solve or to our true calling in life. Drawing on the hardships of his refugee experience, Kayongo shares how he went on to manufacture a solution to a global problem, the life lessons he learned along the way, and how they apply to one’s ability to stay relevant in today’s market.
Attendees use this time to make new connections in the marketplace, take advantage of the refreshments and visit with exhibitors.
As communities look to create lasting change to make their destinations more appealing to those who would live, work, and explore; destination marketing organizations (DMOs) have the ability to shape the collective impact that can transform a place. Collective impact requires thinking beyond single issues and activating support across sectors – from government, nonprofits, and the private sector. With dramatic social and economic change coming to communities, DMOs should play a significant role to impact travel and workforce attraction efforts for a place. This discussion will focus on how DMOs can work with community partners to improve digital cooperative marketing efforts and build shared measurement practices among partners and information sharing agreements to support the overall brand and marketing efforts of a community.
A step-by-step strategy to efficiently and effectively post compelling content to your social networks on a daily basis. Stay “top of mind” with your clients and prospects month in and month out without frustrating or annoying them.
The (I)nfluence (Q)uotient
Influencers know their core business better than anyone. That’s why HelloSociety embarked on a custom research initiative going into the minds of Influencers. The approach was two-pronged:
Custom Study: An extensive online survey was fielded among 300+ Social Influencers from around the globe.
In-person Interviews: Supplemental ethnographic style conversations were conducted in NYC and LA to further elicit qualitative feedback from top market Influencers
Gone are the days that brands can focus solely on qualifiers like follower count and engagement rate. The most effective strategies to leverage Influencers should focus on not only the creators themselves, but the value of the consumers they engage. Enter Inside/Influence, a first-to-market research study HelloSociety conducted among social media users with an affinity for Influencer content. Inside/Influence goes into the minds of social audiences to identify what drives and inspires Influencer content consumption, brand engagement, and more.
In this session, we take marketers behind-the-scenes with Influencers to discover insider insights and best practices for creating social content tapping influential voices. You will walk away with a full understanding of the roles of influencers for brands from the perspective of followers, learn how followers spot a good sponsored post vs. a bad sponsored post and learn what actions followers take after seeing sponsored content to reveal how they move through the purchase funnel.
You’ve made the commitment to sustainability, now it’s time to turn that into action and create a long-term vision for a sustainable future for Florida Tourism. This session will provide an in-depth look at how one group, The Blue Community Consortium is partnering with destinations to set and achieve their sustainability goals. Participants from the recent BCC/One Planet Living Sustainability Assessment Project will share their experiences implementing a detailed sustainability measurement and planning tool. The panel will also discuss strategies for scaling this initiative to make Florida the world leader in sustainable tourism.
Moderator: Debbie Meihls – Executive Director & Film Commissioner, New Smyrna Beach Area Visitors Bureau
Panelists:
Joe Tankersley – Unique Visions (Past Disney Imagineer)
Amy Childs – Director of Sales, Springhill Suites Marriott
Elizabeth Gifford – Director of Sales, Hampton Inn New Smyrna Beach
Chad Truxall – Executive Director, Marine Discovery Center
What better way to enjoy GC19 than a theme party with 900 of your closest friends? Including dynamic entertainment from Latin Ambition, delicious food, and engaging networking opportunities, the Thursday Evening Network Event is always a great time and one you don’t want to miss!
The friendly team at the Registration & Information Desk is available for badge pick-up, onsite registrations and to answer any questions you may have.
The Media Room is for attending media representatives only. Attendees, feel free to place your news releases or other pertinent information in this room.
Held on the Marketplace floor, Friday’s breakfast gives attendees the opportunity for a leisurely meal and for more networking with other attendees.
There are myriad different ways to market your business and all of them require time and money. In this session, we will review data from dozens of mid-sized travel companies to determine where exactly you should be focusing your resources. Using these successful travel companies as our guide, we’ll analyze their approach to marketing online and identify a few of the most effective marketing strategies. Perhaps most importantly, we’ll have this discussion within the context of a marketing plan so you’ll be able to take home a comprehensive framework for use with your business.
Join this informational workshop for an overview on local SEO and its importance to small businesses. Learn about what types of content gets visitors to your website, and how to improve your search engine rankings. Get insights on essential tips and tools to help manage your local listings. You will come out of this session with actionable, easy to implement tactics to get a superb web presence in your local market.
Right now, Facebook and Instagram are the social media darlings of the travel world, but their conversion numbers are bunk. PPC is not generating leads like it used to, and potential visitors are tiring from information overload. Learn two re-marketing techniques that capture visitors when they’re interested, hold their attention, and convert leads to sales with triple-digit success.
Google is very much at the center of the ever-evolving digital travel planning space that impacts every segment of Florida’s tourism industry. Google will join us to highlight the latest trends and newest opportunities that destination marketers and other segments of the industry should know. In the last year, more than 20 DMOs in Florida became participants in the Google DMO Partnership Program to actively influence their presence in Google’s search and travel planning products. Miles Partnership will share how their efforts have improved Florida’s representation.
Attendees use this time to make new connections in the marketplace, take advantage of the refreshments and visit with exhibitors.
Thinking about leaving early? Think again.
The Closing General Session includes closing remarks from the VISIT FLORIDA leadership team in addition to an energetic, do-not-miss, closing keynote speaker, Mike Rayburn!
“The ‘What If…?’ Experience”
Mike Rayburn, Award-Winning Speaker, Entertainer, and Guitar Virtuoso
Mike uses his amazing guitar work and hilarious comedy as a metaphor to illustrate three tools designed to turn your team into an army of innovators with the peak performance skills to transcend the status quo to stop managing change, and lead by creating change.
