WYSTC: the upcoming conference
By Eliza Kruczkowska on
In just under few days’ time, the essential global industry event for youth travel, better known as the WYSTC conference, is once again taking place, this time in sunny San Diego.
The WYSTC, or World Youth and Student Travel Conference, is set to be just as popular as ever this year, with over 800 delegates and 450 organisations from 80 different countries all descending on San Diego between September 18th and 21st. If you want to be in a room with every major player in the youth travel industry, they say the WYSTC is the place to be.
I´m very curious who is going to have the best app in the youth travel industry.The App Yap Contest was a great chance to show how mobile application can help young travellers in their journeys, from inspiration to planning to save memories. And that´s very inspiring for people like me, the marketing geek. With more and more people involved in Social Networking, and using mobile devices in different ways, mobile applications have a much larger market than ever before, especially with the advancements in mobile technology increasing the task they can accomplish to be competitive with some laptops. More than 110 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in June, up 4% versus March 2012, according to comScore.
Almost half of all local travel searches completed on a mobile device in the US were related to transportation, according to Q1 2012 report by mobile-local add network. Travel agencies accounted for another 25% of searches, tours and attractions constituted 14% of searches and 12% of searches were related to lodging and resorts. And this numbers will be still growing, as by 2015, 9 out of 10 consumers will have a mobile subscription and 85% of leisure travelers will use their smartphone while abroad! That´s a potential for the marketing teams not only in the tourism sector.
So again, if you’re attending the conference, I look forward to seeing you at one of the various seminars and workshops or maybe even out-and-about in the city! Spending time schmoozing new contacts and hearing about the latest trends from industry expert speakers are important, but making some good business contact is very important too!