I am very selective when it comes to conferences. As anyone in a corporate environment can attest, the market is flooded with organizations that poach resources and people's time to populate content and attendance at their events...all at a tidy profit and rarely with adequate return value.

Such was not the case at the World Travel and Tourism Council Annual Global Summit, part of which I attended earlier this week in Abu Dhabi (which is about an hour or so south of Dubai by car).  

The content was simply outstanding and the audience was comprised of top level executives across the industry - hotel chains, travel agencies, cruise companies, airlines, associations to name a few.

The conference opened with a macro economist Professor Ian Goldin from Oxford, who set the global context. He spoke about changing demographics and shifts in behaviour due to societal integration, ageing and changing communication modes/technology. (which coincidentally bodes well for Kamazooie as our ageing and increasingly affluent and technologically savvy population will find these outlets to share experiences and connect globally with like-minded people valuable).

The next speaker, another economist from the Boston Consulting Group Dr. Stelter, spoke about rising national debt levels, ageing population, longer lifespans and their impact on Travel and Tourism...brought up the inevitability of changing industry and disappearance of travel agencies.

They were followed by the Chief Customer Officer of Coca Cola Sandy Douglas. Due to my line of work, I was absolutely enthralled by his dissertation on engaging customers with the brand. He broke Coca Cola's approach to generating brand 'love' and advocacy down to four key components. (I was encouraged to learn that the approach we are taking at Dubai Airports is quite similar although not at the high level of activity coming from Coca Cola)

Engagement - customers own the message and the media, we just hope to get into the conversation. He pointed to the fact that Coca Cola's facebook page was actually set up by Coke fans, not the corporation, although now they have a partnership in place. The company also supports and invests heavily in viral videos. For those of you who are familiar with the coke/mento stunt on you tube...the initial urge from Coca Cola was to implement a cease and desist order on the creators, but their marketing team intervened and let it be...good call.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vk4_2xboOE

Transparency - there is a clear need to build credibility and trust with customers. The company is acutely aware of the issue of obesity and the threat it poses to their product and society. So they created an ad publicising the number of calories in a can of coke and they showed different ways to burn it off eg laughing, dancing etc.. Perhaps not glaringly self-deprecating but a fun and clever way to position a sugared drink.

Authenticity - have real, honest - open and relevant conversations with customers with warmth and sincerity and caring

Leadership - let your actions reflect your words and our principles and actions are good for our customers/the world


Finally former US President Bill Clinton spoke. He is a fantastic story teller who talked about the travel and tourism industry support for his foundation's work. He also shared the key learnings from a Nobel Peace Prize winning micro-biologist whose booked pointed to four dominant species on earth - ants, termites, bees and humans - who rule the roost due to their ability to cooperate. The key differentiation between humans and insects was our consciousness and our conscience. This led to a conclusion that travel builds cooperation and that essential element will always make us a positive force. This summary doesn't do it justice but it was well done and well delivered.

I don't often rave about conferences, but this one was an absolutely stunner. So good, I wanted to share some of the content with my good friends on Kamazooie!

I welcome your thoughts and comments!