Travel Matters

In this episode, we have an interesting conversation with pioneer travel blogger Melvin Boecher from Germany.

Melvin is the founder and CEO of Travel Dudes, co-founder of the Social Travel Summit, former COO of iAmbassador, and with more than 15 years of successfully running his business, he is a pioneer of professional travel blogging.

His Social Media are very popular. On Twitter, he has accumulated around 250.000 followers, and Melvin appears on over 8.500 recommended Twitter lists – this ranks him in the top 3 in travel. His Facebook page has over 115,000 fans, and his Instagram has around 50,000 followers. He's also on YouTube, where he and his team post some great videos.

Hear how he started as a travel blogger, how he built his travel blogging empire, and what he shared in his session at this TBEX.

In this episode, we have an interesting conversation with Catharina Fischer about sustainable travel.

Catharina is one of the leading experts in influencer marketing and a digital leader with over ten years of experience in tourism. At TBEX Europe 2023 Kalamata, Greece, she gave an interesting talk about the impact of tourism trends on travel content creators.

Before she was Head of Social Media at the German National Tourist Board (GNTB), she was in various marketing positions in the tourism industry. At the GNTB, she implemented the international Social Media Strategy in over 12 markets & created in 2013 the first international influencer campaign for Germany.

Since 2015 she has been working for the consulting network Tourismuszukunft. Here she supports destinations, hotels, and tour operators, mainly in DACH countries, with their digital marketing. In 2016 she initiated the industry think tank 'Change4Destination' which is dealing with the question of the 'future of public destination marketing'. The think tank white paper became a must-read in the German-speaking markets.

Furthermore, she created the VideoSummit – the leading conference for video in tourism with top videographers and video bloggers worldwide.

Connect to Catharina Fischer on LinkedIn.

In this episode we say "mojn" to Jessica Schmidt from Hamburg Marketing. By developing, communicating and coordinating the Hamburg brand, they highlight the locational attractiveness of Hamburg and the Hamburg Metropolitan Region in Germany and abroad.

Hear how they work with content creators.

Martin Solhaugen is a filmmaker, youTuber and photographer from Oslo, Norway. Martin has worked on global projects for Tourism-boards, luxury hotels, and high-profile clients. Martin has been traveling the world for the past 6 years in pursuit for cultural and visual expressions. With a big heart for visual storytelling and a unique eye for detail, he has worked on global projects for Tourism-boards, luxury hotels and high-profile clients.

He did two sessions at TBEX Europe 2023, and in this conversation, he shares some tips, and talks about how the same video made him more money on Facebook than on YouTube.

Chris Lau talks about his YouTube channel, SeeLauTravel and then we get into a long conversation about selling – an important skill to have as a travel content creator.

With 10+ years of experience in a professional-level sales role, being recommended by other world-class creators, and having helped almost 80 creators from around the world, Chris also has a Mentor Program where he teaches how to travel for free, get paid for your work, and really make this into a lifestyle. See more about that on SeeLauTravelMentorProgram.com.

In this one, we meet another experienced travel blogger and entrepreneur, Yeison, from the Costa Rica travel blog, Mytanfeet.

The keynote speaker at this TBEX, Yeison (pronounced like Jason), is Costa Rican, born and raised. He started Mytanfeet with his wife Samantha, who moved to Costa Rica in 2012 from the United States and ever since then.

Mytanfeet is a blog with local tips, detailed guides, photos, videos, and maps to help you plan the perfect trip to Costa Rica.

Welcome to Travel Matters, recorded at TBEX Europe 2023 in Kalamata, Greece.

In this one we have a conversation with the amazing couple, Mike and Anne Howard from HoneyTrek.com. They're two Americans that realized life is short; the world is big, and the value of travel too great to wait another day. So, when it came time for their honeymoon, they decided to sell their stuff and embark on a trip around the world. They left on January 22, 2012, and are on "The World's Longest Honeymoon" … 11 years and counting!

Books:Check out their National Geographic book "Ultimate Journeys for Two" and their glamping book "Comfortably Wild".

Other links:

Facebook: https://Facebook.com/HoneyTrek Twitter: https://Twitter.com/HoneyTrekInstagram: https://Instagram.com/HoneyTrekYouTube: https://YouTube.com/TheHoneyTrek TikTok: https://TikTok.com/@honeytrekPinterest: https://Pinterest.com/HoneyTrek

Welcome to Travel Matters recorded live on tape at TBEX Europe 2023 in Kalamata, Greece.

In this one, we have a conversation with one of the speakers, Edu Giansante – a Brazilian who lives in Dublin. He's the Founder and Content Creator at E-Dublin – a brand that has reached more than 50 million YouTube views and reaches 1 million accounts every month. For more than ten years, Edu has demonstrated his skills as a highly experienced strategic thinker for online communities for companies across the world. He was awarded the Community Professional of the Year 2020 at the CMX Awards – one of the most prestigious companies in the communities industry.

Edu did a session where he explained how community-led content is the new way to do business. No matter the industry, we're seeing a shift in how companies and content creators with a strong community are leading businesses. We are moving from broadcasting to connecting, telling to hearing, and transactional comms to symbiotic.

You can download Edu's Community cheat sheet from his session on ed.community/tbex. His website for Brazilian expats in Dublin is called eDublin, and you can find also connect with Edu on LinkedIn, Instagram, twitter, and follow his popular YouTube channel.

We are also talking a lot about AI and the future. Edu mentions a cool app called Captions (download it in the iOS store) and we also talk about the app called Lemon8, and the documentary Transcendent Man.

Enjoy an interesting conversation with Edu, and please share if you like it.

Welcome to Travel Matters recorded live on tape at TBEX Europe 2023 in Kalamata, Greece.

In this one we have a conversation with one of the speakers, Itai Marshall. He's a Social Media strategist from Israel who made the leap from YouTube to TikTok, where he has now amassed more than 200,000 followers and 12 million likes with his high-energy and snappy video style.

Itai is also a video marketing coach, and his work includes showing tourism professionals how to effectively create short-form video.

At TBEX in Greece he did two sessions: "Elevate your Online Presence and Personal Brand with TikTok" and "Creating the Ultimate Short Form Video"

You can follow Itai on TikTok, Instagram, and on any other SoMe channel as itaimarshall.

Welcome to Travel Matters, and the first of many episodes from TBEX Europe 2023 in Kalamata, Greece.

In this one – recorded today, two days before the conference, we talk to conference director Shane Dallas about what to expect from this conference.