Travelling with social media
Travel industry teams up with social media at the ITB tourist fair in Berlin.
Most Germans spend up to 15 hours collecting information on the internet before deciding where to go on holiday, according to scientists in a travel analysis conducted for the FUR Research Group for Holiday and Travel. The potential tourists search online travel portals, blogs and review sites. The social media have become an indispensable part of the tourism industry in recent years. The ITB Berlin, the travel industry's leading trade fair, has responded and is increasingly encouraging social-media protagonists to get involved. The ITB started accrediting travel bloggers alongside classical journalists for the first time in 2012. Many saw this as a breakthrough. 300 bloggers from 15 countries are expected to attend the ITB in 2014. The ITB Berlin collaborates with the leading blogger associations – the Professional Travel Bloggers Association (PTBA), the Reiseblogger-Kollektiv, Traveldudes and PDRB, the platform for German-speaking travel bloggers. The ITB Berlin's framework programme includes 40 events for, by, with and about bloggers.
First ITB YouYube Film Award
In addition, the ITB 2014 is offering film-makers a chance to shoot a video about the travel trade fair by launching the YouYube Film Award. The first prize of 1000 euros will go to the most creative entry, which will also be watched by a large audience on the ITB's YouYube channel. And what is important for the YouYube Film Award also applies for blogs and travel reports, whatever the format: at the end of the day it's the quality and relevance of the reporting that counts for the audience. And traditional media, such as printed tourist guides, are not being left behind: on the contrary. According to Media Control they experienced a real boom in 2013.
