Name: Michael Edwards
Company: G Adventures
Title: Managing Director
Website: www.gadventures.co.uk

Tell us about your company:
G Adventures is an adventure-travel pioneer offering the widest selection of affordable small-group tours, safaris and expeditions to more than 100 countries. Powered by an international team of passionate travellers, the award-winning trips embrace authentic accommodation, exotic cuisine and local transport to put travellers on a first-name basis with the planet’s people, cultures, landscapes and wildlife. The intimate, authentic and sustainable approach to small-group travel introduces travellers to the highlights of a destination while offering the freedom to explore it on their own. Whatever age, interest, ability or budget, G Adventures has a genuine life-changing experience.

How did you get into your line of work?
Like many people in the world of travel I stumbled in to the world of travel and stayed stumbled.

What do you do day-to-day?
I am responsible for all commercial activity for G Adventures’ business in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) including all sales and marketing activity.

What’s the most exciting part of your role?
Seeing the relevancy of the travel experience we offer in multiple countries and for so many different types of travellers.

What type of companies/individuals will find your talk relevant?
Anyone with an interest in how people, purpose and values can drive a business forward.

In your field, what exciting developments will 2012 bring?
The continuing growth of our brand in new countries such as Russia and China.

How best can the travel industry use social media and the internet?
To use it as a forum for communication and not promotion.

What’s your favourite travel destination?
Italy

Where’s your favourite place in London?
The view from my apartment

Sum up the capital in five words:
A big city in Europe

How long have you live in the UK?
5 months

How long are you planning on staying in the UK?
2 years

How often do you travel per year?
More than 10 trips a year, generally multiple destinations each trip

What’s your favourite travel destination? And Why?
Thailand so far, because the weather is beautiful, the landscape and the attractions are incredible and the culture is enough of a shock to the Australian way of life to have put me out of my comfort zone on several occasions. This being said, the main tourist areas played host to enough English speaking tourists that at times it didn’t feel like I was in an Asian country.

Where’s your favourite place in London?
Covent Garden. I catch a train 15 minutes to Charing Cross and walk a few minutes to Covent Garden often because it feels very homely.  There are plenty of great places in and around the area including places to get a good coffee (which is very rare in London) and the atmosphere is always very exciting – it always feels like something big could happen there.

Sum up the capital in five words:
Opportunity, social, pub, busy, consumption

Busy. Rainy. Cold. Ambitious. Diverse

Tell us about your company:
We have been teaching Tourism to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Greenwich for more than a decade and have developed a reputation for producing employable, entrepreneurial, creative tourism professionals. Our staff come from a variety of industry and academic backgrounds and produce both consultancy studies and research publications in tourism, events management and marketing.

How did you get into your line of work?
Before joining Greenwich I worked as a consultant in the areas of tourism and cultural industries development, in local authorities and for the British Council.  Greenwich gave me the opportunity to develop my research into tourism and economic development alongside my consultancy and teaching interests.

What do you do day-to-day?
I spend a lot of my time liaising between the university and our partners in industry and the public sector, developing new partnerships and working on projects. As the Director of EDReC, I co-ordinate the work of academics and consultants seeking to influence local economic development policy and practice.  At this time of year, I’m gearing up for teaching classes on tourism development, professional skills and supervising dissertations.

What’s the most exciting part of your role?
Working with innovative companies and public sector entrepreneurs to translate academic research into practical solutions.

Give us an overview of what you’ll be discussing at ABiC 2012:
I’ll be talking about ‘Generation Y’ and how this group of (currently!) young people view travel.  I’ll be presenting research that shows the characteristics of this group and how they experience tourism – in particular their social behaviours and their use of new technologies.

What type of companies/individuals will find your talk relevant?
Anyone who is trying to plan for meeting the needs of the next generation of tourists or designing new products and services for this market.

How will they benefit from it?
They will get concrete information about tourists from generation Y that they can use in developing their businesses, for example in their marketing and communications activity and in the design of their tourism offer.

In your field, what exciting developments will 2012 bring?
Now that the Olympics are over, we can get back to thinking about how tourism can make a sustainable contribution to economic growth in the UK and Europe.  In broader terms, the next year or so is going to see further, accelerated moves away from the high street to more individualised, social-media driven tourism experiences.

How best can the travel industry use social media and the internet?
The industry needs to move away from just seeing the internet as a cost-saving device, based on huge databases, and embrace the (sometimes expensive) possibilities for providing travellers with customised, individual and personal experiences.

What’s your favourite travel destination?
I think you can’t beat Paris for urban tourism – it is a walkable city that has it all.  For something more active, I love Scandinavia, especially Jutland in Denmark.

Where’s your favourite place in London?
Union Chapel in Islington.  It’s a social enterprise and an amazing music venue.  It’s not widely known, but it manages to carry out fantastic social projects at the same time as promoting really high quality music.  The building itself is an incredible place to visit.

Sum up the capital in five words:
Diverse, exciting, central, grumpy, fast

Name: Kelly Schneider Lees
Company: Gogobot
Title: Director Global Marketing & Biz Dev
Website: www.gogobot.com

Tell us about your company:
Online or On-the-Go get travel advice from people in the know. Unlike other travel sites which give you thousands of reviews of places that aren’t relevant to you from strangers who don’t know your tastes, Gogobot helps you tap into your friends on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare to provide you with personalized results.  Search online or on the free Gogobot iphone app for a place to stay, the perfect place to eat, the ideal place to go out for drinks or attraction to visit and the advice you receive will be from your friends and others who travel like you. With over 90% of our 2 million + users Facebook connected, Gogobot is the world’s most popular source of trusted travel advice from people like you.

How did you get into your line of work?
That’s a long story.

What do you do day-to-day?
Oversea social media, brand, PR, promotions, acquisition and partner marketing activities.

What’s the most exciting part of your role?
Seeing our user base grow globally.

What type of companies/individuals will find your talk relevant?
OTAs, writers, social media managers, marketers, DMOs

In your field, what exciting developments will 2012 bring?
Innovations in multi platform services.

How best can the travel industry use social media and the internet?
Be clear about your objective and understand the relationship you have with your user.

What’s your favourite travel destination?
Gili Trawangan, Indonesia

Where’s your favourite place in London?
Hampstead Heath – an urban Oasis

Sum up the capital in five words:
Creative. Green. Diverse. Rich. Wet.

Name: Kevin May
Company: Tnooz
Title: Editor and co-founder
Website: Tnooz.com

Tell us about your company:
We are a global media brand writing about technology and hit it relates to the travel, tourism and hospitality industry, covering search, distribution, social commerce and devices.

How did you get into your line of work?
A journalist for 19 years, you generally fall into these things.

What do you do day-to-day?
Write news articles and analysis, coordinate a team of 15+ contributors around the world, attend and speak at conferences, run webinars and other events.

What’s the most exciting part of your role?
Breaking news, meeting startups, challenging ourselves to make Tnooz better.

Give us an overview of what you’ll be discussing at ABiC 2012:
The role of technology and its impact on the adventure travel sector, looking in particular at how consumers are discovering destinations, product and services, and what trends will shape these patterns ahead.

What type of companies/individuals will find your talk relevant?
Travel agents, tour operators, DMOs and tourist boards.

How will they benefit from it?
Learn more about how the landscape is changing and what they should consider doing as businesses to keep ahead.

In your field, what exciting developments will 2012 bring?
More engagement between brands and consumers via mobile and tablet devices, acceleration of in-destination products and services available via technology.

How best can the travel industry use social media and the internet?
Monitor, engage, share, learn. Repeat. Repeat.

What’s your favourite travel destination?
Nepal.

Where’s your favourite place in London?
Gordon’s Wine Bar, Charing Cross.

Sum up the capital in five words:
Exhilarating, challenging, fun, chaotic, varied.