Annual trade show has a new home and is set to return as an in-person event following COVID
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TravelTech Show: Experts from Meta and Hopper confirmed as keynote speakers
The TravelTech Show has confirmed Meta, formerly Facebook, and Hopper will headline its conference sessions at the event in June.
The annual trade show is set to return as an in-person event for the first time since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
It has a new home in the ExCel conference centre in east London alongside the Business Travel Show and The Meetings Show.
On the opening day, June 29, Karlijn Vogel-Meijer, industry manager for Meta, will deliver the keynote.
He will focus on the future for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and virtual reality in travel and what the new world looks like following the pandemic.
On the second day Hopper chief strategy officer Dakota Smith will give the keynote will speak about the need for travel to reinvent itself post COVID.
Other brands confirmed to speak over the two days include Amadeus, Open Destinations, Cruisewatch, Skypath, Travel Ledger, Pax2Pay, BD4Travel, Mindsay, and Tripstax.
Organisers said the conference will deliver forward-looking sessions in two theatres: Turing Stage and Lovelace Stage.
This year’s themes include:
- Managing change
- Winning customers
- Financial recovery
- Innovation
- Controlling costs
- Supercharge mobile
- Enhancing payments
- Travel reboot
Keyvan Nasehi, founder of travel recruitment specialist Skypath who will speal on June 30 in a session entitled ‘Winning the war on tech talent’ said:
“Hiring technical (IT) professionals post Covid has been challenging for all industries, including travel.
“Having gone through unprecedented mass redundancies throughout the travel industry and unimaginable publicity of how bad the industry suffered due to Covid, travel companies face a real challenge to win back high-in-demand tech staff.
“Another big challenge for travel companies is competing with better-paid enterprises that offer record high salaries for tech people.
“As a travel-tech recruiter, I am looking forward to sharing my experience with the TravelTech Show audience and recommending ways to hire tech people in the current market.”
Kevin O’Sullivan, chief executive of Open Destinations, said: “It seems a long time since the last in-person TravelTech Show so we are really looking forward to meeting our customers and potential clients in-person again.
“We have missed the buzz that events like TravelTech Show creates. The strong rebound the travel industry is currently experiencing should make this year’s event even more special.”
