It was fun wearing two hats at the PhoCusRight conference the last week. I heard about the production PhoCusWright puts on for this event and I wasn’t disappointed. Very slick. And it’s never bad to spend a week in Florida in November.

Wilhelmus (BC), Jens (Canada) and Charel (Holland)
In my role at Tourism BC, I’ve met some interesting people, had some great conversations, and heard things that made me think. In my role as travel industry blogger, I had a lot of fun on our panel and blogger summit. It was great to meet some of the bloggers I only know from reading their postings. I expected more destinations to attend the conference but it was great to talk to the ones that were there.
A big take away is the relentless change the industry continues to go through, with no end in sight. Keep up or go home. Lots of conversation about search, the move away from traditional media, social networks and user generated content, adding value to consumers instead of competing on price and a lot of rosy presentations from CEO’s, and interesting debates.
DMO’s as a collective need to wake up. There are only a few DMO’s who have set themselves up for keeping up with the changes in the industry. But when consumers don’t get the value from destinations collectively, there’s a risk they lose interest in us collectively. Collaboration and knowledge sharing will be important. That’s why it was great to talk to attendees from Austria, Holland, Quebec, Montreal and Canada.