Vakantiebeurs 2015 in 10 selfies

Vakantiebeurs_2015_10With 117,000 visitors the Dutch Travel Convention Vakantiebeurs 2015 exceeded the organizers expectations (reported by nu.nl). It certainly felt crowded on some of the public days. As a travel professional and blogger this convention is my traditional start of the travel year. The convention consists of two parts: a two day professional conference and five public visitor days. Over the last years the Vakantiebeurs has slowly converted from a boring travel brochure exchange into a destination by itself. Together with my 14-year old daughter we turned our visit into a worldwide travel adventure in four hours, taking the challenge to capture the event in ten selfies. We were assisted by a selfie contest, with nine selfie spots posted at the convention floors, using the #selfievakantiebeurs hashtag. It wasn’t even easy to find all spots, but ultimately we even found one extra under water! So here we go on a virtual tour of Vakantiebeurs 2015 in 10 selfies: Continue reading

Summer holiday fun in winter: #Vakantiebeurs

0265-VKB-Banner-250x250pxFor many people the first weeks of the year are the time to think about trips to make in the year ahead. This is also the time of the biggest annual holiday convention in the Netherlands. For me the ‘Vakantiebeurs’ has become synonymous with the beginning of a new travel season. In the past I always attended as a visitor, collecting brochures. Nowadays I also attend as a travel blogger, including the two professional travel conference days that precede the convention for the general public. So what will Vakantiebeurs 2015 have in store? Continue reading

Social Media in the Arctic: #SoMeT14EU

Rovaniemi_Finland_April2014_008It was during the first days of spring. Those days when you can finally open the doors and get out the garden furniture, to enjoy sitting outside to catch those first rays of sun of the new summer season. Exactly on that day I got on board a plane to bring me back to the heart of winter. With the fresh spring still in my head I landed at Helsinki airport to catch another plane to get me to the Arctic Circle. Minimum temperature for Rovaniemi was forecasted to be -15°C that evening. Why had the conference organizers picked exactly this remote and cold location? Continue reading

Top-10 Corporate Tweeps – A World To Win

You Tube Twitter Stats 2014Trendwatchers worldwide have predicted a worldwide embrace of social media for a while now. I was triggered again when ‘social travel’ appeared in the top-5 travel trends for 2014 recently. So if this ‘social’ thing is so trendy, we should see the corporate world jumping this bandwagon in massive numbers. Just out of curiosity I decided to find the 10 largest corporate accounts on Twitter. I used a very wide definition of corporate, as “any account not related to a private person or small group of private persons, like a band”. As we all know, the vast majority of the top-100 tweeps consists of singers, actors, sportscelebrities and other famous people. Continue reading

Social media voor evenementen: in 3 stappen naar ROI

Remco_Timmermans_2014_02Als we de trendwatchers in de eventsbranche in 2014 mogen geloven wordt dit het jaar waarin organisatoren van evenementen eindelijk social media zullen gaan omarmen. Natuurlijk hebben we dit al eerder gehoord, maar de trend is zichtbaar. Er zijn twee redenen waarom sociale media pas nu een rol lijken te gaan spelen. De eerste is onbekendheid met dit nieuwe kanaal, de tweede reden is dat organisatoren niet weten hoe sociale media evenementen daadwerkelijk kunnen ondersteunen. Een goede social media campagne voor events kent drie fasen, elk met een ander doel en een andere content strategie: Continue reading

Outreach from Space: The ISS Effect

First tweet from spaceJust like many of you I have been following many astronauts during training, mission, return and whatever happens after return. For us spacetweeps it is great to see what it means to be an astronaut. What happens during training, how they prepare for their work in space and the launch, how they experience their time in space and how they communicate with those of us that stay behind on the planet? Obviously social media is the perfect way to keep this communication channel open throughout this entire process. We love to follow our astro_’s on Twitter! Continue reading

NASA’s new Social Media Press Credentials Model

NASA Tweetup signSocial media is one of the fastest evolving media channels in society. Tools and methods seem to success each other at ever increasing rates, making it difficult to stay on top of the latest, even for the social media savvy readers of this blog. In the space community this evolution has largely been driven by NASA. After organizing the first space-related tweetup at JPLin January of 2009, NASA continued to embrace and include the social media community in its public outreach and communication strategy. Continue reading

SpaceTweeps meet in Cologne: #SpaceKoelsch

SpaceKoelschAfter the great success of the first European #SpaceTweetup, a bunch of European spacetweeps, led by DLR social media editor @HenningKrause, decided to start the new year with a new tweetup. More a networking event than a tweetup, it became the sequel to #SpaceKoelsch. Last September this was the pre-party to the ESA/DLR #Spacetweetup. Now the event in a typical Cologne beerhall became the main event itself. #SpaceKoelsch 2 was born! Continue reading