The hospitality landscape is changing. Challenger brands are growing at an exciting pace and they're using technology and marketing in new ways that's getting them noticed. Athena Simpson from Y Food will explore the innovative marketing tactics and new business models that are disrupting the market and showcase how these and the tech employed can be applied to established businesses.

Taking inspiration from the most creative change makers and innovators who have used unconventional and lean methods to achieve success, this session will provide the blueprint for charging ahead of the curve by getting into the disruptor mindset.

• Are you comfortable your business is fully compliant?
• What steps have our panel of hoteliers made to ensure they have implemented GDPR?
• Now you have new practices and procedures in place, what’s next?

Noetic’s Stephen Barr will explain how the business helps hotel brands maximise direct bookings, with details on how to:  

• Extend the reach of marketing technology and driving operational efficiencies
• Use of online media to acquire better customers at lower cost
• Employ eCRM to deliver higher value guest repeat bookings
  

• Ensuring your hotel website makes booking easy: simplifying the process
• Making your website all about conversion
• Achieving the balance: how to develop a strong bespoke booking offering and dovetail with OTA bookings?
• Using heat-mapping to create a great booking experience

Daniel Potter will present his findings on what hospitality guests are looking for from technology in the sector, what works for operators and what may be possible in the future.

The word Millennial's gets bounded around as the latest buzz word, but what does it really mean for business? This session looks at the Millennial divide, how it is forcing us to do business very differently, disruption across other industries and what that might mean in the hospitality sector.

• Getting value from A/B multi-variant testing
• Heat mapping & customer journey mapping
• Customer engagement – how do the different parts of the customer journey join up?
• Prioritising how deep to mine your data. And is it worth it?
• Managing your online reputation & how to re-engage with people who have booked previously?

• How AI might help with marketing in hospitality
• Lessons from the US: what operators can learn from stadia in the States
• Best use of mobile apps for booking, check-in, ordering and payment
• What investors see as the latest tech trends