Tailored to every participant’s interests, the Direct Booking Summit kicked off its second day with interactive workshops. Based around various hot industry topics, workshops are designed to offer hoteliers a wide range of choice - ensuring that everyone takes home relevant, actionable tips.

Brad Brewer, CEO and Founder, Brewer Digital Marketing, ran the first workshop of the day. Brad took delegates through the process of mapping a guest’s physical journey, and revealed the digital aspects experienced at every stage.

More interested in learning about Area Demand Clusters? Philipp Stelzer, Head of Sales, HQ plus, answered questions about defining clusters and converting insights into smart decisions to increase overflow revenue.

Alasdair Snow, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at Triptease, explored the challenges that potential guests encounter on their path to purchase. Beginning with the problem of a hotel's discoverability, Al announced the launch of Triptease's latest innovation: Guest Acquisition. Guests of the Summit heard it first, but we can't wait to share more information on this game-changing feature with you. Stay tuned!

Before we got back to workshops, we also added one more panel discussion into the mix. The conversation, moderated by Christopher Biondo, Director of Distribution & Product Development, Standard International, revolved around booking engines. It focused on trends and updates from the experts on the topic: Bernard Tan, Vice President Revenue and Distribution Management at VRI Americas, Johnathan Capps, Vice President of Revenue at Charlestowne Hotels, Justyn Hornor, Senior Product Manager at Fortune 250 Hotel. "The integration process has to be simple!" said Bernard, "You want a partner with whom you can constantly share your needs and wants."

Another round of workshops took an in-depth look at how to collect, analyze and act on guest feedback to increase guest satisfaction and direct bookings in a session run by RJ Friedlander, Founder & CEO at ReviewPro. We also enjoyed a learning session on website data collection, analysis and repurposing, led by Justyn Hornor, Senior Product Manager at Fortune 250 Hotel.

Isaac Collazo, Vice President Competitive Intelligence at IHG, rounded out the Summit with a talk on current trends, economic drivers and the future of the lodging industry. He highlighted the fact that the lodging demand is growing, reaching record highs both in US and globally.

With that, two packed days of learning and networking drew to a close. We wished the hoteliers in the room all the best in tackling the industry’s challenges with fresh tips and priceless knowledge that they’ve gained during these past couple of days at the Direct Bookings Summit: Americas.

We also encouraged everyone to vote for the next Summit's location. Wherever it will be, we hope to see you there!

Get an overview the first day of the Direct Booking Summit: Americas focused on the topics of Distribution, Marketing and Technology.