ARCHIVES: 2017 Keynote Presentations
Mara Gorman
Mara Gorman is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared on websites such as BBC Travel, AOL Travel, and Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel. She also writes for the Ski Vermont All Mountain Mamas website. Her blog The Mother of all Trips has inspired families to travel since 2008 and she founded the crowd-sourced Back to Ski campaign, which focused on using social media and the web to get families excited about downhill skiing. She was previously on the board of the travel blogging fundraiser Passports With Purpose and is an advocate of using social media platforms to improve the lives of women and girls around the globe. Mara lives with her husband and two sons in Delaware; they ski in Vermont (preferably at Mad River Glen) as often as they can. How The Vermont I Knew Has Become the Vermont I Know (and Why That Matters)
DOWNLOAD 1 | DOWNLOAD 2 So much of what makes Vermont a marketable travel brand is based on what the place actually is. Let's talk about how the past decade has seen Vermont dig into its tourism roots and come up with a vision that can sustain the generations to come. I've always had one foot in Vermont and one foot out. Growing up in the 1980s as the child of divorced parents I never lived here but spent all my school vacations skiing at Mad River Glen and all my summers jumping in swimming holes around the Mad River Valley. The entire time I worked in my father and stepmother's inn the Millbrook, arguably one of the earliest farm-to-table, eclectic-menu restaurants in the state. My father had a huge garden in the backyard from which he was cooking Indian food for his restaurant starting in 1980. I've watched as the Vermont my father (who died in 2010) dreamed of began to reach its potential in the local food movement, in the activism of the ski industry, and in the development of small business like cheesemakers, microbreweries and distilleries. Living in Delaware, but writing for Ski Vermont, I still have one foot in and one foot out of the state, but am wholly committed to showing the rest of the world just how true Vermont has been to itself. |
Jason Dunkel
Jason Dunkel is a Travel and Tourism Consultant with Environics Analytics, based out of Toronto. In this role Jason helps all types of travel and tourism organizations, including DMOs, operators, accommodations, and agencies leverage data to better understand their customers and make more educated decisions. Jason has been with Environics Analytics since 2007 so at this point when he gets a cut he bleeds data. A graduate of Queen’s School of Business (a fancy business school in Kingston, Ontario), Jason holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree with a specialization in marketing. We’re Not All The Same – Understanding and Targeting Millennials
DOWNLOAD In this session Jason Dunkel will use Environics Analytics’ demographic and behavioral data to investigate population growth, age, income, and diversity; and their impact on the travel and tourism industry. This will be followed by a deep dive into the different generations, with a particular focus on Millennials. Jason will then introduce the concepts of marketing analytics and discuss how data can be used to understand and target millennials as well as your other customers. |