EVENTS: INFLOW Travel Summit 2017 in Istanbul, Turkey
Have you seen those Instagrammers with like 4.9 million followers… or even 50k followers? Shoot, I’m impressed with 1k folks out there! Or maybe you follow a popular YouTube channel or website like this. They are travel bloggers, luxury lifestyle writers, or even just someone that records their life riding around on a motorcycle.
For a long time, Facebook was ‘my jam’! That was how I connected with others and I loved it! (I also admit that moving overseas for 4 years at a critical social media boom period was terrible for my tech savviness…) But now-a-days people have found ways to share their story through almost every kind of media out there! And their growing popularity has given them the ability to work as online influencers with brands, hotels, and other companies seeking this type of promotion.
Last week Turkey held its first ever INFLOW Travel Summit. The INFLOW team created this Brand-2-Influencers (B2I) summit to bring brands together with leading influencers on an international scale! This 2 day event started with sessions by leading influencers from YouTube, Instagram, and Travel Bloggers with presentations from Turkish Airlines and Switzerland Tourism. The 2nd day was full of B2I meetings.
While most of the speakers and popular influencers were flown in (courtesy of Turkish Airlines) as part of a FAM trip, paid tickets were available for different levels of the conference. Tickets started with the 1st day of speaker sessions, and then you could choose up towards to a full 3 day regular ticket.
A few extra perks of the full 3-day ticket was 3 nights accommodations at the Swissotel in Besiktas, opening welcome dinner sponsored by Swiss Tourism, after party at the 360 Istanbul night club, closing dinner at the Divine Hotel, and more intimate time with other influencers after a busy day!
Here are a few reasons you might consider going to the next INFLOW Travel Summit:
- You are an influencer.
- You want to learn more about become an influencer.
- You are a brand or company looking for online promotion through influencers.
Why did I go?
- We have a podcast about our journey as an expat in Turkey and our travels. Make sure to check it out here.
- I have enjoyed travel writing and I would love to do more with it.
- Great opportunity to network with others.
BONUS: It was my birthday! Who doesn’t want to spend their birthday with a bunch of fun people! (Actually, I know Jason would not choose this for his birthday! Love you honey!)
My thoughts:
Overall, I really enjoyed the INFLOW summit. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the presentation, videography, and graphics were very well done. They had a translation system as well for both Turkish and English speakers. I only saw a couple of areas that could be improved; such as having the summit schedule sooner, and knowing more information about how to prepare for the B2I meetings.
This summit gave me a great motivation for moving forward with my website and encouraged me to continue pursuing my dreams. Since I live in Izmir, it was helpful to have a meeting in Turkey. I loved representing other expats at the B2I meeting, and it was helpful to start conversations about future representation with them!
Update! Enjoy a short video of this conference here!
Questions for you:
Would you attend something like this near you?
Have you attended a summit like this before?
Resources and Articles about the event:
- Official website – INFLOW Travel Summit
- Event location/accommodations – Swiss Otel – The Bosphorus
- Summit on new travel trends set to open in Istanbul
- Older post about the event in November for just influencers – Meet me in Istanbul! Inflow Travel Summit
- Post from GoatsontheRoad about coming to the April Summit
- The phenomenal bloggers met at the Inflow Travel Summit with giant brands – In Turkish but Google Chrome browser will translate for you
- HaberTurk – Inflow Travel Summit’17
