Recap: Social Media and the Travel Industry Roundtable

I boarded the Megabus to New York City yesterday to attend a roundtable discussion about how social media has impacted the travel industry.

The panelists included:

• Stacy Small– President of Elite Travel International, @elitetravelgal
• Brian Simpson- Director of Social Hospitality at Roger Smith Hotel, @RSHotel
• Kim Mance– Editor of GoGalavanting.com and TBEX 2010 Host, @KimMance
• Meg Nesterov– Account Executive at Hawkins International PR, @thenotoriousmeg

To be honest, I enjoyed meeting people at the event more than the actual discussion (search #NYSMRT on Twitter), though I did find it interesting how Meg approaches social media from a professional PR standpoint, and Stacy was leveraging Twitter to gain business for her travel agency.  I had already become familiar with the social media success of the Roger Smith Hotel at the last roundtable I attended in Tribeca.

Before the event, I bumped into Mike from Vagabondish, who was just as funny in person as he was when I interviewed him for Travel Blog Success.  I also met Robert Reid from Lonely Planet (and Reid on Travel), Pete Meyers from EuroCheapo, Anna from Frill Seeker Diary (and moderator for the night), and a few others.  I confirmed with Sean and Alisha from Sosauce that their office had fully recovered from the New Year's Eve fire.

After the post-discussion mingling settled down, a bunch of us headed to Tavern on Jane for beers and late night buffalo burgers.  Our motley crew included Robert, Kim, Mike, Michaela from Briefcase to Backpack and her husband, Erick from Adventure Insider, and myself.

The banter was off the charts, and I teared up more than once from the laughter.  If last night was any indication of what the Travel Blog Exchange conference will be like in June, we're all in for A LOT of fun that weekend.