Conferences and Education

Program Details - Wednesday

Wednesday, October 1st
10:00 am – 11:00 am
Creating an Outstanding Service Company
Focus: Growing Guest Satisfaction - and Profit

Welcome to a 45-minute whirlwind tour of what it takes to create an outstanding service company. Hospitality & service management expert, Mike Hohnen, presents an enlightening and stimulating exploration of how to create and maintain outstanding service in your organization.

Mr. Hohnen starts with the premise that we live in a world of abundance: there is too much of most things and attracting new businesses is no longer a question of making more noise than all the others. Consumers have developed highly selective hearing and mainly look for information from sources they trust. This means shifting our marketing focus from being "noisy" to developing passionate ambassadors.

Mike will explore key concepts such as the Service Profit Chain, how to transform satisfied customers into fiercely loyal customers, and how a focus on internal quality can help create the value that outstanding companies are built on.

Mike Hohnen is the founder of GROW ApS, a company that provides concept development and strategic business development plans for the hospitality and retail industry. He has over 27 years experience in the hospitality, retail and food service industries. He writes and lectures extensively.

Speaker: Mike Hohnen

Wednesday, October 1st
11:15 am 12:15 pm
Ode to Joy - The Attractions Industry Now and in The Future
Focus: Setting the Strategy

David Camp (Economic Research Associates, USA) moderates this session as Mr. Richard Golding, CEO, Parques Reunidos, and Roland Mack, Managing Director, Europa Park, discuss the current state of the leisure industry in Europe and its future direction, the impact of technology and the internet on the industry, how to satisfy changing consumer trends, the increasing brand consciousness of consumers, and how to provide value for money.

Speakers: Richard Golding, CEO, Parques Reunidos, and Roland Mack, Managing Director, Europa Park, moderator David Camp, ERA.

Wednesday, October 1st
14:00 pm – 15:15 pm
Marketing 2.0: New Marketing Strategies for the Industry
Focus: Growing Guest Satisfaction - and Profit

"Whether you like it or not, your guests are communicating with you: it's called the Internet," US facility operator in 2006.

In the space of a few short years, new marketing and Internet based tools have changed the face of business including the attractions industry. Customers search for your facility on Google, they upload movies of their visit to your facility on U-tube and share photos and comments with each other on Face Book and other social networking sites. What can the attractions industry do to manage this change in marketing communications and how can it leverage the opportunity that it presents? How can the attractions industry create more profit from current visitors and attract new profitable customers by using Marketing 2.0 techniques and enlarge the customer-value and extend the customer-life-cycle of visitors? Join trend-watcher, Richard van Hooijdonk of MarketingMonday as he looks at the latest trends in Marketing 2.0 from 'co-creation' to 'viral marketing.'

Mr. van Hooijdonk will present a live 'step-by-step' case study that your management and marketing can use to learn how to build a better business using intelligent Marketing 2.0 strategies using viral marketing, online campaigns, customer-databases and online propositions.

Speaker: Richard van Hooijdonk, director of MarketingMonday, teacher at business university Nyenrode and Erasmus University and author of the book 'Heading for Marketing 2.0'.

Wednesday, October 1st
15:30 pm – 16:45 pm
B2B: Profiting from Corporate Special Events
Focus: Growing Guest Satisfaction - and Profit

Professional attractions operators are using their expertise in catering, special event management and marketing to build highly successful and profitable corporate events. We hear from three facility operators how they developed their corporate programs, how they market them and how they partner with other brands to build B2B profits.

Speakers: Michael Kreft von Byern, Europapark; Dorte Gleie, Tivoli Gardens, and Michael Kaefer, Oktoberfest.