Web 2.0 Workshops

The Patronat de Turisme has held five workshops on new technologies, related to its 7^th Technical Conference, entitled “Web 2.0 and social networks, keys to today's tourism business”. The workshops were attended by 171 people.

In an increasingly globalised world in which information is transmitted at high speed through the new communication channels provided by social media, the Patronat de Turisme organised five specific workshops that provided basic tools and ideas for using and making the most of them. These five-hour workshops were attended by 171 professionals from the accommodation, restaurant, innovation and marketing, and public administration sectors.

The first workshop, entitled “Website monitoring and analysis” was led by Jabi Sánchez, SEO & PPC Account manager of Overalia, on 2^nd November at the PGA Golf Catalunya Resort. The workshop provided basic and applied knowledge on the functioning of Google Analytics and Adwords.

The second workshop, entitled “Web 2.0 applied to rural tourism” was led by Montse Peñarroya, General Manager of GEA Internet Project Consulting, and took place at the Hospici d'Olot building. It was attended by 49 people, including professionals from the rural tourism sector, hotel managers, tourism technicians, and representatives of associations and marketing companies. The attendees were split into groups of 3 and worked on the computer to learn about tools for producing a good benchmark test. Real cases were used, enabling group members to see what other companies and destinations do and learn how to plan their own strategy and monitor the results.

For the third workshop, entitled "Online reputation management (ORM)", two sessions were held in which attendees were shown how to know what people say about us on the Internet, where they talk about us and how to respond to positive and negative comments. The first session took place on Tuesday 16^th November at the Espai Armengol venue in Vilajuïga. It was led by Javier Jiménez, a manager of Internet projects for hotels and tourism destinations. The second session was led by Victor Puig, Director of Reputation and Contents at Overalia, on Monday 22^nd November at the Mas de Torrent Hotel & Spa. Both workshops were mainly attended by managers of hotel establishments, along with campsite and rural tourism accommodation managers.

Last of all, due to requests from those who attended the workshops held before 30^th November, a workshop entitled "How to be a good community manager" was held at the Hotel Carlemany, led once again by Montse Peñarroya and attended by 45 professionals from the sector. This workshop focused on various topics including what social media profiles should be like, what we should talk about, what tools we could use and how to make the most of our time; in short, knowledge that all community managers should have to carry out their work in a tourism company.

All the workshops could also be followed on our twitter channel with the hashtag #bitts and the presentations were subsequently uploaded on our website, www.costabrava.org, together with the talks and video of the day.