Barcelona: The organisers of The Trip Circus 2020 have announced the agenda and a first set of speakers for the inaugural event.
The conference will bring together over 500 participants from the worldwide hotel and short-term rental industries for discussions with CEOs, heads of associations, regulators, industry influencers and members of the accommodation community. The Trip Circus will be held at Poble Espanyol in Barcelona from 4-5 June 2020.
The focus for The Trip Circus is on speakers who are actively involved in the collaboration of hotels and short-term rentals – from either a business, operations, experience, technology, distribution or regulation perspective.
Among the growing list of speakers, the first are as follows:
- Markus Luthe – political economist [“Diplom-Volkswirt”] and CEO of the German Hotel Association (IHA) since 2005.
- Simon Lehmann – CEO and founder of AJL Consulting, where his main focus is the private accommodation and vacation rental space. He previously served as CEO of one of the world’s largest vacation rental companies as well as on the board of HomeAway, plus as CEO of Phocuswright Inc in New York.
- Amy Hinote – Amy Hinote is the founder and editor-in-chief of VRM Intel Magazine, and also founder of Key Data Dashboard, which provides aggregated market intelligence and reporting for vacation rental managers.
- Richard Vaughton – experienced short-term rental veteran and advisor to a small number of well known companies, such as Stay Alfred and OVO Network, and co-founder of Rentivo.
- Zeev Rosenberg – general manager of Boutique Hotel i31 since 2012, with experience as hotel director at the Best Western President Berlin and the Indigo Berlin Alexanderplatz [opening team from Indigo Hardenbergstrasse, Holiday Inn Alexanderplatz and the Indigo Alexander].
- Martim Gois – founder-CEO of Valpas, a startup with a mission to advance thoughtful travel.
- Moritz Klussmann – CEO and co-founder of Customer Alliance, one of the European market leaders for customer experience management and online reputation management.
- Ullrich Kastner – managing partner and co-founder of myhotelshop.
- Pierre Becerril – CEO of Transparent, a leading global company in providing data intelligence for the vacation rental industry.
- Sarah DuPre – sales director at Airbnb data & analytics company AirDNA, where she helps property managers, hoteliers and local governments comprehend the impact of Airbnb and the sharing economy on their local area. She also works with real estate investors to help them find the best opportunities for short-term rental investment.
- Graham Donoghue – CEO of Sykes Holiday Cottages, with over 20 years’ experience in digital transformation covering many disciplines from product innovation, technology, general management, digital marketing and operations.
- Antonio Bortolotti – founder of the Vacation Rental World Summit [VRWS], now in its seventh edition.
- Enrique Alcantara – CEO and founder of Stay U-nique, a hyper local property management company based in Barcelona.
- Sascha Hausmann – CEO and co-founder of Busy Rooms, partner and co-founder of StellantPartners, and partner of Howzat Partners. Hausmann runs an M&A, strategic and operational consultancy in the travel, hospitality and technology sector, and manages an early-stage venture capital fund in digital businesses respectively.
- Vanessa de Souza Lage – chief marketing director and co-founder of Rentals United. Founder of the VrTech brand which includes the Vacation Rental Start-Up Awards, VrTech Meet-Ups and the Vacation Rental Tech Week. Recently named as one of “Top ten people to watch in the vacation rental industry in 2020” by ShortTermRentalz.
Announced agenda addresses a wide range of accommodation and convergence topics. Complete with information on the latest industry trends, as well as future challenges that are front of mind, the agenda features a broad program of presentations, panels, workshops and roundtable discussions over two days.
The Trip Circus will explore cross-cutting issues of direct importance to the industry:
- Vacation rentals vs hotels: which industry is the better investment?
- Raising the bar in hotel concepts / in vacation rental concepts
- Can we harmonise regulations and star ratings across the accommodation sector?
- A property manager and hotelier compare the tech they use every day
- A walk through the regulation jungle for hotels and vacation rentals
- What’s missing in hospitality education?
- Will Google become the only OTA?
- Do hotels lose business to vacation rentals or vice versa? The hard stats.
- The data guys have tons of stats… should we go back to basics?
- Millions of funding for cool tech – meet the CEOs of startup tech companies
- The challenges of entering the vacation rental space
Sascha Hausmann of The Trip Circus said: “We are excited and pleased that so many influential leaders from the hotel and short-term rental world have already committed to speak at The Trip Circus 2020. Their experience and leadership will allow for critical and insightful discussions at the conference.”
The Trip Circus will be releasing more news developments over the next three months.
For more information, visit The Trip Circus website here.
