World Travel Market London 2016’s Conference and Event programme experienced a 5% increase, taking the number of attendees to a record of almost 19,000.
The conference and events programme included sessions on aviation, hospitality, sports tourism, technology, digital, wellness and responsible tourism and featured some of the biggest names in the industry… Industry expert Doug Lansky and digital futurist Brian Solis were the keynote speakers.

Why are marketers undertaking digital transformation more quickly than everyone else? Solis suggested it’s because they are leading the charge in technology investments to upgrade and build touch points that lead connected customers along a more productive journey. And customer experience has become a major strategic priority for organizations that wish to remain competitive.

In a recent exclusive interview, he said thought leadership can be measured by social media responses, like followers and “likes,” or book sales and placement on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

“These are the numbers that become the standards for the next generation of thought leaders,” Solis said.

Tools like IBM Watson “introduce machine learning to understand what human beings have a hard time seeing in the context of their work,” said Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter. “Machine learning will allow companies to see things they wouldn’t otherwise, because of the cognitive bias that exists in the relationship between humans and the data they collect.”

A tension remains between what digital transformation is and who should own it, said Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter. “The challenge is that businesses don’t yet fully realize the promise of digital transformation or the purpose of it—they still look at it as a technology play,” he said.

“Bedrijven denken vaak dat ze de klant centraal stellen, maar in de werkelijkheid zijn het vaak de aandeelhouders. En dat is oké”, stelt Solis. “Maar de consumenten veranderen en stellen steeds hogere eisen. Bedrijven moeten nieuwe manieren zoeken om te verbinden met consumenten en waarde te creëren. Daarom moeten we human-centric zijn, om het soort ervaringen te ontwerpen dat betekenis heeft en shareable is.”

Brian Solis, who is interested in “digital anthropology,” said the possibility of being a so-called “bad friend” for opting to go mainly digital is something people are still adapting to.

“We are getting lazier, and so putting something on a wall is checked off as a personal interaction for most people,” he said. “But we’re learning the hard way, through experience — so there really is no answer to the ‘bad friend’ notion. It’s all user-defined.”

“Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology” — Brian Solis

Western military forces – in most cases – are in fact anti-social.

There is no real intention of engagement, no replies to comments or tweets. We busy ourselves measuring likes, comments, shares, retweets and reach but the parade of shallow vanity metrics being delivered in reports as a solid return on investment does little to measure or quantify the actual strategic effect applied. In many cases, the strategic effect is unclear or absent to begin with.

What comes out clearly, reading the report – based on the input of more than 500 digital transformation strategists and executives – is that “innovation has become a key priority in digital transformation efforts. This trend is rapidly gaining momentum as companies look to the startup ecosystem as a means to innovate and tap into the new expertise and talent often missing from more traditional organizations.”

Author and influencer Brian Solis asserts that a customer’s journey, right from searching to buying a product or service comprises of ‘micro moments’, which marketers need to cater to by deploying new tools and techniques birthed by technology that boost the chances of making their products and services discoverable. Especially since Google noticed that 90% of people who search for products or services on their smartphones initially do so without having any particular brand in mind, and 65% hunt for the most relevant information regardless of who is providing it. He uses the term ‘Digital Darwinism‘ to refer to the varying but inevitable degree of disruption brought about by technology on various businesses.