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I had three goals this year, while visiting the Philly Travel and Adventure Show.
- Hear some great speakers
- Spend time with other bloggers and vloggers
- Practice my networking skills
Speakers
There was a great line up of speakers this year at the Travel and Adventure Show.
We started off the day with Samantha Brown. We’ve heard her speak before, and her talks are always inspiring.
She talked about her new show Samantha Brown’s Places to Love. It will air on PBS and she is the host and the producer. Samantha Brown mentioned something I never noticed before. The majority of travel shows are hosted by men. Not only is she an advocate for more travel shows that are actually about travel, she is also an advocate for more women in travel TV.
This time around we decided to wait in line and get a picture with Samantha. She was incredibly kind.
Next, we caught Marsha Barton from Visit Anchorage. Since we are visiting Alaska this summer, we wanted to get as much information as possible.
Lee Abbamonte is the youngest person to visit every country in the world. He’s also visited the North and South Poles. He had interesting travel stories.
Aside from Samantha Brown, the other person we really wanted to see at the Philly Travel and Adventure Show, was Brian Kelly aka The Points Guy.
The Points Guy is a website that dispenses information needed to maximize your credit card points to get free and/or discounted travel.
The maximizing of points is more my husband Shannon’s department, but I was equally excited to hear Brian.
Brian was amazing. He is clearly living his best life and he isn’t taking anything for granted. He is aware of how bonkers it is to go from writing his first few blog posts to being the CEO of his own, major, brand, and being a main speaker at the Philly Travel and Adventure Show.
We got our picture with Brian and thanked him for his website, as we used credit card points to fly to Africa last year. He was the nicest, coolest, guy.
Hanging out with other Bloggers and Vloggers
After many years of following her blog and social media, I finally met Philly Grub. She always has great write-ups and suggestions for places to eat in Philadelphia and South Jersey. If you plan on visiting Philadelphia, make sure you check out her website to know the best places to eat.
It was also nice to see Philatravelgirl again. Her points game is strong. She always seems to be several trips ahead of me, which I love, because her posts offer great information. I read her South Africa posts several times while planning our trip.
Last but not least, while waiting in line to meet Samantha Brown, I met Louis. Louis is an autistic, scuba diving, travel vlogger, who also has a passion for Pokemon Go. You can find him at Louis’ Adventures. Louis is an ambassador for a non-profit organization called DiveHeart. DiveHeart teaches scuba diving skills to individuals with special abilities.
Practicing Networking Skills
This was the first time I attended the Travel and Adventure Show with a press pass.
Just in case you didn’t know, if you have a press pass, you can go onto the floor before the show officially opens. I walked in and was pretty much the only person with a press pass walking around.
Being an introvert, I find face to face networking, terrifying. I’ll be doing quite a bit of it this year, so I thought the Travel and Adventure Show would be a good place to practice.
During this pre-show time, I was able to forge, what I hope will be, a lasting relationship, with Visit South Jersey. They invited me on a FAM tour they are having in May.
I had a nice chat with the marketing representative from Atlantic City’s, Steel Pier. I’ll never give up hope that one day, Atlantic City, will become a fabulous destination.
Finally, I got to have an extensive conversation with Visit Anchorage. Since there was no one else around, I had plenty of time to talk and exchange information. For the rest of the show they were swamped with people.
Go early if you are a blogger or vlogger.
I thought that the Philly Travel and Adventure Show was better this year than in years past, and I look forward to it being even better next year. Now if only Southie Jack would speak at the Philly show, all of my Adventure Show dreams would come true.
