First Bristol Travel Massive Meetup on Trend!

April 20th marked the inaugural meetup of Bristol Travel Massive, offering almost fifty travel professionals an evening of busy yet casual networking at the Shore Bar of The Bristol Hotel.

Heather Cowper (Heather on her Travels) and I, (Jane Batt, Practically Perfect Mums and Taking 5) recently formed the new Bristol chapter as a forum for members of the region’s travel industry to connect and collaborate.

We opted for a simple networking format for this first meetup. The Bristol Hotel kindly offered to host the event and provide complementary wine and nibbles for the guests.

The warm April evening saw Bristol’s harbourside at its best, with folk sitting outside enjoying the evening sun and pleasant surroundings.

The Shore Bar’s waterfront location offered a perfect venue for our event. As soon as 7 o’clock struck, guests started to arrive and before long the venue was busy. Between conversations, it was great to look around and witness the cheerful buzz of almost fifty members of the travel industry enjoying a couple of hours of networking. Attendees ranged from bloggers, journalists, video producers and adventure travel companies to Bristol Airport, local tourist attractions such as the SS Great Britain, PR companies and DMOs.

Smart, friendly staff were a welcome sight as they circulated with wine and beautifully presented canapes!

Heather had cleverly suggested our date to tie in with this year’s Social Travel Britain conference which was being held in Bristol the subsequent two days, giving early arrivals a chance to connect with travel colleagues from the Bristol area. This worked well as conference organisers Steve Keenan and Mark Frary unofficially incorporated our Travel Massive meetup into their schedule and joined us for the evening. We were more than happy to support and attend their excellent conference in return.

Jane Batt and Heather Cowper with Fleet Street travel writers and Social Travel Conference founders, Mark Frary and Steve Keenan

When you gather together that many travel types with their collective finger on the social media pulse, it’s no great surprise to learn that our first Bristol meetup trended on Twitter but seeing the evidence is rewarding all the same!

#TravelMassiveBristol trending on twitter for four hours now

Many thanks to The Bristol Hotel for sponsoring the event and to everyone who attended, spread the word on social media and helped make the evening such a success.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I was asked how soon we could put on the next event and feedback following the meetup was overwhelmingly positive.

Having Travel Massive just before our Social Travel Britain conference in Bristol worked out really well. We were able to meet travel influencers from the South West, many of whom joined us at the conference in the following days.

Mark Frary
Social Travel Britain Founder and Travel Journalist, Sunday Times

Excellent first Travel Massive in Bristol, with a strong core of social and digital Bristol-lites. Really good kick-off to STB, with conversations began that night and continued for three days.

Steve Keenan
Social Travel Britain Founder and national print travel writer

It’s rather exciting to be part of this global movement which connects people in the travel industry all around the world and as the response to our first meetup was so good, we’re planning to organise future Bristol events approximately once a quarter. Some will simply bring together professionals in and around the city for networking and others will offer more of a structure, with an opportunity to learn through workshops or talks. All events will continue to be free to attend.

If you’d like to be kept informed about the Travel Massive Bristol scene then please sign up to the Bristol Chapter.

Jane is a video professional and writer. An established figure in the travel and parenting world, she runs two of her own websites, “Practically Perfect Mums“ and “Taking 5“ as well as writing on behalf of travel destinations and brands.