Rhodes Tourism Professionals Explore Digital Marketing Opportunities

Mariliza Chatzilazarou, Rhodes Deputy Mayor for Tourism; Marietta Papavasileiou, South Aegean Vice Governor for Tourism; Thanasis Nellas, Rhodes Business Center Director at Eurobank; Ioanna Dretta, CEO of Marketing Greece; and Giorgos Matsigos, President of the Rhodes Association of Hotel Managers.

Ways of optimizing the techniques and tools of digital marketing were analyzed during the “Rhodes Loading | Digital Marketing” conference, which was recently held by Marketing Greece, Eurobank and the INSETE institute on the island of Rhodes.

More than 150 participants from the tourism field had the opportunity to learn more and discuss on the possibilities of social media; the optimization of data; the audience segmentation; the value of content; and the role of digital PR. Furthermore, they received tips on the opportunities offered by TripAdvisor’s platform.

“The conference aimed to provide know-how to tourism enterprises in order for them to become more extrovert and directly address the traveler through targeted messages and modern tools,” Marketing Greece CEO Ioanna Dretta said.

“Marketing Greece’s main aim is to develop synergies, whose results will reach all and actively support not only the tourist product but also the people behind it,” she added.

South Aegean Region Vice Governor for Tourism Marietta Papavasileiou said that the rapidly developing dynamics of digital marketing, as well as the new methods and techniques, should be adjusted to the current needs. Presenting the regions’s  strategy, she said: “Through the internet, the South Aegean Region has managed to make its island complex widely known, as an area of unique destinations with distinctive features that determine the tourism identity of each island”.

Representing the island’s hoteliers, the president of the Rhodes Association of Hotel Managers, Giorgos Matsigos, spoke of the importance of the collaboration between organizations such as Marketing Greece and Eurobank. “We need to make use of the unlimited opportunities offered on the internet, always aiming on quality, in order to compete with other tourism destinations and promote the features of each area in a direct effective way,” he underlined.

Rhodes island. Photo Source: Visit Greece

The conference’s speakers included Kostis Kapopoulos, Co- founder and CEO, W2Strategy; Κonstantinos Kambakis, Managing Director, ForestView; Kostis Fronimos, CEO, Global Media; Nikos Diamantopoulos, Web & Digital Marketing Director, Marketing Greece; Ioannis Triantafyllidis, Performance Marketing Manager, Forestview;  Yiannis Yiannopoulos, Founder and Managing Partner, FinDigital; Charis Brousalian, Sales and Marketing Manager, Greek Travel Pages; and Thrasy Petropoulos, PR and Communication Consultant, Marketing Greece.