Echoing an article written in French, 2016 will see a dramatic increase in content, and, therefore, it will become more and more difficult to arise from the “mass” and make your brand/values shine.

That’s why, to all of you, in the digital world (is there any other place? ;)), I wish BEAUTY for 2016.

Beauty nestles strong bounds. Because:

Beauty is Emotion.

Beauty is Connection.

And you can find beauty – almost – anywhere:

• Beauty of nature
• Beauty of your engagement
• Beauty of the community
• Beauty of a shared moment, of the experience
• Beauty of products
• Beauty of creation,
• … so much more, it’s up to you to decline this infinite list.

Inspired by @gapingvoid:

But reflecting a very old credo of mine, already developed in 2008, in this article >>>

After more than 10 years training & coaching  tourism & hospitality professionnals in digital marketing, it has become obvious to me that it is an – underevaluated – strategical asset for a destination.

Bring together a maximum of destination’s partners, help them acquire the right digital skills, train them, coach them, drive them according to the destination’s positioning and USP, and you’ll witness the results. The destination will start to shine and touch new, wider, specific target potential customers. Its core values and assets will become embodied in “particle messages”, creating the overall targeted perception. And, in fine, generate leads and sales.

Throughout the years, after having developed a Diploma for tourism & hospitality professionals in Switzerland based on my own idea and initiative, the results are impressive and support the above mentioned elements.

Thank you Daniel Plancic for having supported the project (and me!), with high expectations and pertinent, sensitive, constructive remarks. Long life to this diploma, Cursus diplme gestionnaire emarketing et réseaux sociaux pour le tourisme, l’hôtellerie et la restauration – Lausanne – Claudia Benassi Faltys, formation digital marketing..

The #hashtag is at the heart of the most powerful marketing opportunities of the moment. As “The Hub for the Shared Love”, as I once defined it, well understood and strategically deployed, it allows marketing campaigns with a deep impact and large visibility.

The tourism industry, marked by a high emotional component, has all it needs to make the #hashtag one of its preferred marketing strategies.

Here are a couple of slides in French presented at EHL alumni back in May.

Please credit this post if finding it somehow useful.

This is the time when you look back at what you have accomplished in the past year and you turn and look onwards at what’s coming in the next months.

2013, first: after almots 10 years teaching digital marketing to tourism and hospitality professionals, I set up a Diploma of “E-marketing and social media manager for tourism, hospitality and restaurants”, officially recognized in Switzerland by the leading association “hotelleriesuisse”. It’s been immediately a huge success, “sold out” weeks before the beginning. The full training leading to the Diploma has taken place two times in 2013. It’s been a big amount of work defining the objectives, skills to be developed, what kind of work to deliver for the exam, the evaluation criteria, …. But it was worth the effort, the quality of the training having been highly rated. And, above all, the participants were enthusiastic! I really enjoyed these experiences.

In parallel of that, I’ve been myself following a training program and have obtained a CAS (Certificate of Advanced Studies) of trainer for adults. I decided to continue and I am currently heading towards the “Brevet Fédéral de Formatrice d’Adultes”, basically  a University level degree, in the professional field (not Academic), allowing you to have your own Training Institution, with quality labels, or more generally to be responsible of or to set up and engineer training programs.

The third domain I’ve been active in the past years, and still in 2013, is innovation, with the continuous development of Solo: Solo Mobile has become a service, fully cloud-based, it still is, and more than ever, a highly innovative service and I am proud to be member of the team and member of the board. In 2013, we launched solocloud.ch, from scratch: strategy, communication strategy, brand identity, web site, social media, sales collaterals, etc.. Before the creation and launching of solocloud, we spent a lot of time imagining the Business Model, with the precious help of the Business Model Generation method (I am proud to have the first generation book, with a beautiful paperback.. I love that book!).

And since things tend to follow naturally, I got a very nice and stimulating mandate: to help set up and teach at a CAS part of an Executive MBA in Tourism Innovation (mandate of Prof. Schegg). The CAS is about Etourism – TIC-Driven Innovations. The official EMBA program is HERE. It hence perfectly rounds up my main activities of the past year: Innovation, Etourism, Marketing, Adults Training.

Other projects for 2014, besides obtaining the “Brevet” include developing new training programs in digital marketing and some consulting mandates.

As you may know, I am a believer of the #genflux mindset, so I also share here bits of personal projects:

On a more private level, 2014 will see a trip to Boston (Feb) (mixing professional visits to private ones), starting with some running trails, like this one: Trail de la Vallee de Joux, and some cycling tours.

So, the upcoming months will be very intensive.. chances are that you see me less on Facebook! :))… But still on Instagram @clodia_me

Cheers, and do not hesitate to share here your thoughts and comments.