Pamela Whitby has been penning notes in London and has compiled a by no means exhaustive list of quotable quotes from the Connected Traveller event this week

Over the past two days representatives from airlines, airports hotels, OTAs, airports, ground transportation, tours & activities and trains not to mention the big IT and media players in the travel have been gathered in London to discuss the future of connected travel.

In the coming weeks we’ll be reporting back on the discussion in more detail, but in the meantime here is some food for thought. 

From the keynotes

Customers want information, communication and control

Dara Brady, Head of Digital Experience, Ryanair, who was sharing insights into the 18-month digital about turn that is putting the customer first and helping the Irish carrier fast become one of the world’s biggest airlines

It’s all about customer time management. About getting the right information, from the right supplier to the customer at the right time

Julien Nicolas, COO Europe, Voyages-sncf.com on CTM, the new customer relationship management

Being simple isn’t an edge, it is a requirement today

Theoretical physicist Joerg Esser, Managing Director Hotels4U, Thomas Cook believes digitisation forces companies to focus on their core and deliver this in the simplest and cleanest way

If I see another mobile agency case study saying that the users who download the app are more valuable, I will shoot myself and probably the person delivering it

A stark warning from Tom Valentine, CCO, Secret Escapes

From ground transportation

Autonomous driving. Nothing that has gone before is a gamechanger. This is

Forget urbanisation and ‘sharing economy’ upstarts like Uber, Robert Henrich, CEO of Daimler owned Moovel on the real force shaping ground transportation

Are there any travel management companies here? They should be

Tommi Holmgren, Chief Product Officer, Cabforce seems worried that the business travel community hasn't grasped the importance of the connected traveller

It’s a question people always ask but no, Uber isn’t a threat to our business; if anything, it creates more opportunity 

Notably absent from the panel on ground transportation but never far from the conservation, Peter Rooney, Marketing Director at Rentalcars.com comments on the Uber impact. His view: Uber helps more people ditch their vehicles, boosting demand for longer-term car rentals

Reinventing hitchhiking and getting paid for it

Conference chair Rémy Merckx, VP of Digital Marketing at The Rezidor Hotel Group on Blablacar, a French company he is happy to see innovating

From the airlines and airports

In a digital world, the customer owns himself. The power lies with the consumer

Guy Stephenson, CCO, Gatwick Airport responds to the question: in this connected world, who owns the customer?

We need to innovate around it [legacy systems] rather than ripping up the rulebook

While it would be great for airlines to start with a clean technology sheet in the cloud, David Cadenhead, Director of Information Technology CityJet says the grandfather of airline technology is here to stay

“We have been working a lot in silos but we [the industry] need to start collaborating and innovating together”

This will be the way forward on the road to ‘enchanting’ the connected traveller, says Pernilla Edelsvard, Head of Digital, at Scandinavian Airlines

The journey should be open. We need to make everything available by API platforms to all those that play a role in travel journey

Harm van Hees, Head of E-commerce, Transavia on the importance of integrating third-party data

A thought from a hotel management company

We create ‘selfie’ points in hotels; situations or locations where we know people will take pictures 

In 2015, the year of the selfie, Daniel Wishnia, Director of Digital Promotion & eCommerce Manager, GCH Hotels GmbH says this move has significantly boosted their exposure on social media

Google speaks

One in six of the 3bn daily queries made on Google have never been seen before

Anna Chomse, Head of Travel at Google pitches to the travel industry on why they might need another Google product – Dynamic Search Ads. As the name suggests, the product dynamically creates adverts that relates to what the user is searching for in real-time, even the if search isn't in your keyword or query list

Tours & Activities, in destination

It would be slightly insane for us to compromise our reviews

Rory Kenny, Head of Mobile EMEA, Tripadvisor reassures a delegate worried that Tripadvisor's move from being a travel media player to world’s biggest OTA will impact the integrity of hotel rankings

Today we are the shop window and not the shop anymore

Joss Croft, Marketing Director, Visit Britain, on the changing role of the destination marketer in a data driven digital world

One of the fundamental issues in voucher redemption today is fraud 

Mobile technology can help address this, says Alex Bainbridge, CEO,TourCMS

IT and marketing is an odd couple. We have to get on but how?

For what is still a largely paper-based sector, is it time for a marketing-IT marriage, wonders Ben Hopkins, e-Commerce and Digital Marketing, CityCruises

From the techies

TomTom’s business model was destroyed by the iPhone but adapted by building their API strategy

If you want to survive in the digital world, you need to take the API economy seriously, says Liad Bokovsky, Director of Strategic Partnerships & Innovations, Tibco Mashery

If you missed this event, don’t miss the next EyeforTravel conference Online Marketing Strategies for Travel Europe 2015 24-25 November | Novotel Amsterdam City