Traverse Year Review 2019

It has been an incredible year for Traverse! 2019 has been filled with lots of new and exciting projects, events and conferences!

Earlier this month the whole Traverse team spent a week in Lisbon, Portugal as part of the ‘Traverse Away Week’, where we had time to sit down as a team and discuss our business strategies for 2020, as well as reflect back on 2019. You can read more about the week in a blog post here. So I thought it would be great to write down what Traverse got up to in 2019 for anyone who might have missed any of our events.

January

We started off the year with lots of behind the scenes planning for all of the upcoming conferences and events in 2019.

Michael and Paul visited Hamburg at the beginning of the year to check out potential venues for the brand new video conference; KeyFrame. They spent four days checking out various venues, activities and locations to make sure that we hosted this conference in the best places.

February

KeyFrame 19

Date: 28 Feb – 3 March 2019
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Hashtag: #KeyFrame19

KeyFrame was our brand new video specific conference in Hamburg, Germany, in partnership with Travizeo held back in February this year. 

KeyFrame 19 was a great success, bringing together over 150 content creators, with a total of 53 sessions, 20 inspiring speakers, and four epic evening parties!

We’ve written up an overview of KeyFrame, so make sure to check it out here.

March

ITB Berlin

Date: 6 – 10 March 2019
Location: Berlin, Germany
Hashtag: #ITBBerlin

Straight after KeyFrame, the whole Traverse team headed over to Berlin where we attended ITB Berlin. Throughout the 3 days at the conference we attended over 30 meetings. On the Saturday, we also attended Berlin Travel Festival .

April

April was a busy month for us with all the logistics of organising Antigua Mini Conference, our flagship conference; Traverse 19, as well as the brand new conference BorderlessLive.

May

Antigua Mini Conference

Date: 6 – 12 May 2019
Location: Antigua, The Caribbean
Hashtag: #WhatCoolLooksLike

In May we flew to the Caribbean once again for another exciting mini conference in Antigua in partnership with the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority (ABTA).

Campaign with Princess Cruises

Date: 25 – 31 May 2019
Location: Southampton, La Coruña, Bilbao, Bordeaux, Guernsey
Hashtag: #DiscoverWithPrincess

In May we hosted our third campaign with Princess Cruises. For this campaign, we invited ten incredible content creators to experience their first ever cruise around Spain & France! To make it easier to find all of the content created, we’ve put together a project hub page where you can find all of the content for this campaign.

You can view all of the content produced from this campaign here.

New Traverse Member

Lastly towards the end of May, Traverse welcomed a new Traverse staff member to the team. Han joined us as a Project Manager focusing on the brand new conference; BorderlessLive.

June

Traverse 19 Conference

Date: 4 June – 14 June 2019
Location: Trento, Italy
Hashtag: #Traverse19

In June, the Traverse team set off to Italy to host our biggest European conference to date. We welcomed over 400 content creators; bloggers, vloggers, instagrammers, podcasters, digital marketers and writers in Trento.

We had people from all over the world (quite literally) come and join us in the wonderful town of Trento for our conference.

Over the course of the week we put on over 50 Mid Week Experiences, 55 seminars and sessions as well as 6 amazing (hangover-inducing) evening parties.

We have also written up an overview of everything that happened at Traverse 19, so if you’re interested to read about our conference in more detail, check it out here.

Traverse Creators Awards

Date: 8 June 2019
Location: Trento, Italy
Hashtag: #TraverseCreatorAwards

On Saturday 8 June, we hosted our brand new TraverseCreatorAwards.

These Awards involved no public voting and instead were judged by a panel of creatives, experts and those who work closely with content creators.

We wrote up a very special blog post about all of the winners from this year’s Traverse Creator Awards, so if you missed the Awards or would like to see a list of all the winner, head over to over blog to have a read.

July

Campaign with Dominica

Date: 4 – 9 July 2019
Location: Dominica, The Caribbean
Hashtag: #UnknownDominica

Back in July, Traverse and Discover Dominica Authority (DDA) sent six talented content creators to produce content that showcased the hidden, undiscovered gems that the beautiful Caribbean island of Dominica has to offer. The group of influencers took part in a range of activities, including scuba diving, cooking classes, whale watching, hiking and visiting the stunning Emerald Pool.

You can view all of the content which was created from this campaign over on our project hub page.

August

Three Film Festival

Date: 7 & 8 August
Location: London, UK
Hashtag: #ThreeFilmFestival

On Wednesday 7 & Thursday 8 August we hosted a private screening for the Three Film Festival in partnership with Three. Across the two evenings we welcomed over 80 guests at the Close-Up Film Centre in London.

The idea behind this project was to test and show the camera quality of various mobile devices such as; Samsung S10+, Google Pixel 3, Huawei P30 Pro, One Plus Pro 7 and iPhone XS Max.

We then sent these devices to 16 incredible content creators who had around 2 – 4 weeks to create a short 2 – 10 minutes documentary, vlog or cinematic film with their device, which we then showed at a private screening earlier this week.

For both evenings, we invited other fellow content creators to come watch the incredible films along with those who created them. Throughout the evening, we enjoyed some music, networking, some delicious mini burgers and chips along with a few drinks and popcorn.

Event with Macao Tourism

Date: 14 August 2019
Location: London, UK
Hashtag: #WowMacao

Back in August, we hosted an exciting evening with Macao which took attendees on a journey as we discovered some of its best food, drinks, culture and art at SAMA Bankside. We enjoyed cocktail making classes, food demonstrations from the wonderful Jonathan Phang, VR experiences, a green screen and some very special entertainment in the form of an acrobatic duo.

September

BorderlessLive

Date: 6 – 7 September 2019
Location: London, UK
Hashtag: #BorderlessLive

During the two day event we welcomed over 600 attendees and 35 exhibitors (various brands and destinations).

This conference gave the opportunity for content creators, exhibitors and attendees to network with each other at brand stands, also during the the Speed Networking sessions, as well as at the three evening events we hosted.

We also created a packed conference schedule of informative and inspiring sessions. Topics ranged from SEO to film editing, securing a book deal to blogging for the right reasons.

We were joined by over 50 inspiring speakers, including our wonderful headline speakers; Louis Cole aka Fun For Louis and Sorelle Amore, who spoke about using social media to change the world and capitalising on your small audience for maximum reach respectively.

We also hosted various evening events, which you can read all about here.

If you missed this year, make sure to check out all the information over on the BorderlessLive website to get involved and save 11-12 September in your diaries!

We created a BorderlessLive 2019 round up blog post which you can read here.

October

Campaign with Princess Cruises

Date: 15 – 20 October 2019
Location: Trieste, Kotor and Athens
Hashtag: #SkyPrincess

Traverse and Princess Cruises sent nine talented content creators and influencers on very special 5 day cruise on board the brand new Sky Princess, starting in Trieste, Italy and finishing in Athens, Greece!

You can discover more about it on our projects page here.

Project with VisitEngland

Date: October 2019
Location: Brighton, Bristol, Sheffield and Margate
Hashtag: #MyMicrogap

During the month of October we partnered up with VisitEngland to showcase the amazing experiences you can have on a Microgap by hosting The Microgap Weekender!

The Microgap Weekenders were a series of day trips that took place around England, showing off some of the microgaps you can do in England.

We worked with a total of 80 content creators over the four weekends, where we hosted them in four different cities; Sheffield, Bristol, Brighton and Margate.

The message of this campaign was to ‘Switch Off, Give Back, Learn More or Go Wild’. In order to show this message along with the best bits of a gap year, each content creator created online content around this.

November

WTM Mingle

Date: 1 November 2019
Location: London, UK
Hashtag: #TraverseMingle

The annual Traverse Mingle took place at the Royal Star, as we partnered with Spain to welcome over 150 attendees for an evening of relaxing catching up ahead of WTM the following week.

World Travel Market London

Date: 4 – 6 November 2019
Location: London, UK
Hashtag: #WTMLDN | #WTMLondon

This was Traverse’s 7th year at World Travel Market London, and it sure was a busy one for the whole team.

Here’s a few numbers just to sum up the three days at WTM and what we got up to:

• 6 on stand events
• 2 evening parties
• 30+ pre-arranged meetings
• 5 seminars
• 14 speakers
• 1,100 seminar attendees
• 1 Traverse Mingle (pre-WTM party)

The 5 seminars included the most hot and important topics in our industry in 2019. Below are the seminars we ran:

• “Content Creation 2019-2025: What the Next Five Years Hold for Influencers”
• “Bridging the Gap: How to Connect With Inclusive Communities Online”
• “Every Traveller Matters: One Perspective to Another”
• “Responsible Social & Content Creation”
• “Promoting Controversial Destinations: The Good, the Bad and the Morally Questionable” .

Event with Gran Canaria

Date: 26 November 2019
Location: London, UK
Hashtag: #LasPalmasdeGranCanaria

On Tuesday 26 November we hosted an evening event with Gran Canaria Tourist Board where we invited 50 content creators for a fun evening of bowling at the All Star Lanes in Holborn. It was a super fun evening, full of festive food, drinks and networking.

As part of the event, we also gave away two amazing prizes (five nights stay in a five star luxury hotel) to the winner of our bowling competition and also the best social media post on the evening itself.

Congratulations to the two winners: Sven and Ashley!

December

Traverse Away Week

Date: 1 – 7 December 2019
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Hashtag: #TraverseAwayWeek

The Traverse team spent the first week of December in Lisbon where we had time to recharged, pitch some exciting new ideas, re-focus our business strategy for 2020 and of course, explore the beautiful city of Lisbon!

Project with Three UK

Hashtag: #GoRoam

Throughout 2019, we worked with Three UK on a variety of project, one of them being the ‘Phones Are Good’ and ‘On The Road’.

The purpose of this new project with Three is to look at when mobile devices really help people in their day to day lives. Thinking beyond the 2am Uber or Spotify playlist. For some people a phone does so much more than add convenience to their lives, they truly enhance them.


The idea of this project is to showcase the importance of staying connected whilst on the road.

Campaign with Spanish Islands

Hashtag: #SpanishIslands

In December we worked on a very exciting online project with Spain Tourism Board to promote the Canary and Balearic islands. Make sure to check out the #SpanishIslands hashtag to see all the content produced so far!

Things coming up in 2020 …

• Winter Wonderland Conference in Trentino – 6-16 January 2020

We’re so excited to return to Trentino once more following the success of Traverse 19, this time for Trentino Winter Wonderland Camp. We’ll be joined by 25 talented content creators. Make sure to follow along using the #WinterInTrentino hashtag.

• BorderlessLive – 11 & 12 September 2020

Join us for the second edition of BorderlessLive taking place in the Tobacco Dock once again. For more information make sure to head to the BorderlessLive website here.

And of course we will also be announcing Traverse 20 along with more exciting projects and events so stay tuned.