Worldwide travel blogger convention to hold North American Conference in Lafayette in October | Business

Travel Blog Exchange, which bills itself as the largest conference and networking event for travel bloggers and other media producers, will hold its North American Conference Oct. 12-14 at the Cajundome Convention Center.

The conference will bring over 200-400 TBEX partners from North America, Europe and Asia Pacific to network, learn and do business. It also attracts travel brands, public relations firms and destination marketing organizations.

The event was initially scheduled in 2020 in Lafayette but was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We know this will be the first time many of our attendees have visited Cajun & Creole country, and they will be overwhelmed by how much this city has to offer,” said Ricky Calvert, CEO and co-founder of New Media Expo and TBEX. “The Cajundome Convention Center perfectly fits our community’s tech-centered culture of travel content creators. Lafayette Convention & Visitors Commission truly understand the impact of travel bloggers and how important this shift to new media is for their city. We think they are a perfect destination organization to showcase what TBEX is all about.”

The convention is an opportunity for earned media, said said Lafayette Travel President and CEO Ben Berthelot. Bloggers will create content about Lafayette that will circulate and raise awareness of what the area has to offer. The convention is also expected to secure 600 room nights in local hotels.

“It will be a tremendous honor to host TBEX in October for its North American conference,” Berthelot said. “In addition to the room nights that the conference will generate, the most important part of having these bloggers in town will be tens of millions of dollars in earned media that it will generate in positive press for our area for years to come. Previous cities that have hosted the event, such as Huntsville, AL received over 41 million in earned media as a result of the conference.”