All right, welcome everybody. We are in season 7 episode 22 and this is the final episode of the Boothley podcast for series 7.

We've had really big season. This is the longest season that I've gone on for normally I do five

six seven episodes in the season we've gone for 22 and I thought the best way to

finish this season before we kick start season eight is coming up very shortly

is to do a little takeaway.

In season six, I did a takeaway of the full season,

but in this I want to do a takeaway on two specific conferences

that I've recently attended.

One was in Athens, which is called the Book of Direct Symposium.

And the other one was in London, where it's the more bookings direct event.

The reason why I want to talk about these is because it was very clearly around

one topic which was book direct. I'm going to go and talk about the book direct symposium first which

was organized by Steve Kupandi and I'm going to move on to more book and direct, which was organized by a guy called

Damien Sheridan. So the Book Direct Symposium, the way that this has always worked, the

Symposium, it wasn't their first year, the Symposium has been around for quite a few years.

It has been born and created from a gentleman that was in the tours and activities sector.

Cycle C's, is his network and over the last couple of years he's noticed that the pains and problems of business owners in cycle tours is the same as what's happening in hospitality.

So this year he organized the event in Athens.

It's based over a couple of days.

It's on the 18th of February, 21st of February.

And what he wanted to do was he wanted to combine the tourism activities

world with the Hospitality. You reached out to me, I was recommended to him by somebody that he knew because I talk about direct book and this is what this whole

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