In today’s episode of the Travel Industry Mavericks, Peter Syme, Christian Watts chats with Chris Newlands about his unique business model and the journey that led to the creation of spelfie.com.
We discuss how COVID has changed Chris’s business landscape and the challenges of bringing brands, events, and partners together. We discuss how Spelfie works, the unique benefits brands get when partnering with them at events, and how Spelfie can work for destination cities and in-destination supply partners.
Chris highlights the first socially distanced event for Spelfie and how real-time opportunities can evolve the business’s offering. We also discuss how satellite technology is evolving, both in terms of quality and capacity, the many possible new avenues it will give travel partners, and what Spelfie will be doing in the future.
“The ability to do something that you can capture the people at the event and allow people to participate remotely, we think, is going to be a real value.”
Chris Newlands
This week on Tourpreneur, the Tour Operator Podcast:
- Chris’ background and the inspiration behind spelfie.com
- How COVID has affected Chris’ business
- How spelfie connects a satellite photo to a users selfie
- The challenges of bringing brands, events, and partners together
- The unique benefits for brands when working with spelfie
- Why you can’t use drones to create the spelfie effect
- The cost comparison of using spelfie for branding compared to other options
- How spelfie is looking at in-destination supply opportunities
- Possible new opportunities for spelfie in destination cities
- How brands can engage with users on spelfie to build relationships after events
- The first socially distanced event spelfie did
- Changes Chris foresees for the travel and event industry following COVID for end-users
- The real-time opportunities that are coming to satellite photography applications
- How satellite technology is moving forward and how that will change the way we use them
- Where spelfie will be in three years
Today’s episode of Tourpreneur is kindly sponsored by Checkfront
More about today’s guest, Chris Newlands of Spelfie
Chris Newlands is an award-winning CEO, Founder, keynote speaker, and one of the most connected entrepreneurs in the travel and technology sectors. Following his service in the Royal Navy, he spent more than 30 years as a Chartered Financial Planner.
He is a member of the Presidents 1783 Network and the Institute of Directors. He is the CEO and Founder of Spelfie, an experiential hyper-targeted marketing tool that creates a selfie from space for a unique and personal shareable memento of an experience.