We are so excited to report on Saffire’s FIRST attendance at the 2014 Texas Travel Summit hosted by the Texas Travel Industry Association (TTIA) at the San Luis Conference Center in Galveston, TX. We had such a splendid time. As first time attendees, we felt extremely welcome by those we hadn’t met and were excited to reconnect with those that we had met at past conferences and tradeshows.
One of the most exciting aspects of our attendance at TTIA was that we were able to show off our new and beautiful website geared specifically towards Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO) on a large display poster right next to our table We had many visitors at our booth that loved the layout and how easily manageable it was through the back-end. I mean, what’s not to love, right? Side note: I love that we had the only palm tree in the room right behind our table to make it look even more inviting than it already did, win! 
The first night opened with a dinner/networking event at the Galveston Pleasure Pier where we experienced a lot of fun rides, our favorite being the swings that soar you out over the water; what a remarkable view! We may have ridden that and the Ferris wheel a little too many times!
On Monday, San Antonio hosted an incredible lunch filled with costumes, dancing, exotic birds, and of course delicious food. TripAdvisor and Adara hosted a “Southern-home cookin’” themed lunch where we indulged in fried chicken, potato salad, biscuits and root beer floats for dessert, yum!
The educational presentations were both impressive and beneficial. We were able to learn a lot about trends and opportunities in the DMO industry, which is great due to our new website and industry focus. Kaplan Mobray spoke on diversity in the workplace and was one of the most engaging public speakers we had ever experienced. He got attendees totally involved and even opened his session by playing the saxophone! We were lucky enough to meet him and other speakers prior to their sessions and all were impressed with our services.
Our conference experience concluded with a delicious awards dinner where multiple professionals were recognized for their hard-work and accomplishments benefiting the travel and tourism industry in the past year. It was truly an experience getting to know such amazing people and gain an understanding of such a huge industry. Overall, we feel that the conference was beneficial, entertaining and just awesome in so many ways. Cannot wait for round 2 in 2015! #TXSUMMIT14