Oh, this infobiz of yours, or why the OTM exhibition became paid

The whole truth about why Profi.Travel has restricted entry to the online exhibition.

Today there are a lot of rumors and conversations around the new paid OTM exhibition, which is held by Profi.Travel. We talked with Olesya Oleinikova, the company’s deputy general director, and she told us about the true reasons for this decision, as well as what the market should expect next.

— Olesya, hello! I think most people know the head of the company Alexey Vengin, but not all of you. Please tell us first about yourself: who are you, what do you do in Profi.Travel?

— Today I am the co-founder of Profi.Travel, and also perform the role of CPO (Chief Product Officer) — this is what Western digital companies call a specialist who is responsible for the development of product strategy and product portfolio. In the media holding, I am in charge of new product launches, development and the product part of the team. And I joined the company about 15 years ago as an ordinary employee. Then it was a small portal Utravel.ru , who wrote for travel industry professionals in Yekaterinburg. As a result, I got so carried away and involved in the growth and changes of the company that at some point my colleagues offered me a share in the company.

First, together with Alexey Vengin and the team, we opened five regional TurProfi portals to cover other markets. Then, instead of them, we created a single brand and brought it to the federal level — the Profi portal.Travel. He was actually born at the same time as my daughter, and I often joke that this project is her brother. But this is only partly a joke, because I think no less love and care was put into it. It is in Profi.Travel we created our development team and I learned how to lead the creation and launch of a new product in the full sense of the word.

In 2014, we decided to create online exhibitions, and I was engaged in the development and launch of the format. A couple of years later, we came up with and created the Loyalty program with the team.

In 2023, we decided that Profi.Travel needs to enter the international market. So another interesting adventure in my life happened: I spent more than six months in India, and we held a Profi tourism exhibition there.Travel under the Travel Expo Week brand.

Thus, I mainly lead the creation and modification of the product, supervise IT solutions, and now devote a lot of time to our startup within the framework of Profi.Travel, which we plan to tell you more about later. And this summer, I was working with the team to change the format of online exhibitions: at the time of opening 10 years ago, they were ultra-innovative, but this year it became clear that we need new cool approaches and solutions.

— And that’s why you decided to make the exhibitions paid? This is definitely an original format change…

(Laughs.) No, of course, that’s not the point. Although in this, too. I’ll start in order. A few years ago, I chose the format of exhibitions — as the most understandable for agents — and made it as convenient as possible. This is an analogue of offline events. Without wasting their time and effort on the road and visiting the stands, agents received all the most up-to-date information on tourist products from us every six months, before the season, for 2-3 weeks. And they immediately went to sell. It would seem logical and extremely simple. However, it seems so now. And when we launched the Profi online exhibitions.Travel, even the word “webinars” was not understood by everyone. I remember how the team argued with me, suggested calling it something simpler, since market participants cannot understand what it is all about. For example, video seminars. And I kicked myself in the chest and assured myself that in two years at most everyone would know the word “webinars”. Well, we will be the first to popularize it in the tourist market. And so it turned out.

Now everything has changed and it is no longer fashionable to go to exhibitions — marathons, trainings, intensive courses, etc. are popular today. And in order to reboot our exhibition and at the same time make it more useful, we used the latest trends in the field of online learning. The bottom line is that you take as a basis some relevant topic and involve people in it who are experiencing an under-load of information on it. You arrange some kind of competition between them, give them the right supportive community – and as a result, they master the knowledge and skills that they lacked motivation for alone.

That’s the way we rebooted our OTM exhibition (even the name itself is unclear to newcomers to the market today) — we turned it into an intensive “Study now, earn in winter”. We managed to make it useful and meet the needs of everyone — both those who study with us every year, and completely new participants — from the generation that works successfully today only when it “suits” them. For them, we have strengthened our game mechanics, made webinars even more interesting and at the same time as applied as possible, giving knowledge and skills that can be applied immediately.

Our project is now not just about the product, but about how to move from the economy to luxury segment, how to increase margins and income. How to find and implement non-obvious ways of earning money for travel agents. That’s what we’ve built a new exhibition around. And we also stretched bridges from those professionals who have been in business for a long time to newcomers: we brought out agents of the Loyalty community as speakers of editorial broadcasts. They will share their experience, ask questions to representatives of hotels, etc.

— Don’t you think it was possible to change the format of the exhibition, but not make it paid?

— It’s not about paying. There is a cool expression: money is not always about money, or rather, even so: money is always not about money. It’s always about values.

We all have a huge information overdose today. There is a lot of information around that you need to filter out somehow, choose from it what you are ready to devote your time to. Lately, it often happens to all of us: it seems that you have already found a course for promotion in social networks, but you have not opened it. Or he registered for some kind of training, and then did not go or quit in the middle – he did not have enough motivation to reach the end. But at the same time, if you buy a course, then this is another story: first, you understand that good products today are usually paid. Well, at least because the organizers also had the opportunity to invest in paid speakers and select content. And it’s also a motivation for yourself: it’s a shame to pay and not come. Therefore, often the payment of a product is also directly related to the motivation to assimilate information.

At the same time, we still maintained our democracy. The price of a package for our exhibition starts from 500 rubles. (in fact, this is the cost of a cup of coffee in Moscow) and ends with 3 thousand rubles (like dinner in a restaurant). And, of course, we gave our Loyalty community the opportunity to pay not with money, but with points. And, by the way, many newcomers, having learned about this system before the exhibition, decided to become members of Loyalty and were able to earn these 500 points there without difficulty and also come to our intensive for free.

In short, we did not make the exhibition paid in order to make money from it. And to give it additional value and get an informed, motivated audience. Who understands why she came here, and aims to reach the end and get all the necessary knowledge.

— So the exhibition seems to be paid, but it doesn’t seem to be? Can you just connect to the Loyalty program, as you say, earn points quickly — and, voila, get on it for free? What’s the point then? And what is this additional value? And the elimination of an unmotivated audience?

— Not exactly like that. To buy an exhibition for points, you first need to go and figure out what kind of system this is, Loyalty, who needs it, how they earn these points. That is, to get involved. Therefore, these 800-900 motivated agents are much more expensive to us than 1 500 – 2 000 random enough. Those who have worked hard at first will get involved, listen with desire, ask the right questions, etc. Because our task is still not for them to just watch webinars, but for them to eventually sell these products. Therefore, such a paywall is probably, first of all, proof that a person will have actions besides intentions to learn.

— Then tell me about the Loyalty program — what is it in general?

— Then I’ll tell you from the very beginning where it came from in the first place. When I started getting to know the tourist community, I saw very sincere, pleasant people, but at the same time I noticed: they united only spontaneously — at workshops, in advertising campaigns. And then they returned home and all this communication somehow fell apart, was no longer supported. And I realized that the market really lacks a positive, supportive community, where newcomers will come — and they will be accepted, explained something, given a shoulder, and their inexperience will not be ridiculed. And then we decided to create our own community.

We needed a unifying idea, because people will not be able to hold on to one communication. And we came up with such a motivating activity: during the year, agents attend our webinars, special projects, study, take tests — and get points for all this. But the main thing is that they can book partners of our system and receive points for bookings. As a result, all these points add up to a rating. We have developed a fair system that takes into account whether you work in Moscow or in a region from which there are few departures and, accordingly, you will not score many points on armor alone. Every agent has the opportunity to claim a prize. At the end of the year, the general partner takes 10-20 winners to a cool advertising campaign for free.

Over the years of Loyalty’s existence, all its participants have not only become friends and united, but also acquired some kind of special vibe – everyone here not only treats each other well, but also supports, is always open, ready together, as they say, into fire and into water. That is, it seems that the main idea is competition and the struggle to win, but everyone has learned to rejoice in the success of another, to treat each other environmentally. Unfortunately, this cannot be said about other agency communities, where there is constant gaslighting in chat rooms and groups, negativity towards newcomers, and so on.

And at the same time, our Loyalty Profi community.Travel — although behind the scenes, but very open. You can make a reservation right now and start tracking your rating. And by the end of the year, either win somewhere, or acquire a lot of knowledge and win for the next year. Or spend your points on something useful, such as an exhibition.

— Let’s get back to the exhibition. Now you have decided not to earn money from the audience, and then what? Can this step be regarded as a course that Profi.Will Travel be closed by paywall, and exhibitions will cost more and more expensive?

— Actually, this exhibition is an experiment. An attempt to understand what the audience is coming in and what is not. We experimented with the format, themes, prices, etc. Feedback will show what needs to be further developed and what needs to be changed further.

I can definitely say right now: we have found out that an online exhibition in the format of an intensive annual professional development in sales of a seasonal product is in great demand. We have a cool motivated audience — almost 900 people. And at online webinars, attendance did not decrease below 250 for exhibitors, and the total number of registrations was around 400 – 450 on average per webinar. So we saw that, compared to previous exhibitions, we had gathered a more motivated and better-quality audience. The program is not over yet, but in the end we will definitely check again — and what about our digestibility, we will do surveys regarding the increase in sales. But it is already clear: we have achieved the main goal.

However, this does not mean that all exhibitions will be paid. Each event determines the theme and type of tourism product. For example, “Know ours” — I would not like to limit the entrance there in any way. The fact is that domestic tourism has a completely different problem. If in the outbound segment we can teach agents to sell not only Turkey and Egypt, but also the UAE, Oman and Qatar (and those who already sell them should be taught to earn more in these areas), then this is not suitable for the Russian market. Here, the main trouble and pain is that the players, as they say, do not notice the agencies, are not ready for close cooperation with them. This happens for a number of reasons: their interaction with the tourist is facilitated, there is no language barrier — it seems to them that it is strange to share a commission with someone in such a situation. At the same time, many people do not realize that the B2B channel is what will give you a download both in the season and in the off-season. If all the links in your chain work correctly, then everyone’s profit grows.

Therefore, “Know Our” has a completely different mission. And this year we want to increase the literacy level of our partners on how to work with the B2B channel. We will conduct training for them and send only those who understand why they need agents and how to properly convey knowledge about their product to them. What should be the motivation of the agency, what is the commission. After all, we used to have cases when specialists talked about their hotels on our site, and then it turned out that they did not even have a commission for agencies. And it was unclear: then why did you come to the exhibition “Know Ours” at all? This is some kind of operation “bees against honey”. So we will upgrade this exhibition too, but this will not be related to payment, but to partner training aimed at building competent work with travel agents. So that oriented agencies receive exactly the pool of verified and “agent-oriented”, if I may say so, suppliers on it.

— I suggest we talk more about the infobase. You said that you took the trends of new educational formats as a basis. But those who are in the subject understand that there is a lot in any paid information product — and from the infobiz. And in general, this phenomenon is not well treated in the market. Was it worth taking anything from there at all?

— There are some things that we may or may not like, but they will not go away from this. For example, globalization. You may not like the fact that five global companies in the world hold the main markets, or you may like it, it doesn’t matter — this is the reality. Infobiz, in my opinion, is one of the category of such phenomena. Let’s just think about where it came from in the first place.

10 years ago, everyone was lamenting that the school curriculum was outdated, university programs were godlessly outdated, everything needed to be renovated and upgraded. What has happened to these programs in these 10 years? Yes, practically nothing, they remained about the same. They are changed a little bit every year, but not dramatically. But the world has changed enormously! And a person needs to somehow adapt to the fact that everything is changing in his work, business, and life. The world requires us to constantly improve our skills — these are just ideal conditions for the development of infobiz. Would you agree? Since school, university and other programs simply do not keep up with these changes.

Now, if there is any need for training in the market, as a rule, her business closes. Therefore, for me, infobiz is not a story of Blinovskis and others like that. For me, this is a story about how this world is changing too fast, and in order to keep up with it, we are willing to pay money. So that someone who has already pumped himself into the field we need, shares his knowledge, his expertise, so that we do not waste our years on understanding this topic, quickly absorb all this information and begin to apply it in our work.

To bring to the Profi.Travel is all new and cool, which is why it is appreciated — my colleagues and I study a lot. To create my own paid programs, I went through a huge amount of training — from psychology to digital marketing. In order to see how it works for the best. And, you know, no program was useless to me at all. Of course, a competent selection for yourself is important here. That is, Blinovskaya won’t come to me, but Western coaches and Russian practitioners from business and digital startups will come. It’s just that everyone needs to look for programs for themselves.

And let me also remind you that the disparaging word “infobiz” is Russian, but actually all over the world it is called EdTech, from Educational Technologies, that is, educational programs. And in my opinion, it is strange not to use these programs today.

— What else would you recommend to the agents today?

— First of all, I would advise you to take a sensible look at the realities of our time. Because there is such a routine effect: you sit in the office or at home day after day, clients come, you book tours, but you simply do not notice global trends in this mode. Actually, you and I are already living in a new paradigm – we buy most things online, pay when it’s convenient for us, and so on. Given these new consumer patterns, it should be understood that there will be more and more independent tourists. And in these conditions, it is very important for an agent to be a super professional in order to survive in the market with his small commission and not lose the influx of customers.

You need to use absolutely all methods: someone leads tours of their city, someone does author tours (I’m talking about legal ones now, if anything), someone uses referral programs, someone earns on additional services, someone opens online schools and so on.

It is important to keep track of all this and understand exactly what you can use from it, look around, learn, constantly pump yourself. By the way, you can study not only at professional courses. You can see how people work in other industries, what they use there, and what tools they use. Learn marketing, management, and HR management. Do not limit yourself to one tourist area, where all the experts are already known to you. Or the Russian market alone, because then at some point you may have enormous risks with counterparties. In general, do not close the window of opportunity for yourself and remember that stopping development means putting an end to your business, because then others will go ahead, and you will remain in the past.

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