I loved the International Luxury Travel Mart conference!
We started with breakfast with Marriott International Luxury Brands at the JW Marriott on Boulevard de la Croisette. Jennie Benzaquen shared exciting new developments throughout the brands and I even got to take a photo with the chefs! It was another beautiful December day in Cannes and we started at the conference with ‘In Conversation with’ press conferences with many top luxury brands.
Walking the floors of the conference, I spoke with many luxury brands about upcoming hotel openings, story ideas and possible adventures.
At lunch, we had Press Roundtables in the First Floor Restaurant at the Palais des Festivals.
For Afternoon Tea, we met with a selection of exhibitors during a dedicated session at the Palais des Festivals.
Hill Choi Lee and Lisa Niver at VOGA party ILTM
In the evening, I attended the MILUX beach house cocktail party, VOGA Vogue Yoga event, Jumeirah Hotels yacht party, Nobu Hotels party.
Journalists at VOGA ILTM party
One of the best things was to reconnect with journalism friends from around the world and to make new connections.
I stayed at the Martinez Hotel and when we returned, we went to the Hyatt party which was at our hotel!
Party with MILUX at ILTM
December 6 started with breakfast at Martinez Hotel before our final set of ‘In Conversation with’at the ILTM Media Centre. I had many one on one chats about future stories and being at the conference was superb.
Nobu Hotels Party at ILTM
The Kudadoo Maldives Lunch was held at the Majestic Hotel. I enjoyed going to all of the area hotels for our different events. At the end of the day, we went to the MILUX party and the Four Seasons Party before the final party at Hotel Martinez with the famous revolving dance floor.
Journalists at Final Party at ILTM 2018
A giant thank you to the ILTM team for including me at the Cannes 2018 event.
“ILTM in Cannes is our flagship inspirational show. We bring everyone to Cannes: your customers, your media and your network. It’s where the world meets the world! You will be seen alongside the absolute best in class and do more business in a week than is possible in many months. More contacts, more opportunities, more insights and more markets than anywhere else – you can’t afford not to be part of it.
ILTM introduces global travel buyers to an unrivaled collection of international travel experiences. We are the relationship brokers that provide a platform for you to do business and build relationships.
ILTM 2018 marks the launch of ILTM’s Year of Health and Wellness, kicking off in the French Riviera in Cannes. ILTM will launch research and gather a community of wellness experts that all draw the same conclusion; in the future, all travel is wellness travel, every trip is expected to enhance the physical, mental and social wellbeing of the traveller, transformation is the very promise of travel, and today’s travel brands are the solution to one of the biggest problems of our age.”
Lisa Ellen Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries and six continents. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she worked on cruise ships for seven years and backpacked for three years in Asia. She is the founder of the website WeSaidGoTravel which is read in 235 countries and was named #3 on Rise Global’s top 1,000 Travel Blogs. Niver is a speaker at the Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Dallas Travel and Adventure Shows for 2023. Her podcast, “Make Your Own Map,” has been watched in more than 11 countries on 4 continents. Niver is represented by Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary, Inc. Look for her memoir in Fall 2023 from Post Hill Press/Simon and Schuster.
You can find Lisa Niver talking travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, Satellite Media Tours, The Jet Set TV and Orbitz travel webisodes as well as her YouTube channel, where her WeSaidGoTravel videos have nearly 2 million views.
With more than 150,000 followers across social media, she has hosted Facebook Live for USA Today 10best, is verified on Twitter and listed on IMDb, and is the Social Media Manager for the Los Angeles Press Club.
As a journalist, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors and been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. She has been a judge for the Gracie Awards for the Alliance of Women in Media, and has run 15 travel competitions on her website, publishing over 2,500 writers and photographers from 75 countries.
For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty times.
Niver has published more than 2000 articles, in more than three dozen magazines and journals
including National Geographic, Wired, Teen Vogue, HuffPost Personal, POPSUGAR, Ms. Magazine, Luxury Magazine, Smithsonian, Sierra Club, Saturday Evening Post, AARP, AAA Explorer Magazine, American Airways, Delta Sky, enRoute (Air Canada), Hemispheres, Jewish Journal, Myanmar Times, BuzzFeed, Robb Report, Scuba Diver Life, Ski Utah, Trivago, Undomesticated, USA Today, TODAY, Wharton Magazine, and Yahoo.
https://bit.ly/m/lisaniver
Awards
National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards
2021 Winner: Book Critic: Ms. Magazine “Untamed: Brave Means Living From the Inside Out”
2019 Winner: Soft News Feature for Film/TV: KTLA TV “Oscars Countdown to Gold with Lisa Niver”
2019 Finalist for: Soft News, Business/Music/Tech/Art
Southern California Journalism Awards
2022 Finalist: Book Criticism
2021 Winner: Technology Reporting
2021 Finalist: Book Criticism
2020 Winner: Print Magazine Feature: Hemispheres Magazine, “Painter by the Numbers, Rembrandt”
2020 Finalist: Online Journalist of the Year, Activism Journalism, Educational Reporting, Broadcast Lifestyle Feature
2019 Finalist: Broadcast Television Lifestyle Segment for “Ogden Ski Getaway”
2018 Finalist: Science/Technology Reporting, Travel Reporting, Personality Profile
2017 Winner: Print Column “A Journey to Freedom over Three Passovers”
Social Media Presence
YouTube Channel: We Said Go Travel (1.7 million views)
Short form video:TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts
Twitter: lisaniver (90,000 followers)
Instagram: lisaniver (24,000 followers)
Pinterest: We Said Go Travel (20,000 followers and over 70,000 monthly views)
Facebook: lisa.niver (5,000 followers); We Said Go Travel (3,000 followers)
LinkedIn: lisaellenniver (9000 contacts)
