ANAHEIM, Calif., June 12, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The 2019 IPW conference in Anaheim, California, added an exciting new feature to its lineup this year. The Jeenie Mobile App was selected as the Official Language Assistance App for the event to facilitate more interaction between U.S. destinations exhibiting at the trade show and international tour buyer attendees seeking to add exciting destinations to their travel packages. Exhibitors and buyers alike had access 24/7 to LIVE bilingual and bicultural interpreters throughout the conference.
This was the first year that IPW integrated language assistance into the conference's format of three days of appointments between suppliers and buyers that rotate every 20 minutes. The inclusion of Jeenie not only differentiates the conference from other trade shows that use the appointment format, but also underscores how increasingly global the business of "travel" is in the U.S. and around the world.
"We attended IPW as an exhibitor last year and witnessed the language barrier first hand between buyers and suppliers," said Kirsten Brecht Baker, CEO & Co-founder of Jeenie. "We were doing demos of our (then) brand-new app and other exhibitors would come over and ask if they could use the app for their meetings. Without the fluid communication Jeenie provided, we could see that suppliers couldn't be sure whether buyers had understood their message or had genuine interest. As soon as we introduced a bilingual speaker through Jeenie, buyers would open up and pose the questions they were otherwise hesitant to ask."
IPW is the North American travel industry's leading international inbound travel trade show, attracting over 1,300 industry buyers and media from more than 70 countries. The one-on-one appointments and business negotiations that take place over the intensive three-day conference schedule generate more than $5.5 billion in future travel to the U.S., making the stakes for successful meetings especially high.
"My whole team is excited about all the ways we can use Jeenie with our corporate customers," said Humberto Cançado, Director of Voetur, a major Brazilian tour operator who visited IPW this year. "It will help us solve issues abroad and will be seen as a differentiator for us. We do a lot of business with China and other Asian countries, and Jeenie will be extremely useful."
Jeenie's ability to facilitate conversation between international partners will ideally result in greater inbound interest and revenue for the U.S. travel market generated during the event. The Jeenie app instantly connects people in need of language assistance and cultural advice to a live, bilingual and bicultural expert who can help them hold three-way conversations with speakers of other languages, on-demand. With a few taps on a smartphone or iPad, users are connected via video-chat or audio to a "Jeenie" (the company's name for their providers). Unlike machine translation tools, Jeenies are real people who can interpret linguistic complexity and cultural nuance, while ensuring accuracy and avoiding embarrassing cultural missteps, crucially important in international business negotiations.
"It's great to see IPW embrace the next generation of technology to make it easier for operators and suppliers to communicate in different languages. Jeenie can be used to help avoid miscommunication that can often happen between two people who don't speak the same language," offered Jake Steinman, Founder and CEO of NAJ Group.
The partnership between Jeenie and IPW included specially negotiated packages for attendees and access to linguists in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Portuguese, French, Italian, German and Korean. Future language rollouts are planned with language pairs like Mandarin<>Japanese and Japanese<>Korean, which are in high demand from the app's growing international client-base and travel partners.
For information about adding language assistance to your global conference, contact info(at)Jeenie.com.
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About Jeenie®
Jeenie® is a peer-to-peer marketplace for on-demand video or voice calls with HUMAN language & culture concierges. With the tap of a button, Jeenie mobile app connects customers to LIVE language help & cultural advice in less than a minute.
SOURCE Jeenie
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