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Why Attend

The Midwest Travel Network Conference was created for content creators, entrepreneurs, media, industry professionals, marketers, destinations and brand representatives. While we focus on promoting the Midwest, we welcome anyone interested in connecting and learning with us.

If you haven’t purchased your tickets for the 2022 conference yet in St. Cloud, MN, there are lots of reasons you should attend.

Build Knowledge & Skills

Learn from others in your profession. Find out what’s new and/or tips and tricks to make your job easier, whether you’re a content creator or a destination professional. If you’re looking to try out Tiktok, freelance writing, how to connect with and pitch destinations, digging into understanding where your website traffic comes from, determining your worth for brand sponsorships, or interested in making money with video creation, these topics and more will be presented by our speakers. Our speakers have been vetted and are ready to show you how they have excelled in the topic they are presenting.

Explore

The Midwest Travel Network Conference is happy to head to St. Cloud, MN in 2022. It’s a great location on the Mississippi River just about an hour North of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Known as the Granite City, St. Cloud is full of beautiful natural landscapes, colorful art, great dining and drinking establishments, shopping, events and more.

Our host hotel, the Best Western Plus Kelly Inn, sits overlooking the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown St. Cloud. It is only 4 blocks from where the first two days of the conference will be held at the Paramount Center for the Arts.

Coming from out of state? Emily from Visit Greater St. Cloud put together this great map of Notable MN Attractions with places to visit including museums, roadside attractions, famous attractions, restaurants, historical centers, and more.

Connect & Build Relationships

It’s been awhile since many of us have been together. This is a chance to get together and connect with writers and destination professionals. You’ll have a chance to make new friends and reconnect with ones in person. We know that getting further in this field is about the relationships you make and build upon. Meeting face-to-face helps to build stronger, more meaningful relationships.

While going to the sessions is important, we encourage you to meet new people.

Be Inspired

Get ready to get energized and refocused from listening and learning from a variety of speakers on a range of topics. Come away feeling inspired whether it’s finding new content while exploring St. Cloud, hearing about a great tip you heard from one of the sessions or finding that next destination you’ll be heading to after meeting with one of the many destination vendors in attendance.

What Past Attendees Say

Rachel Thompson
Visit Greater St. Cloud

Emily Bertram who attended the 2018 conference in Iowa came back raving about this event. We have seen such a great ROI from this conference and travel bloggers interested in visiting St. Cloud.

Shel Zelkowich
Canadian Freelance Writer

I loved the intimate setting. A smaller conference makes it easy to connect with people; I never felt lost in the crowd. The quality of the speakers was excellent and took home plenty of inspiration. It was my first time at the conference and I will be back.

Stacy Brooks
Tangled Up in Food

Attending the 2018 Midwest Travel Network Conference was one of the best investments I’ve ever made in my career as a travel blogger. I really appreciated the chance to connect with fellow travel bloggers — some of whom I’ve been following online for years online and chatting with via the Facebook group. In addition, conference organizers Sara Broers and Lisa Trudell did an excellent job of working with the local CVB to highlight the conference destination of Clear Lake, IA including catering delicious local food and coordinating a fascinating tour of the historic conference venue (the Surf Ballroom).

Leah Hall
Gastronomblog

It was a great way to network and to hear ideas to grow travel in the midwest.

Michelle Marine
Simplify, Live, Love

I thought it was a great conference – full of good people for networking and informative sessions.