Skift is the largest industry intelligence and marketing platform in travel, providing news, information, and services to all sectors of the world’s largest industry.

Based in New York City, Skift deciphers and defines trends for global CEOs and CMOs across travel, dining, and wellness sectors through a combination of news, research, conferences, and marketing services.

Skift Forum conferences are the largest creative business events in the global travel industry. They make up the first conference series focused on top Marketers, Strategists and Technologists in travel — the people creating and defining the future of travel.

Through talks, panels, workshops and networking, Skift Forum events help top travel professionals understand changing trends across sectors, geographies, and functional silos in the travel industry.

Since 2014, Skift Global Forum has quickly expanded to 5 events internationally.
Skift conferences bring together high-level groups of attendees looking to learn from and connect with each other, and the Skift team has been working hard to revamp the attendee’s handheld experience at their Forums based on past attendees’ direct feedback, and anticipating their needs.

As the world’s biggest industry, Skift believes intentional networking deepens relationships and fosters community across all sectors. So they faced the question: how to make networking easier than ever?

Grandiz were challenged with finding a solution that would provide event attendees all the tools they need to navigate the crowd and make lasting connections right in the palm of their hands.

Grandiz team suggested building a cross-platform mobile application using React Native framework to speed-up the development cycle and release at both platforms at the same time.

Backend part, built on Laravel PHP framework, featured data synchronization between event details service, ticket sales service, stored and handled data via restful API.

That allowed to develop robust service providing up-to-date online data for thousands of event attendees in real-time with a high availability service.

To reach even higher availability and auto-scaling the application’s backend was deployed on Amazon AWS.

Through the Skift Forums app, thousands of conference attendees are able to manage their schedule and connect with other attendees, sponsors, and speakers for all of Skift’s events, including Skift Global Forum, Skift Forum Europe, and Skift Tech Forum.

The Skift Forums app allows to:
  • Locate venue information and maps
  • Discover and network with attendees through messaging and meeting scheduling
  • Contribute live feedback during sessions
  • View conference schedule and content
  • View media list

Look & Feel:

We wanted this app to be as Skift-y as possible.
Event attendees can enjoy the whimsical color scheme and a user-friendly interface.

Attendee Messaging:

Attendees can search the attendee list by personal name or company name, find the people they want to meet, and message them directly. They’ll have a message inbox within the app so they can manage their conversations.

Meeting Scheduler:

We believe attendees want to make the most of their time at the event surrounded by the top executives in travel. Now they’ll be able to schedule meetings at specific dates and times using a meeting scheduling function. They can manage their pending invites and confirmed meetings, reschedule if needed, and add them to their phone calendar.

Complete Schedule:

Attendees can plan their days by reviewing the complete schedule over three days with session topics and speaker info. Add sessions to their phone’s calendar.

Live Session Q & A:

During key conference sessions, every attendee is able to submit questions they’d like asked onstage. The questions will populate in the app, so the audience can react and like certain questions, and the favorites rise to the top and will be answered live.

Locations and Directions:

Even if you live in the city where the event is held, sometimes you just need some directions! All venue location information with maps is in the app, plus locations for other things attendees may need like the subway, a drugstore/pharmacy, and an ATM.