Rallies a Global Sales Team Through Transformation
With Meghan Keough – Global Senior Director, Business Development, Lodging
50+
global sales professionals united across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC
2.5
day summit
Challenge
Align a globally distributed team around a shared vision and priorities.
Solution
Design and deliver a high-impact summit through end-to-end strategic, creative, and operational support.
Headquarters
Seattle, WA
Industry
Technology
Expedia Group is one of the world’s leading travel technology companies, connecting travelers with hotels, airlines, vacation rentals, and experiences across the globe. With a vast portfolio of brands and a global sales organization spanning multiple regions and verticals, Expedia Group’s lodging advertising business works with thousands of partners to deliver compelling, measurable advertising solutions that reach travelers at every stage of their journey.
“The partnership with Seismic’s Strategic Enablement Services team was critically important to the success of our sales summit. The details, the framework, the conversations, the unique perspectives really culminated in the success of our sales summit. We had a seamless working rhythm, and I couldn’t ask for a better partner.”
Meghan Keough
Global Senior Director, Business Development, Lodging, Expedia Group
A Global Sales Team Needed Time to Reconnect
At an important moment in the selling year, Expedia Group’s Global Lodging Vertical saw an opportunity to bring its globally distributed team together around a shared vision for the next phase of the business. With team members based across North America, EMEA, and APAC, many working remotely or as the only representative in their location, leaders recognized that an in-person experience could do more than convene the group. It could strengthen alignment, deepen connection, and create space for the team to move forward with clarity and confidence.
The goal was not simply to host a meeting. It was to design a meaningful experience that would help managers and individual contributors reconnect with one another, engage with the team’s priorities, and leave with practical momentum for the months ahead. To deliver that experience at a high standard while internal teams remained focused on existing priorities, Expedia Group partnered with Seismic’s Strategic Enablement Services team.
“The partnership with Seismic’s Strategic Enablement Services team was critically important to the success of our sales summit. The details, the framework, the conversations, the unique perspectives really culminated in the success of our sales summit. We had a seamless working rhythm, and I couldn’t ask for a better partner.”
Meghan Keough
Global Senior Director, Business Development, Lodging, Expedia Group
The Solution
“It allowed us to deliver more than we could have done ourselves, but still of the same quality that we would have expected if we wanted to do it ourselves. That model of helping us scale up and down and have that expertise on the side of you was really, really helpful.”
Ernst-Jan de Planque
Senior Director, Sales Enablement, Expedia Group
A Partnership Built for Moments Like This
Ernst De Planque had heard Irina from Seismic’s Strategic Enablement Services team describe the offering at Seismic’s City Tours event the year prior. The idea of a specialized team that could act as a genuine extension of a customer’s enablement function, scaling up when needed without displacing the team’s own identity or work, stood out immediately. When planning began for the summit, Expedia Group moved quickly to bring Seismic in as a strategic and operational partner.
From the outset, Seismic’s Strategic Enablement Services team helped shape the event’s purpose, structure, and flow. They partnered closely with Meghan Keough and her leadership team to define the agenda, establish a clear content framework, and align contributors on expectations. As planning advanced, the Seismic team absorbed the production heavy lifting and maintained a disciplined operating rhythm that kept stakeholders aligned from concept through execution.
They also brought in MONOKI, a Hamburg-based branding agency founded in 2004 and specializing in Brand Building, Brand Design, and Brand Experience, as a key creative partner on the engagement. The collaboration with MONOKI would prove to be one of the defining elements of the RISE Summit’s success.
MONOKI: Turning a Theme into an Identity
At the heart of the RISE Summit’s impact was the creative work MONOKI brought to life. Working alongside Seismic’s Strategic Enablement Services team, MONOKI developed the event’s entire brand identity from the ground up. They conceived the RISE theme and translated it into a complete event identity: a custom brand system, event collateral, and a professionally produced opening video complete with an original custom song.
For a globally distributed team coming together at an important inflection point, the experience of walking into a space that had been built entirely for them was powerful. As Meghan recalled, “The team loved the hype video. People were just beaming — you could feel the positive energy in the room and see the smiles on their faces.”
MONOKI’s work did more than set a tone. It signaled to every attendee that this was a meaningful investment in the team and in the future they were building together. The quality and intentionality of the brand experience became central to the event’s ability to create energy, focus, and shared ownership.
Designing an Experience, Not Just an Agenda
The Seismic team coordinated with external vendors, including the event’s AV partner, to ensure seamless execution across all three days. Photo and video capture opportunities were identified throughout, creating content that could later be repurposed for training and internal communications and extending the summit’s value well beyond the days in London.
The summit was structured with genuine intention. Day one was reserved for a leadership pre-session: a dedicated space for managers to align on priorities, messaging, and how they wanted to lead the experience for the broader team. The subsequent days brought together individual contributors and managers in a format that was deliberately interactive, with whiteboards, flip charts, post-it exercises, and hands-on activities woven into each session.
A team-building activity facilitated by the Seismic team pushed participants to think creatively, work under pressure, and connect with colleagues across regions — and quickly became one of the highlights of the event. A listening session was also built into the agenda, during which leaders stepped out of the room so team members could share candid feedback in a facilitated, anonymous format. That feedback was then used to build action plans the team owned themselves. As Meghan put it, “People own what they create.”
The summit closed with an industry expert panel featuring voices from a brewery, a former Legoland Paris executive, and an analytics leader, moderated by Madfest. Rather than keeping the conversation narrowly focused on lodging, the panel opened participants up to how broader advertising industry trends were reshaping the business landscape, a perspective that resonated deeply and ranked among the highest-rated moments of the entire event.
On-site, the Seismic team operated as a seamless extension of the Expedia team: taking notes, troubleshooting technical issues, providing an impartial point of view during the leadership pre-session, and ensuring that every session ran smoothly from start to finish. As Ernst described it, “It felt very much like we just had a bunch of additional hands, but hands that are very capable.”
“It allowed us to deliver more than we could have done ourselves, but still of the same quality that we would have expected if we wanted to do it ourselves. That model of helping us scale up and down and have that expertise on the side of you was really, really helpful.”
Ernst-Jan de Planque
Senior Director, Sales Enablement, Expedia Group
The Results
“Just the level of confidence that I’ve observed — people that hadn’t shared before being able to highlight great success and brainstorm ideas with colleagues from other regions — has been really, really great to see.”
Meghan Keough
Global Senior Director, Business Development, Lodging, Expedia Group
From Alignment to Momentum
The RISE Summit exceeded expectations across virtually every dimension. Post-event survey feedback confirmed that the experience had landed as intended. The team left London with individual win plans, renewed clarity on the direction of the lodging vertical, and a tangible sense of belonging to a team headed somewhere meaningful.
A new cross-regional channel was launched to sustain the peer-sharing culture the summit had ignited, enabling sales professionals across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC to exchange wins, tactics, and questions in real time. Meghan noted a visible increase in confidence and collaboration, especially as team members began sharing successes and brainstorming with colleagues across regions in new ways. “Just the level of confidence that I’ve observed — people that hadn’t shared before being able to highlight great success and brainstorm ideas with colleagues from other regions — has been really, really great to see.”
The benefits extended beyond the audience the event was designed for. Ernst observed that his own enablement team grew through the experience of working alongside Seismic’s professionals, absorbing new approaches to program management, content development, and event execution. Other leaders across Expedia took notice too. “Everyone wants to do another event now,” Ernst noted. “The bar has been raised.”
Looking ahead, Expedia Group’s leadership is planning more intentional, proactive use of Seismic Strategic Enablement Services as part of a broader strategy for high-impact in-person experiences that strengthen alignment, accelerate collaboration, and support team performance. As Meghan summed it up: “I hope it’s the first of many to come.”
“Just the level of confidence that I’ve observed — people that hadn’t shared before being able to highlight great success and brainstorm ideas with colleagues from other regions — has been really, really great to see.”
Meghan Keough
Global Senior Director, Business Development, Lodging, Expedia Group
