INTRODUCTION

“Satisfactory integrated services, freedom, user-friendliness, sustainability and accessibility”. These are crucial characteristics of a modern and attractive public transport. And it is just part of what our clients demand.

Our society is continually changing as citizens’ attitudes towards mobility, services and brands evolve.The challenge of marketing in public transport is to deliver high-quality and cost-efficient services, as well as creating added value to respond to the evolving needs and new lifestyles of consumers. We need to be the first mobility choice in the citizens’ mind.
To encourage people to change their mobility behaviour and use public transport  more often requires using the right mix of marketing tools tailored to the individual market needs, expectations and resources.

This conference will consider how organisations can use marketing to increase their market share, improve their profit margins, find their way to successfully compete against the car, and stimulate demand for public transport as a whole.
We will have a comprehensive overview of successful and original practices and techniques aimed at changing attitudes, influencing demand, and increasing performance.
A special focus will be given to solutions developed by small and medium-sized companies and networks from all over the world.

Improving the offer begins with listening to needs.  Here is a marketing principle we applied again to propose this 5th UITP Marketing Conference. It is the only international conference on this topic in public transport, created to satisfy our customers: all public transport companies and actors in this sector.
With participants from across the world we have the opportunity to create a unique platform of exchange.
With speakers from across the world, we are able to create a panel of practical experiments which we have carefully selected according to 4 principles:

- Unique presentations, as consequence of a high-level selection,
- Information on results: you want evidence,
- Tested practical cases: you demand concrete cases,
- Plurality: you want to find the variety of our situations: public, private, of variable size companies, on different markets, organising authorities.

On the basis of your reactions and of the collected evaluations, we have made the following programme:

- More time for questions and debates thanks to the limitation of the number of sessions;
- A true exchange: only concrete cases and speakers also selected according to their capacity to transmit their experiment without having a set language, interactivity organised via means of communication;
- A real utility: each selected case, whatever its context, puts forward compatible elements, explanations and their context;
- A broad vision: speakers of the 5 continents, representatives of our diversity;
- A concentration of inspiration with the 5th UITP Marketing Awards which will present the state of the art as regards public transport communication; and
- Opening to other sectors: we will have a particularly dynamic speaker from the health sector: Docteur Paulo Malo has founded the MALO GROUP in 1995 with the opening of the first MALO CLINIC. It is composed of several companies specialising in a range of industries from Oral Rehabilitation and Implantology, growing rapidly to Health Management, Restaurant Industry and Catering, Marketing and Communication Services, Financial Consulting and Leisure Activities to Children.

The programme is just the foundation and we know that taking part in the conference is a true investment for you. Who says investment says return on investment!

In this regard:
- The registration fees are lowered to the minimum;
- UITP has negotiated exclusive rates for the delegates at the conferences venue, the Lisbon Marriott Hotel; and
- An extraordinary city, Lisbon, now under major investments in public transport to radically improve mobility and economic development.

In the name of the Programme Committee, of UITP and of all the members of the Marketing Commission, I thank you in advance for your decision to come and share this professional time with us and I assure you that everyone will be mobilised to make your stay pleasant as well as advantageous.

I look forward to meeting you all in Lisbon,