PROGRAMME
WiT Experience Singapore 2021
Homecoming: Travel Zero.O To Infinity.O ∞
Oct 19–20 | Sands Grand Ballroom, Level 5, Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre
A hybrid event – in-person for up to 250, and virtual for everyone
Across the seas, in Canada, one company has declared it is preparing to take on the “big global empires (of travel) as our next stepping stone”. In March, it raised $170 million in Series F funding and launched a new B2B product called Hopper Cloud. Then in August, it raised another $175 million, saying it would add 500 employees to take on its global march. All in, the company has raised $598 million, valuing it at $3.5 billion. What is it doing different that’s attracting the investors and what are its plans to take on the “big global empires”, particularly in Asia, its new frontier? We find out in this conversation with the founder who started it as a trip planning engine, powered by the “world’s largest structured database of travel information”, to what it is today.




Hopper
Frederic is the founder and CEO of Hopper, an airfare prediction app available for iOS and Android devices. Hopper analyzes billions of flight prices a day to provide advice on when to fly and buy. Hopper predicts price changes for your trip, and notifies you when to book. Hopper has received accolades such as Apple’s App Store Best of 2015, the Google Play Award for Standout Startup of 2016, and the Webby Award for Best Travel App.
He previously co-founded Newtrade, where he successfully raised $7 million in two rounds of venture capital and built the company up to 70 employees. Newtrade was acquired by Expedia in 2002, 21 months after their first round of funding.
As a VP at Expedia, Frederic was responsible for developing the Direct Connect product strategy and signing up over 10,000 hotels to the Expedia platform, including major brands such as Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Carlson, Cendant and Choice Hotels. He later moved on to participate in various Expedia M&A activities, including the acquisition of Hotels.com, TripAdvisor and eLong.
Frederic joined the Board of Directors of MakeMyTrip.com in 2007. MakeMyTrip is India’s leading online travel company and books tickets for all major airlines and reservations at over 1,000 hotels in the country.




Hopper
As the first country to get into the crisis and the first to get out of it, Trip.com Group has been at the forefront of riding out and managing travel’s biggest existential crisis. It’s had the advantage of a huge home market to fall back on but it’s certainly not been resting on its laurels, transforming the organisation with “hybrid work” pilots, building up tech and product, scaling its platform and preparing for the future. What does that look like? Can the world live without Chinese travellers? When can the world welcome Chinese travellers again? We ask these questions and more during this opening conversation with the pioneer of online travel in China.




Trip.com Group
James Liang is one of the Co-founders and Executive Chairman of the Board of Trip.com Group Ltd. He was the Chief Executive Officer from 2000 to 2006 and from 2013 to 2016. Under his visionary leadership, Trip.com Group has achieved great milestones over the years. The company has successfully carried out transitions from offline to online, and from desktop to mobile. Furthermore, Trip.com Group has made strategic investments in key industry players, cultivated and invested in new business ideas, and established industry-leading operational standards and processes. Trip.com Group has grown to become one of the world’s largest online travel agencies.
Currently, James serves as Co-Chairman of Tongcheng-eLong (HKSE:0780) and on the boards of a number of other companies, including BTG Hotels(SSE:600258), Sina (NASDAQ: SINA), and MakeMyTrip (NASDAQ: MMYT). He is also Research Professor of Economics at Peking University.
James has been awarded various accolades for his contributions to the travel industry. Some of his recent awards include: 2019 Forbes China Multinational Business Leader, Best CEO in the Internet category in the 2016 All-Asia Executive Team Rankings by Institutional Investor, 2016 Top Ten Economic Leaders of the Year by Sina Finance, 2015 China’s Business Leader of the Year by Forbes, 2015 Most Influential Business Leaders by China Entrepreneur Magazine, 2015 Top Ten Economic Leaders of the Year by Sina Finance, People’s Daily, and The Paper, 2015 China’s Most Transformative Leader by Sohu Finance, and 2015 China’s Best Business Leader by Yicai.com.
In addition to his expertise in the travel industry, James is also a leading scholar of demographics and social studies. He has played an important role in shaping China’s population policies in recent years and in generating public interest in issues such as education and urban planning. As a co-author of the book Too Many People in China?, James analyzed the impact of the one-child policy and the adverse effects of demographic changes on China’s economy. He is also the author of multiple other publications, including The Rise of the Network Society, and his latest book published in 2018, The Demographics of Innovation.
Prior to co-founding Trip.com Group, James held a number of technical and managerial positions at Oracle Corporation from 1991 to 1999, both in the United States and China. He was the head of the ERP consulting division of Oracle China from 1997 to 1999.
James received his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology. He was also an attendee of the “China Gifted Youth Class” at Fudan University.




Trip.com Group
No one gives a better overview of the online travel market than Phocuswright which has been analysing the market since 1994. Here’s the latest look at top trends in both the global and APAC online travel space.




Phocuswright
Ms. Fadnis leads Phocuswright’s research team and is focused on delivering high quality data, intelligence and insights that help customers make strategic decisions. She previously worked at Phocuswright from 2014 to 2016 and recently returned to take on responsibility for research content, delivery and setting product direction. Charuta has broad experience across the industry and has worked across various functions at American Airlines, Egencia and BCD Travel. Her expertise lies in uncovering and applying technological and market trends to strategy, product development and marketing. Charuta holds an M.B.A. from HEC Paris and a Bachelor of Engineering from Saurashtra University, India.




Phocuswright
Nate Blecharczyk is the co-founder of Airbnb, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chairman of Airbnb China. Nate plays a leading role in driving key strategic initiatives across the global business, particularly those which require a combined understanding of the business, product, and data. Recently he oversaw the creation of the Airbnb City Portal, an industry-first software solution that addresses the needs of cities relating to short-term rentals. Previously Nate oversaw the creation of Airbnb’s engineering, data science, payments, and performance marketing teams. This conversation will be about how Nate sees the future of travel and insights on how countries in APAC can rebuild tourism.




Chief Strategy Officer & Chairman, Airbnb China
Nate Blecharczyk is the co-founder of Airbnb, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chairman of Airbnb China. Nate plays a leading role in driving key strategic initiatives across the global business, particularly those which require a combined understanding of the business, product, and data. Recently he oversaw the creation of the Airbnb City Portal, an industry-first software solution that addresses the needs of cities relating to short-term rentals. Previously Nate oversaw the creation of Airbnb’s engineering, data science, payments, and performance marketing teams.




Chief Strategy Officer & Chairman, Airbnb China
Investors used to be the kings. They held court while entrepreneurs approached the palace. But the kingdom has changed. Entrepreneurs are now the dragons – they can fly anywhere and cause havoc. Like any company or person who defies gravity, they have all the choices. We’ve seen a lot of changes in the investment landscape. And many of those changes will have a favourable impact on our industry, the world’s largest by some measures.




Queen's Road Capital
In 2005 Frederick “Fritz” Demopoulos co-founded and was the CEO of Qunar. Qunar was acquired by Baidu in 2011.
Fritz also co-founded and was the CEO of Shawei. Shawei was acquired by Tom.com in 2000.
Fritz held senior management positions at various online and traditional media companies in China including Netease, Hai Run Media Group and News Corporation.
Fritz currently coordinates his personal investment and entrepreneurial activities through Queen’s Road Capital.
A native of Los Angeles, Fritz was educated at UCLA, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Karls-Ruprecht University in Heidelberg. He has lectured on entrepreneurship and the Chinese Internet at Stanford, Harvard, UCLA, Tsinghua, Beijing University, Singapore Management University and the Communist Party College in Nanjing.




Queen's Road Capital
The first round of our annual competition to pick out the entrepreneurs who want to take travel to Infinity.O. Three will be picked to pitch at the Grand Finals on Oct 20. The WiT Startup Pitch 2021, powered by Amadeus, is held in partnership with AWS which will provide up to US$250,000 worth of AWS credits and technical support through the AWS Activate program. The winner will have the opportunity to present in person during the 5 minutes in the Spotlight session at The Phocuswright Conference in Fort Lauderdale/ Hollywood, Florida, November 15-17, 2021.
Who will the post-Covid traveller be? How will they travel? Revealing insights on the changing traveller culled from research done by Google based on apps and consumer-based data.




Hermione is a leader with 15 years’ experience in sales, marketing, strategy and business development in the technology & travel sector.
Hermione leads the APAC Travel team for Google’s Large Customer Sales business, working with leading online travel agents, airlines, hotel chains & vacation rental companies to develop digital business strategy & products for Asian consumers. Additionally she oversees the APAC Vertical search team, who help clients adopt our more technical solutions such as Hotel Ads, and work with our Product & Engineering team to build products for our region. Prior to this, Hermione worked in Google’s Sydney office managing major Retail clients.
Before her time at Google, she worked in the TV industry for 4 years, working for 7media West running the Key Accounts team. When she launched her career she started in Creative Advertising working initially for M&C Saatchi and then TBWA in Sydney.
Hermione was educated in Sydney Australia, completing a degree in Economics & Social Sciences from Sydney University and was awarded the Young Citizen of the Year (2009) by the Woollahra Mulinciptilty.
Hermione now lives in Singapore, and has done so for six & a half years. She is a mum to three young children and a Red Kelpie, and is an incredibly passionate traveler.




It’s been the most challenging of times for Japan’s travel industry. It’s had to cope with a tough Covid situation at home which dampened its massive domestic travel market. Yet it pulled off a historic Olympics 2020 which kept the world united and enthralled at a critical time. How have all these developments influenced the way different travel brands are thinking of the future, from traditional players to digital brands to new startups? We examine the trends from three unique perspectives.




JTB Corp.
The JTB Group traces its roots back to 1912 when “Japan Tourist Bureau” was formed to attract international travelers to Japan and assist with their travel needs. While our activities and clientele have expanded greatly since then, the JTB Group remains aligned around a core purpose: bringing people, places and possibilities together.
Over an 18-year career at JTB, Eijiro Yamakita was involved in the development of the company’s global strategy and then moved to Europe, where he was appointed to be a top management at the forefront of the company’s global business. Prior to becoming a Managing Executive Officer, he served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Kuoni Travel Investment Ltd and the European Head of JTB Group for 3 years. At the beginning of the year he returned to Japan, then became President and CEO of JTB Corp.




JTB Corp.




- TRAVEL.jp & Trip101
TravelTech entrepreneur based in Singapore and Tokyo with 20 years of experience. He led his company to an IPO, a buyout and two exits.
Kei co-founded Venture Republic in Tokyo, Japan in 2001 and has been serving as a CEO since foundation. Company runs a group of online travel websites and apps worldwide including TRAVEL jp, Japan’s largest online travel metasearch/media (Over 30 million monthly visits/23 million followers. http://www.travel.co.jp/), Trip101, Singapore based global online travel media (https://trip101.com/) and Allstay, mobile accommodation search app in Korea (http://www.allstay.kr/). In 2018, he led the company to bring in LINE Corporation, Asia’s leading mobile messaging company as an investor. In 2021, company launched the chat based corporate travel booking and management service, “TRAVEL jp for Business” by the partnership with LINE WORKS, a leading business communication platform in Japan that has over 20 million corporate clients.
He led the company to an IPO in 2008 (2177. JASDAQ) after 7 years of inception and to LBO by management in 2012. In its history, company had built one of the leading online comparison shopping businesses in Japan through running “coneco.net” which was acquired by Yahoo! Japan. He also led to acquire Flocations, a Singapore based travel startup, rebrand it to Trip101 and have it grown to one of the fastest growing online travel media sites attracting the users from over 200 countries worldwide.
As a co-founder/organizer, he also runs WIT (Web In Travel) Japan & North Asia, largest international business conference in North Asia focusing on technology & travel.
In 2019, he received the WiT Hall of Fame award which honors individuals who have had the greatest influence on the progress and professionalism of the digital travel industry in Asia Pacific.
Frequent speaker at travel & technology events and conferences. Among them are ITB, Google Travel Executive Forum, Phocuswright, TBEX, WiT and Digital Travel APAC.
Angel investor in travel & technology space across APEC and America regions over 10 years. He serves as a board of director for various startups including BeMyGuest (Singapore).
He also serves as a Chairman of Keio University’s alumni association for startup founders/CEOs, Executive Committee Member of Harvard Business School Club of Japan and co-chapter leader of Travel Massive in Singapore and Tokyo.
Kei received a BA of Law from Keio University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Avid nordic/alpine skier & snowboarder.




- TRAVEL.jp & Trip101




Reiwa Travel




Reiwa Travel
We look at the future through three different lenses. Seasoned corporate travel veteran Johnny Thorsen has left the corporate world to pursue a new startup that he believes will deliver “Traveltopia” to travellers. Mary Li, passionate about fixing flights, sold her previous startup Aslan to Fliggy, and is back building a new business to change the way people buy flights. Serial entrepreneur Turochas Fuad, who sold two startups – Travelmob and Spacemob – is back with a new startup in a hot space, getting people to “Buy Now, Pay Later”. How will these three stories play out in shaping the future of travel?




The Atlas
Mary Li has built her startup career in solving flight problems and is back with a new startup, The Atlas, which is a global airfare aggregator, offering unique content from low-cost carriers and domestic airlines. Before that, she was co-CEO of Mystifly where she managed its product, technology, operations, human resource, and APAC Sales from Bangalore, India. Her first flight startup was ASLAN, which she ran for eight years, building it from a 40-person offline travel agency into the largest B2B air ticket platform in China. In 2014, Aslan was acquired by Alitrip (Fliggy), Alibaba’s online travel platform.




The Atlas




Spotnana
Johnny Thorsen is a global technology evangelist in the corporate travel and mobile world with proven ability to start new business or develop new services within large companies as well negotiating and closing “impossible deals” between global enterprise buyers, start-up suppliers and major established industry players.
He has all-round background in software services ranging from actual code writing to marketing of new products and services and creation of completely new business models with associated go-to-market strategy and significant disruptive innovation resulting in new customer value creation.
He is also a proven presenter at very large travel industry events in both EMEA, APAC and US, with audiences ranging from 10 – 1,000 delegates.
Named as of the 25 most influential people in the travel industry in 2010 by Business Travel News as CEO and co-founder of conTgo, a UK-based startup acquired by Concur technologies in March 2013 Global network of business contacts within the travel, procurement and mobile world after living and working in 5 different countries in EMEA, APAC and now USA.




Spotnana




Pace Enterprise
Turochas “T” Fuad enjoys building companies and he has successfully launched and sold 3 startups thus far. T’s first startup was WUF Networks, Inc., an Internet of things software company based out of Silicon Valley. The company was acquired by Yahoo!, Inc in 2005. T was also the CEO and Founder of travelmob, an online marketplace for vacation rentals. Headquartered in Singapore, travelmob was acquired by HomeAway, Inc. (now part of Expedia) in mid 2013. In 2016, T established and ran Spacemob, a co-working operator based out of Singapore. Spacemob was later acquired by WeWork in 2017 and T was appointed as the Managing Director of WeWork Southeast Asia and Korea.
In between his startups, T was the Managing Director for Skype AsiaPac, responsible for its business expansion across Japan, China, Australia, Taiwan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia. T led and launched a mobile partnership with KDDI to make Skype available to the second largest mobile network in Japan. Prior to Skype, T was responsible for all business aspects of Yahoo!’s Mobile division across the Southeast Asia market.
T’s background has spanned across various industries which include enterprise software, e-commerce, mobile, travel, real estate, hospitality and consumer internet services. Born in Indonesia, T currently resides in Singapore, plotting out his next adventure.




Pace Enterprise
The first round of our annual competition to pick out the entrepreneurs who want to take travel to Infinity.O. Three will be picked to pitch at the Grand Finals on Oct 20. The WiT Startup Pitch 2021, powered by Amadeus, is held in partnership with AWS which will provide up to US$250,000 worth of AWS credits and technical support through the AWS Activate program. The winner will have the opportunity to present in person during the 5 minutes in the Spotlight session at The Phocuswright Conference in Fort Lauderdale/ Hollywood, Florida, November 15-17, 2021.
We round up those responsible for the purse strings and find out how they are thinking about bringing on the next billion users with their capital and initiatives, what trends they are betting on and the opportunities that have been accelerated during this period, plus a commentary on this year’s WiT Startup Pitch entrants.
Moderator:
David Peller
Managing Director, Travel & Hospitality
Amazon Web Services




Monk's Hill Ventures
Susli is a Venture Partner at Monk’s Hill Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage tech companies, primarily Series A, in Southeast Asia. She is based in Indonesia and is responsible for sourcing, analyzing, and executing deals, and working closely with portfolio companies. Prior to MHV, she co-founded ErudiFi, a tech-enabled education financing company in Southeast Asia. She is also the first female founder backed by Y Combinator from Indonesia.
Susli is a seasoned finance professional, having built a career at the cross-section of finance, development, and technology with global experience spanning North America, Australia, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Born and raised in Jakarta, she has spent the last decade advising, investing, and operating as a founder primarily in Indonesia. She began her career in strategy consulting at Oliver Wyman in the financial services practice, and subsequently pioneered the role of Asia-Pacific Chief of Staff. Her investment experience is focused on Indonesia and includes stints at LeapFrog Investments, Quvat Capital, and YCAB Ventures. Susli also advises on development finance projects for the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank Group.
Susli received her BA in Economics and Chinese from Yale, MBA from Wharton, and MA in International Development from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).




Monk's Hill Ventures




Amadeus
Frédéric Barou is Senior Vice President, Online Travel Companies, Asia Pacific at Amadeus. He is responsible for defining and delivering the commercial strategy for Amadeus’ Online Travel business in Asia Pacific, including all Online Travel Agencies and Metasearch in the region.
Frédéric joined Amadeus in 1999 and has held many different portfolios in locations around the world, including in Chicago, Bangkok, Nice (where he is currently based) and soon Singapore. Prior to his current role, he was responsible for the company’s Online Travel business in the Northern, Eastern, Central and Southern Europe (NECSE) region, and before that he drove the Amadeus Online Travel solution direction, investment, roadmap and marketing, globally. From 2014-2018, Frédéric was Vice President Products and Operations for Asia Pacific, in charge of leveraging Amadeus’ investment in leading-edge technology and services for the region.
Before joining Amadeus, he worked as a consultant for SAP and IBM.
A sports fanatic, Frédéric runs triathlons, sails and snowboards. A happy father of two children, he practices photography with his family as they share their passion of travel and exploration.
Frédéric graduated in 1994 from the University of Technology of Compiegne, France and the University of Waterloo, Canada with a degree in Computer Engineering.




Amadeus




Future Now Capital
Louise is Fund CEO responsible for coordinating and delivery of strategy and outcomes across the business. Louise was a member of the Fund’s Investment Committee until March before joining full time as CEO.
Prior to Future Now Capital, Louise was Deputy CEO of Accor Hotel Group Asia Pacific, operating more than 1,200 hotels and ancillary businesses across 22 countries with gross revenues of over $10 billion. Louise also sat on the Accor global disruption and growth board, the only member outside of France. Accor is one of the world’s most active enterprise adopters of technology, having developed its own unique digital ecosystem. Louis completed her Executive MBA at SMU Singapore has a Bachelor of Business (Accounting) and is a Certified Practicing Account (CPA).




Future Now Capital
It’s a tale of two startups who started their journey differently. One started in Singapore as an event registration business, then saw the future of virtual events early on and built an events platform, only to have the business catch on fire during the pandemic, and has expanded and innovated aggressively the last two years. The other started in San Francisco as a company that created virtual editions of physical venues, with tools to help them with designing and planning events. Then came Covid and it pivoted to bring its virtual venues to life with 3D design and interactive tools. Meet the builders of our two virtual homes this year and learn about how they see the future of events.




GEVME & GlobalSign.In
Veemal founded GSI in 2006, architected and coded the very first software platform of the company. GSI is today a leading event tech company with offices in Singapore, Australia, India, Myanmar and the US. Having graduated from the National University of Singapore with a degree in Computer Science, Veemal remains at the forefront of technology and spearheads the software products being crafted at GSI. GSI’s core SaaS product is GEVME, the award-winning enterprise event ticketing & marketing platform.




GEVME & GlobalSign.In




AllSeated EXVO
Yaron Lipshitz, CEO, has led rapid growth in Allseated for the past six years. Prior to that, he was an Investment Banker at Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Ridgecrest Capital where he led scores of strategic transactions in the high-tech industry. Yaron served in the 8200 unit of the IDF and holds a BA in Economics and Computer Science from Tel Aviv University, and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon. In his spare time, Yaron enjoys skiing, sailing and spending time with his wife and four kids.




AllSeated EXVO
Covid will end (we can’t wait for the day) but the sustainability movement will not. In this session, we connect the dots of what it takes to build a business infused with sustainability – the heart and sincerity to do it, the tech to deliver it and the dollars to ensure it pays off for stakeholders. We go behind the scenes of two major hotel groups to uncover how a CEO and tech leader view it from their perspectives, and we speak to a major OTA on how it is thinking about sustainability and travel’s impact on local communities.




Pan Pacific Hotels Group
Mr Choe Peng Sum is Chief Executive Officer of Pan Pacific Hotels Group, a member of Singapore- listed UOL Group, one of Asia’s most established hotel and property companies. He oversees nearly 50 properties with more than 14,000 keys across 29 cities in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America.
Mr Choe has more than 33 years’ experience in the hospitality industry managing and developing hotels and serviced apartments worldwide, and was formerly the Chief Executive Officer of Frasers Hospitality International Ltd. During his 22-year tenure, he grew the portfolio from two properties in Singapore in 1998 to more than 140 properties across more than 76 cities worldwide. His last appointment was Senior Advisor to Frasers Property Limited.
As CEO of Pan Pacific Hotels Group, Mr Choe is responsible for the expansion of the Group’s hotels and serviced apartments under its Pan Pacific, PARKROYAL COLLECTION and PARKROYAL brands. He is in charge of their performance, operations, marketing and brand standards, as well as the business development of the hotels and serviced suites.
Mr Choe started his hospitality career with Westin and subsequently Shangri-La International in 1981, where he was awarded the Shangri-La overseas scholarship. He graduated from Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) with a Bachelor of Science with Distinction. He was awarded the National Dean’s List (USA) as well as the Phi Kappa Phi for academic excellence.




Pan Pacific Hotels Group




Booking.com
As Managing Director & Vice President of Asia Pacific, Laura Houldsworth leads and oversees business growth, operations and strategy for one of Booking.com’s most vibrant and diverse regions globally.
Laura joined Booking.com in June 2021, following 10 successful years at SAP Concur where she last served as Senior Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China. Laura has previously held regional roles in BCD Travel and ABN Amro Private Banking; and is a commercial leader with more than 15 years of experience managing successful, multi-cultural teams.
Laura has lived and worked in Singapore for more than 15 years and holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Marketing Management from Bournemouth University, United Kingdom. Besides being an avid traveller and runner, she enjoys a good game of chess.




Booking.com




Accor
From France and then from Singapore, Khang has 20+ years of tech leadership in digital native companies and more traditional companies going for deep digital transformation. A strong advocate of “Management 3.0 | Agile Leadership Practices” and of “Tech for Good”, he is currently Group Chief Technology Architect at Accor, the world-leading augmented hospitality group, where he leads the middle and long term tech strategies of the Group.
He is also a shareholder of Time for the Planet, the first crowdfunded investment company and open source accelerator to fight climate change.
Finally, he enjoys advising startups which need to scale up their tech management practices.




Accor
With a background in the Economic Development Board and as a board member of the Singapore Food Agency, she’s now leading the charge at Sentosa Development Corporation, which last month laid out a sustainability roadmap to meet the island’s target of becoming carbon neutral by 2030, and a globally recognised and certified sustainable tourism destination. The multi-pronged roadmap includes electrification of all Sentosa transportation, leveraging underutilised spaces for renewable energy, development of low energy buildings, green events, and more. We find out how she intends to rally businesses on the island together in this collective push.




Sentosa Development Corporation




Sentosa Development Corporation
If you ask this travel technologist what his dream project is, his answer will probably be building tech to bring on the next billion users – to make travel and everything accessible and affordable to the emerging class, and it starts in India. In its prospectus filing for IPO, ixigo spoke of the opportunity of bringing on the next billion users. In this talk, the tech and product chief of one of India’s most successful travel startups, shares his dream and how he would make it a reality.




ixigo
Rajnish Kumar is the Group CTPO & Co-founder of ixigo, an intelligent AI-based travel app. Spearheading the company’s innovation and technology, he has created many global industry first products, that are revolutionising the way India travels. Under his leadership, ixigo trains app has emerged as the 6th most downloaded travel app globally and the second most downloaded travel app in India.
He holds a BTech degree in Computer Science from IIT, Kanpur. He has also published research papers on AI, one of which was presented at MIT, Boston in 2004.




ixigo
It’s probably the most iconic attraction in Singapore, which also means that the integrated resort has been right in the eye of the storm of Covid, which smashed the MICE business (on which it is hugely reliant) and inbound travel (on which it too is reliant). It has had to be nimble to survive and bold to change course. How has this period changed its thinking about its brand promise, customer experience and loyalty?




Marina Bay Sands
As the Senior Vice President – Marketing for Marina Bay Sands, Maunik leads the marketing organization in developing and delivering a strong brand proposition and alignment to the service culture for Marina Bay Sands. Data, analytics and technology are at the core of the personalized and seamless customer experience he is charged with developing for the brand. Maunik started his career in revenue management for hotels, working with brands such as Taj Hotels, Le Meridien and Starwood, in India, Bahrain and Dubai, before moving to Macau to join the pre-opening team for the Venetian Macau and other Las Vegas Sands properties. With the experience of the casino industry, he moved to Singapore where he is based now, as part of the pre-opening team at Marina Bay Sands with the remit of extending the revenue optimization practice across the casino as well, before transitioning to lead the marketing function at the Integrated Resort.
Maunik holds an MBA in International Hospitality Management from IMHI in Paris, a program jointly administered by Cornell University, USA and ESSEC, France. His personal interests lie in travel and he has always had a desire to live and work in different parts of the world, learning about different cultures. He also serves on the HSMAI Asia Pacific Digital Marketing Advisory Board and has been involved with the organization for several years.




Marina Bay Sands
“There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief”
How do we restart cross-border travel in Asia Pacific? That’s the biggest pain point in our industry right now, so WiT asked four travel tech leaders who have been thinking about the problem and monitoring the data to collaborate and come up with a solution. This is their pitch.




ZUZU Hospitality Solutions
Dan Lynn is the Co-founder of ZUZU Hospitality Solutions, focused on product and finance. Dan has built his career at the intersection of travel and technology. Prior to founding ZUZU, Dan spent much of his career with Expedia, building their Asia Pacific business as the CEO of the AirAsia/Expedia joint venture AAE. Dan also ran HomeAway’s APAC businesses – Stayz, Bookabach and Travelmob. Dan has served on the boards of international travel companies Elong in China, and Movenpick Hotels and Resorts in Switzerland.




ZUZU Hospitality Solutions




Wego
Ross is CEO & Co-Founder at Wego, which is online travel marketplace that provides top ranked mobile apps and websites for users living in the APAC and MENA regions. Wego harnesses powerful technology that simplifies the process of searching, comparing and booking flights and hotels across hundreds of airlines, hotels and online travel agency websites. Wego is has dual-HQs in Singpaore and Dubai and is backed by top-tier investors including Tiger Global, Crescent Group, Square Peg Capital and the MBC Group.
Ross is a veteran of the Asian internet industry having established Yahoo!s Southeast Asian operations in Singapore back in 1998 and leading product development efforts across the region for 6+ years. He is also Singapore Co-Chair of H2, the premier global leadership network for the digital industry. Ross has been an active angel investor in the technology sector for a decade and enjoys working with other passionate entrepreneurs. He has worked in Sydney, Melbourne, London, Kuala Lumpur and is now splits his time between Singapore and Dubai. He travels frequently for business but not nearly enough for leisure.




Wego




Spotnana
Johnny Thorsen is a global technology evangelist in the corporate travel and mobile world with proven ability to start new business or develop new services within large companies as well negotiating and closing “impossible deals” between global enterprise buyers, start-up suppliers and major established industry players.
He has all-round background in software services ranging from actual code writing to marketing of new products and services and creation of completely new business models with associated go-to-market strategy and significant disruptive innovation resulting in new customer value creation.
He is also a proven presenter at very large travel industry events in both EMEA, APAC and US, with audiences ranging from 10 – 1,000 delegates.
Named as of the 25 most influential people in the travel industry in 2010 by Business Travel News as CEO and co-founder of conTgo, a UK-based startup acquired by Concur technologies in March 2013 Global network of business contacts within the travel, procurement and mobile world after living and working in 5 different countries in EMEA, APAC and now USA.




Spotnana




T2Impact
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne is a principal at 777 Partners, a private equity investment firm based in Miami with deep experience in aviation. He is a frequent speaker and commentator on aviation, travel distribution, technology, startups and innovation at events around the globe. Timothy is also the head of product at Air Black Box, a global travel technology company founded to help airlines address the complexities of cross-selling travel product inventory. Air Black Box is headquartered in Manchester, UK with offices in the USA and Asia. Most recently, Air Black Box was recognized as a 2019 CIO 100 Award Winner.
Before founding Air Black Box, Timothy was a founding management team member with Expedia, heading its international and ground transportation portfolios. He also spent time with Worldspan as their international head of technology, where he managed technology services from infrastructure to product.




T2Impact
As with travel, the live music industry was crushed by the pandemic and institutions and iconic tourist attractions such as Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City found themselves untethered by the crisis. But there have been silver linings and this is the story of how this world-renowned musical center, whose mission it is to bring jazz to the world, may be having the biggest breakthrough moment in its 30-year history.




Jazz at Lincoln Center
NEW YORK, USA // Gabrielle Armand is a seasoned professional with 30 years experience creating, managing, and implementing global marketing, branding and sponsorship initiatives within the entertainment industry, not-for-profit and cultural arts landscapes.
In her current role as Vice President, Brand, Sales and Marketing for Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC), she oversees the Marketing, Creative, PR, & Communications, Corporate Partnerships/Sponsorships, Audience Development, Content Development and Intellectual Property teams, and is responsible for stewarding and strengthening the global brand.
Gabrielle has strategically designed and managed multi-layered partnerships with major global brands. Prior to joining Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2009, she was the Executive Director for Marketing & Communications for the United Nations Association of the USA, where she formed a groundbreaking strategic partnership focused on gender-equity and improving the lives of children in sub-Saharan Africa.
Gabrielle spent the first ten years of her professional career in the recording industry, working with a host of Grammy Award winning artists and shepherding the commercial release of more than 1,500 records.
She is a musician and writer and lives in New York City.




Jazz at Lincoln Center
We announce the three finalists who will pitch at the WiT Startup Pitch Grand Finals tomorrow, Oct 20 and it’s also time for you to vote for People’s Choice.
For those watching virtually, stay tuned for the next item on the agenda.
This year, WiT For Good is raising funds for Phare Ponleu Selpak, the 30-year-old NGO behind the social enterprise, Phare, the Cambodia Circus. As part of this partnership, their artistes will stage this special performance, themed “Home”, especially for WiT audiences.
Quote from Charles Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities” – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Are we past despair and into hope? Agoda, founded in 1998, has seen the best and the worst of times in Asia’s travel story. In its early days, it rode on the coat-tails of a rapidly rising, changing market in Asia and it changed the face of online travel in Asia. How has Covid changed it? And how is it looking to further change the face of online travel in Asia as well as globally? We do some soul-searching and forecasting with this travel leader.




Agoda
John Brown has been CEO of Agoda since June 2018 and during his 10 years at Agoda has overseen product, marketing, customer experience, and partner services teams.
He had a brief stint as advisor to Minister of Commerce in Afghanistan from June 2009 to May 2008 and prior to that, worked with Boston Consulting Group for nearly six years.




Agoda
Since the start of the pandemic, 70 million people – equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom – have become digital consumers in South-east Asia. Almost 8 in 10 people (78%) among South-east Asia’s population of 15-year-olds and above will be digital consumers by end-2021. The same 2021 Digital Consumer Report (Facebook & Bain & Company) projects that by end 2026, Vietnam’s ecommerce GMV is expected to grow 4.5x from 2021 levels, the Philippines’ is projected to grow 3.8x and Indonesia’s is expected to grow by 1.6x. South Korea, meanwhile, ranks second in the third annual edition of the Digital Quality of Life Index (DQL), which ranks 110 countries. It also ranks second in mobile speeds and 6th in broadband internet speeds. No wonder thus that these companies are riding on this boom – is this the beginning of the next wave of travel in Asia?




VNLIFE
Niraan is currently Group CEO and a Board member for VNLife, one of Vietnam’s largest and fastest growing technology groups. VNLife operates across digital banking, e-payments, online travel and new retail. VNLife’s largest subsidiary is VNPay, the largest financial technology and payments company in Vietnam.
Prior to VNLife, Niraan was a senior executive at a diverse Vietnamese conglomerate called Sovico Holdings.
Niraan started his career in Investment Banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he spent over 11 years reaching Head of Asia Pacific for Equity Linked Capital Markets and Head of Equity Capital Markets South East Asia for South East Asia.
Niraan has a degree in Commerce and Economics from Monash University in Australia.




VNLIFE




Yanolja
Jong Yoon Kim is the CEO of Yanolja & Yanolja Cloud, leading all strategic management of businesses regarding domestic/international accommodation and leisure activity platforms and cloud-based hospitality solutions. He also oversees the company’s ongoing expansion efforts with responsibility for investment attraction & corporate acquisition strategies.
As a digital professional and business strategy expert, Kim is leading the company to grow 2X bigger per year while spearheading the digital transformation of travel and leisure industry.
Prior to joining Yanolja in 2015, Kim worked across several innovative brands and sectors including 3M, Google, and McKinsey & Company




Yanolja
This infectious disease expert believes a “scientific, calibrated approach” is needed to manage future pandemics, otherwise the default mode by governments is likely to be to shut down borders. And we’ve seen first hand how challenging it is to reopen borders once they close. How can travel work with science to give confidence to governments? And what do you do when the issue becomes more about policy, than science which is usually the case early in a new infection? What can travel, caught between policy and science, do?
(To get context for this conversation, listen to this WiT Podcast)




Professor, Department of Medicine, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine;
President-elect, International Society of Infectious Diseases (ISID)
At the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Prof Tambyah is Professor of Medicine. He is also a Senior Consultant in Infectious Diseases at the National University Hospital and has served as the Research Director in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the National University Health System (NUHS). Outside of the NUHS, Prof Tambyah is the President of the Asia Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection. Other positions Prof Tambyah has held include being the immediate past-president of the Singapore Society of Infectious Diseases and Assistant Dean at NUS Medicine in 2015.




Professor, Department of Medicine, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine;
President-elect, International Society of Infectious Diseases (ISID)
Domestic is not enough, the past 20 months have proven that. There is no recovery without inbound or inbound within the region. Travellers want to travel but governments are fearful. What will it take to get cross-border travel in Asia Pacific off again? The session takes a look at the challenges and what the industry needs to do to get things moving again, and if there are lessons to be learnt from other markets that have started travelling again.
This panel is held in partnership with ATTIA.
Moderator:
Ang Choo Pin
MD of Asia, and Head of Government Relations and Corporate Affairs
Expedia Group




Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA)
Subhas Menon joined the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines in March 2020. Subhas has over 35 years’ experience in international aviation with the Singapore Airlines Group, having served in a wide spectrum of roles including international & government relations, marketing, product development, logistics, country & regional management.
In his various roles in the airline industry over the past three decades, he has developed a solid skill set that includes successfully building and managing relationships with different stakeholders, strong communications and public speaking skills as well as commercial acumen honed across different regions.
As Regional Vice President for an Asian airline in various regions around the world, and having also served as Chief Executive of SilkAir, Subhas is familiar with the Asian airline environment, its market dynamics and the region’s diverse political landscape. Building on his early experience in international relations, he has well-developed lobbying and negotiation skills as well as dealing with government affairs, which makes him well-placed to undertake the kind of advocacy and lobbying activities AAPA conducts as a trade association on behalf of its member airlines.
He is a graduate of the National University of Singapore, with a Bachelor of Social Science (Honours) in Sociology.




Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA)




Changi Airport Group




Changi Airport Group




Agoda
Timothy Hughes is the Vice President Corporate Development of Agoda (a Priceline Company). Timothy is a “retired” blogger and pundit. Previously he was the editor and publisher of one of the top online travel industry blogs (the BOOT: the Business Of Online Travel) and a writer at Tnooz.
Tim is a former lawyer and venture capitalist. As a venture capitalist and consultant he helped a number of start-ups (inside and outside travel) secure funding, set up online media companies, managed investments in public companies and held regular client briefing sessions for a brokerage house. As lawyer he represented technology, new media, Internet, telecommunications and broadcasting clients in Australia, Europe and Hong Kong.
He first joined the online travel industry in 1999 and has worked for top tier online travel companies in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Tim has a Bachelor of Commerce and Hons Law Degree from the Australian National University.




Agoda




International Air Transport Association (IATA)
Vinoop Goel is the Asia-Pacific Regional Director of Airports & External Relations for the International Air Transport Association (IATA). He is based at their Asia-Pacific regional office in Singapore. Vinoop leads a team that is responsible for all IATA’s activities in the Asia-Pacific region relating to Airports, Passenger Experience, Baggage, Ground Handling, Cargo Supply Chain, Security and Facilitation. In addition to this, Vinoop also heads the Member and External Relations department for the region that is responsible for IATA membership and government policy issues such as environment, taxation and aviation regulatory matters. Vinoop has a degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT, Delhi in India. He has 3 decades of aviation industry experience including a 15-year stint in Japan and has been with IATA since 2005.




International Air Transport Association (IATA)
It’s been better than nothing for cruises in Asia – at least they are going somewhere even if it’s nowhere. With a December 2020 restart in Singapore, and other “safe” pockets in the regions, cruise lines have been able to keep the wheels turning. But how does one of the biggest foreign cruise companies, operating in Asia, see the outlook of cruising when so much has changed in the industry – from customer behavior to distribution and sustainability awareness? What trends and opportunities does it see in the region which has its own set of distinctly different characteristics?




Royal Caribbean
Based in Singapore since 2018, Angie Stephen has been with Royal Caribbean for over 20 years. As Vice President of Asia Pacific, Angie oversees all commercial and operational activities for the region, and most recently led the restart of Royal Caribbean’s cruises out of Singapore, working closely with the Singapore Tourism Board.
Prior to this, Angie was based in Shanghai, where she led Market Development for Greater China, developing sales distribution, brand marketing and partnerships. She was also previously based in Miami at the RCL Global Headquarters, where she has held many leadership positions within the sales and marketing organization, including District Sales Manager, Trade Strategy, Training & Event Planning, and Marketing Operations.




Royal Caribbean
Exploring Wellness in an Urban City
Hear from these business leaders as they interpret their versions of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, sharing insights into reintroducing the concept of urban wellness in Singapore, making it even more relevant post-pandemic to the new traveller.
Powered by SingapoReimagine Global Conversations

COMO Lifestyle
Alexis is COO of COMO Lifestyle, part of the COMO Group of companies. Headquartered in Singapore, the Group represents an integrated approach to living well, grounded in a celebration of diversity and a deep respect for authenticity.
The Group’s interests extend across hospitality, fashion, wellness, organic living and specialty foods. COMO Lifestyle oversees the COMO Group’s food and beverage businesses spanning import and distribution, restaurants, retail, and wellness.
Prior to joining COMO, Alexis held a variety of positions, including CEO and COO roles in financial institutions in Asia. She has over twenty-five years of experience in financial markets and has a Masters in International Addiction Studies, a Masters in Counselling; and a BA Hons in Chinese. She was born in Hong Kong and educated in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Taiwan, Beijing, and England. She speaks conversational Mandarin, Cantonese, and French.

COMO Lifestyle

Unlisted Collection
Dynamic hotelier and restaurateur, Loh Lik Peng was born in Dublin, Ireland on May 4, 1972 to Singapore parents who were practicing medicine there at the time. He attended Law school in England, University of Sheffield and Postgraduate at London School of Economics followed by bar exams in London before returning to Singapore in 1997. Loh became a corporate litigator upon his return before leaving the profession to step into the hospitality industry. Since then, Loh has started ventures across Singapore, Shanghai, London and Sydney under the Unlisted Collection.

Unlisted Collection

Klook
As Klook’s General Manager for Singapore, Sarah oversees the travel and leisure platform’s operations, including business development, marketing and e-commerce. Over the past year, Sarah has led her team in tackling the domestic tourism market amidst a rapidly changing environment – from kickstarting Klook’s foray into hotels and cruises, to innovating and enhancing traditional tourism products to better suit local tastes.
Sarah was previously Southeast Asia Marketing Director (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore) for Klook. Prior to that, she worked in Edelman’s Brand practice – where she led consumer campaigns for prominent international and local brands including Diageo, Shell, Singapore Tourism Board, Lagardère Sports, Kimberly Clark and Nestlé.

Klook
At a time when the world went local, in-destination experiences managed to hold their ground and those who had a leg in this space found that, well, at least they had this leg to stand on. They didn’t stand still though, they pivoted, innovated, consolidated – what they look today is very different from what they looked like pre-this age of Covid. We catch up with two key players in this space and delve into how they see the future of possibilities.




Klook
Eric Gnock Fah is the COO & co-founder of Klook Travel, Asia’s leading platform or travelers to explore and book a curated selection of activities. These amazing experiences are verified and vetted by Klook’s team of travel curators and made easily bookable online and on-the-go at unbeatable prices of up to 50% off.
Prior to founding Klook Travel, Eric worked in hedge fund and Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley, focused on consumer and travel companies in Asia. Originally from Mauritius, an exotic travel destination, Eric grew up speaking 7 languages and is a cultural explorer at heart.




Klook




Go City
An experienced leader with a passion for high-growth digital businesses, Jon became CEO of Go City at the beginning of 2020, aer stepping up from his role as Chief Commercial Officer, which he had held since 2017. Go City is the world’s largest sightseeing pass business, operating in over 25 cities across the US, Europe, and Asia. During his time at the company, Jon has overseen rapid business growth, which has resulted in over 60% global pass market share, an expansion of the global destination footprint, and an increase in Go City’s customer base to more than 2.5m / annum.
As CEO, Jon has focused the business around a new mission of “transforming the way people see and experience the world’s greatest cities”, and driven a strong focus on customer satisfaction as a key measure. Jon is a passionate, customer-centric leader, focused on improving the sightseeing experience for travelers around the world. Go City enables its customers to see the best attractions, tours and activities in a city, whilst retaining the freedom to do what they want, when they want – all whilst making incredible savings.
Before Go City, Jon simultaneously served as CEO of Ribble Cycles, a disruptive, direct-to-consumer, technology-enabled cycling manufacturer, and a non-executive director at OVO Energy. Prior to that, he worked at U.K.-based online retailer Shop Direct, where he ran Very.co.uk, a digital department store which he grew to a £800 million business and £100 million in profit.
Outside of Go City, Jon leads a team he’s just as dedicated to: his son’s football team, which he coaches at home in Harrogate, England. Jon has a growing passion for rewilding and biodiversity, and loves travelling to the mountains of Europe and North America with his family.




Go City
She’s known among industry peers and colleagues as the voice of reason within the Tourism Authority of Thailand and when she was appointed deputy governor for policy and planning two years ago (BC, before Covid), hopes rose that she’d be able to put the brakes on unfettered development. But Covid came and put the brakes on. With tourism smashed, she believes Thailand has a chance to reposition and rebuild for the future, as a destination that goes beyond numbers and money. It’s a hard sell when so many businesses have collapsed and those left are struggling, but she remains resolute in her longterm planning and vision.




Tourism Authority of Thailand
Mrs. Numfhon Boonyawat is Deputy Governor for Policy and Planning of the Tourism Authority of Thailand. She oversees the organisational policy, overall marketing strategy planning, monitoring and evaluation.
Prior to this, she was the Executive Director of the Planning Department. Her previous positions and responsibilities at TAT have included TAT Director of Marketing Strategy Division, Director of the TAT Sydney Office, and Executive Director of the Human Resources Department.




Tourism Authority of Thailand
As recovery continues and travelers become increasingly confident taking trips, staying ahead of shifting consumer behaviors has never been more important. This session takes a high level look at exclusive Expedia Group first-party traveler data and custom research, sharing the latest trends and key considerations shaping the industry’s continued recovery. Brands can learn how to reach and reconnect with travelers who are dreaming of their next trip or are ready to travel again.




Expedia Group Media Solutions
Andrew van der Feltz is a senior director of business development at Expedia Group Media Solutions. His team works closely with agencies, destination marketing organizations, hotel and airline partners on display advertising opportunities and campaigns across the portfolio of Expedia Group brands. Andrew previously led business development and oversaw the partner-facing teams for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
Prior to joining Expedia, Andy was the director of business development and operations at the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions (NBTC) since April 2011. Prior to this, he also worked at NBTC in the London office as country manager for the UK and Ireland. He started his career at NBTC as marketing manager, after his role as an international marketing manager at VisitScotland.
Andy studied Marketing and French in Scotland, continued his postdoc education at the Institute of Marketing in Edinburgh, and attended the Executive Educational Programme in General Management at the London Business School.




Expedia Group Media Solutions
It can’t have been fun running an airline that couldn’t fly for most part of the last year and more but the runway lights are coming on in the world’s airports for this low cost airline out of Singapore. A catch-up with the CEO who launched the airline, returned to Singapore Airlines to work on digital transformation of the group and is now back at the helm of Scoot, steering the airline back into some form of normalcy.




Scoot
Campbell Wilson is the chief executive officer of Scoot.
He was appointed the founding member of the airline on 18 July 2011. Before his appointment, he worked for the SIA group for more than 15 years in countries like Japan, Canada, and Hong Kong. He left Scoot in June 2016 and he is now appointed as the acting senior vice president of sales and marketing for Singapore Airlines. He was once again brought back as the CEO on 1 April 2020.
Campbell joined Singapore Airlines in Auckland in 1996 and was appointed vice-president of the airlines’ operation in Canada in 2006. 2 years later, he was appointed general manager of Hong Kong and then of Japan operations in 2010.
In June 2016, Campbell left Scoot. He is now the senior vice president of sales and marketing for Singapore Airlines.
Campbell took the position in 2011 and was quoted as saying ‘my immediate task is to establish a strong management team and we will be actively recruiting to fill senior positions’. On 1 November 2011, Campbell officially unveiled the new airline.
Campbell left Scoot in June 2016.




Scoot
Anything that could have happened to aviation has happened. Flights stopped. Planes grounded. Cancellations. Refunds. Customer Confusion. Not Air Travel Pass, but Air Travel Mess. How will flights recover? What needs to be fixed? Direct or indirect? Online or offline in the initial stage? How much simplicity do you trade off for profitability? How has the marketing playbook changed pre- and post-Covid? What does this whole NDC thing really mean for the GDS, intermediary and customer? Join us as we take this trip through the stormy skies of flights.




Amadeus
Mieke De Schepper is Executive Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific at Amadeus. Mieke is responsible for Amadeus’ Airlines and Travel Agency business, and leads business development across the company’s portfolio of airport, payments and hospitality solutions in the Asia Pacific region.
Previously, she was responsible for Amadeus’ Global Online Travel business, a role she held since joining the company in 2019.
Mieke has a strong track record of managing B2C and B2B businesses over two decades. Before joining Amadeus, Mieke worked for the Expedia Group as Vice President of Lodging Partner Solutions Asia Pacific, and later as Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Egencia, Expedia Group’s corporate travel brand. Prior to Expedia Group, she spent 10 years with Phillips Electronics in various global, regional and local leadership roles in product, marketing and sales. She started her professional career with McKinsey & Company.
A Dutch national, Mieke has lived in Singapore for almost 17 years, and has worked extensively across multiple countries in Asia-Pacific, while also having worked and lived in Europe, Latin America and USA. Mieke holds an MBA from INSEAD and an MSc in Industrial Design Engineering from the Delft University of Technology.




Amadeus




Skyscanner
Paul Whiteway is Head of Asia, MD Japan at Skyscanner. Based in the regional headquarters in Singapore, he is responsible for helping lead the company’s growth across APAC, and he also heads up the Japan business based in Tokyo.
Paul has been working with Internet companies since the industry’s formation and is experienced at scaling businesses in both start-up and corporate environments. He was previously General Manager of the Internet Advertising Division for Yellow Pages Australia, VP for a telecommunications start-up in New York City and Business Manager for MSN in London. He has been working in Asia since 2007 where, amongst other roles, he held senior roles at Yahoo!, leading product, editorial and engineering teams across the region and was Chief Operating Officer for iProperty, based in Malaysia up till his appointment at Skyscanner in 2013.
Paul is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at INSEAD Singapore where he provides coaching and advice to students interested in entrepreneurship. In his spare time, he loves to cook with ingredients he directly imports from Australia and tries to practise Yoga regularly.




Skyscanner




Wego
Ross is CEO & Co-Founder at Wego, which is online travel marketplace that provides top ranked mobile apps and websites for users living in the APAC and MENA regions. Wego harnesses powerful technology that simplifies the process of searching, comparing and booking flights and hotels across hundreds of airlines, hotels and online travel agency websites. Wego is has dual-HQs in Singpaore and Dubai and is backed by top-tier investors including Tiger Global, Crescent Group, Square Peg Capital and the MBC Group.
Ross is a veteran of the Asian internet industry having established Yahoo!s Southeast Asian operations in Singapore back in 1998 and leading product development efforts across the region for 6+ years. He is also Singapore Co-Chair of H2, the premier global leadership network for the digital industry. Ross has been an active angel investor in the technology sector for a decade and enjoys working with other passionate entrepreneurs. He has worked in Sydney, Melbourne, London, Kuala Lumpur and is now splits his time between Singapore and Dubai. He travels frequently for business but not nearly enough for leisure.




Wego




FCM Travel Solutions Asia
Bertrand is the Managing Director for the Flight Centre Travel Group in Asia, after being in the role of General Manager for FCM Asia since 2015. Bertrand started his career in the telecom industry in Europe working for Orange and then moved to the aeronautical giant Airbus to lead the sales and marketing department of their IT division. He held multiple global management roles within Amadeus, an IT leader of the travel industry before joining FCM.




FCM Travel Solutions Asia
He was appointed to CEO, Expedia Group at the height of the pandemic. At the time, chairman Barry Diller said, “We have one mandate – to conserve cash, survive, and use this time to reconstruct a stronger enterprise to serve the future of travel. We are unable to make any predictions as to when travel will rebound but we emphatically believe that it will, for… “if there’s life, there’s travel”.” Since then, Peter Kern has been simplifying, streamlining and reshaping Expedia Group for the longterm future and the company is a very different animal from circa-2019 and before. We find out more about Expedia Group’s ambitions and how it plans to shape the future of travel.




Expedia Group
Peter Kern is the Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Expedia Group. Mr. Kern has been a director of Expedia Group since completion of the IAC/Expedia Group Spin-Off and has served as Vice Chairman of Expedia Group since June 2018.
Mr. Kern has spent decades in leadership roles in public and private settings. Previously, Mr. Kern was CEO of Tribune Media and Managing Partner of InterMedia Partners VII, LP, a private equity firm. Prior to joining InterMedia, Mr. Kern was Senior Managing Director and Principal of Alpine Capital LLC. Prior to Alpine Capital, Mr. Kern founded Gemini Associates in 1996 and served as President from its inception through its merger with Alpine Capital in 2001. Prior to founding Gemini Associates, Mr. Kern was at the Home Shopping Network and Whittle Communications. Mr. Kern has served on the Board of Directors of Tribune Media Company since October 2016, where he currently also serves as Chief Executive Officer, as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hemisphere Media Group, Inc., a publicly-traded Spanish-language media company, since April 2013, and since 2016, as a member of Supervisory Board of trivago N.V., a majority-owned subsidiary of Expedia Group. Mr. Kern also serves on the boards of several private companies.
Mr. Kern holds a B.S. degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.




Expedia Group
Time to pick the winner who wants to take travel to Infinity.O. The winner will have the opportunity to get up to US$250,000 worth of AWS credits and technical support through the AWS Activate program and present on Center Stage during the 5 minutes in the Spotlight session at The Phocuswright Conference “in Fort Lauderdale/ Hollywood, Florida, November 15-17, 2021.
A one-on-one conversation with one of the world’s largest travel investors on investment trends, SPACs, opportunities across its portfolio, including Tripadvisor Plus, his perspectives on business travel recovery and emerging categories of hospitality, as well as his interests in the Middle East.
Interviewer:
Charuta Fadnis
Senior Vice President, Research & Product Strategy
Phocuswright




Certares
Michael Gregory (Greg) O’Hara is the Founder and a Senior Managing Director of Certares. Prior to forming Certares, he served as Chief Investment Officer of JPMorgan Chase’s Special Investments Group (“JPM SIG”). Prior to this role at JPM SIG, Greg was a Managing Director of One Equity Partners (“OEP”), the private equity arm of JPMorgan. Before joining OEP in 2005, he served as Executive Vice President of Worldspan and was a member of its Board of Directors. Greg is the Executive Chairman of American Express Global Business Travel, Chairperson of Hertz Global Holdings and Vice Chairman of Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings and serves on the Boards of Directors of Hertz Global Holdings, Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings and Tripadvisor, The Innocence Project, World Travel & Tourism Council and Certares Holdings. Greg is the Head of the Investment Committee and a member of the Management Committee of Certares Management LLC.
Greg received his Master of Business Administration degree from Vanderbilt University.




Certares
Founded in 2000, MakeMyTrip is one of Asia’s online travel pioneers and indeed was the first OTA from the region to list on the NASDAQ in 2010, setting the pace for others to follow. Founded in 1999, Travelstart is one of Africa’s online travel pioneers and wants to own Africa. Parallel journeys, two different markets. How are these two homegrown brands in two huge markets facing the future as they emerge from the dust of Covid?




MakeMyTrip
Deep is the Founder & Group Executive Chairman of India’s leading online travel company, MakeMyTrip Limited. He has steered MakeMyTrip as CEO since its inception in 2000, to a successful listing on NASDAQ in August 2010.
Deep is the co-chair of CII’s National Committee on Tourism and Hospitality. He is a founding member of IndiaTech.Org, an industry body representing the interests of Indian digital companies. Deep is on the Board of TiE NCR Chapter and served as President from 2013 to 2016. He is also one of the founding members of Ashoka University and serves on their governing body and Board. A believer in citizens effort, he is a founding member of ‘I am Gurgaon’— an NGO focused on improving the quality of life in Gurgaon. Deep serves on the Board of GMDA, Gurgaon’s Development Authority.
Deep has been recognized by Ernst & Young as Entrepreneur of the Year—Business Transformation (2011), and as the most powerful Digital influencer in India (2012) by KPMG. TTG Asia awarded him Best Travel Entrepreneur of 2012 at the TTG Travel Awards.
Deep is passionate about Sustainable Tourism and has been championing this cause through MakeMyTrip Foundation.
He holds an MBA degree from IIM, Ahmedabad and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.
His interests include swimming, yoga, adventure sports, quizzing and of course, travelling.




MakeMyTrip




Travelstart
Stephan Ekbergh married father of 4, lives in Cape Town. Ex professional DJ for 10 years. Entrepreneur in Travel. Started the E-commerce revolution in Scandinavia 1999. Is now doing the same in Africa. Passion for releasing gifts and entrepreneurship with people. Writes and speaks about business, life and taking risks. Investor and active boardmember, also works with and finances non profits organization Thembalitscha foundation.




Travelstart
In the days of yore, online travel was focused on transactions – the easier, quicker, cheaper for consumers, the better. During Covid, the pendulum swung towards inspiration – because well, in the absence of transactions, what else could online travel brands do? Will inspiration continue to rule post-Covid or will it swing back to transactions? What will ultimately rule? You decide after this debate.
For:
Timothy Hughes
Vice President, Corporate Development
Agoda
Martin Symes
Returning WiT Debator
Syazanah Haniff
WiTtie
Against:
Shyn Yee-Ho Strangas
Director, Global Product Management
Expedia Group
Chan Chee Chong
CEO & Co-founder
GlobalTix
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne
Principal
T2Impact
Announcing the WiT Startup of the Year 2021, and our Charity Auction. This year, WiT For Good is raising funds for Phare Ponleu Selpak, the 30-year-old NGO behind the social enterprise, Phare, the Cambodia Circus. More than 1,000 youths go through its academy every year, becoming artists, performers, musicians. Pre-Covid, a main source of funding came from Phare, the Cambodia Circus. . Specifically, we are raising for its Visual & Applied Arts Living Scholarships which support students from difficult socio-economic situation to cover living and school supplies for the duration of their studies.
In 2019, WiT held its “Bird’s Eye View” closing party at AJ Hackett on Sentosa. It seems fitting that we should return home to the beach and adventure park this year for a gathering, in a new hybrid format.
Hosted by Skypark by AJ Hackett, Go City and Sentosa Development Corporation.
Virtual Skypark built by Allseated EXVO
See you in 2022, when the world should look very different
Across the seas, in Canada, one company has declared it is preparing to take on the “big global empires (of travel) as our next stepping stone”. In March, it raised $170 million in Series F funding and launched a new B2B product called Hopper Cloud. Then in August, it raised another $175 million, saying it would add 500 employees to take on its global march. All in, the company has raised $598 million, valuing it at $3.5 billion. What is it doing different that’s attracting the investors and what are its plans to take on the “big global empires”, particularly in Asia, its new frontier? We find out in this conversation with the founder who started it as a trip planning engine, powered by the “world’s largest structured database of travel information”, to what it is today.




Hopper
Frederic is the founder and CEO of Hopper, an airfare prediction app available for iOS and Android devices. Hopper analyzes billions of flight prices a day to provide advice on when to fly and buy. Hopper predicts price changes for your trip, and notifies you when to book. Hopper has received accolades such as Apple’s App Store Best of 2015, the Google Play Award for Standout Startup of 2016, and the Webby Award for Best Travel App.
He previously co-founded Newtrade, where he successfully raised $7 million in two rounds of venture capital and built the company up to 70 employees. Newtrade was acquired by Expedia in 2002, 21 months after their first round of funding.
As a VP at Expedia, Frederic was responsible for developing the Direct Connect product strategy and signing up over 10,000 hotels to the Expedia platform, including major brands such as Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Carlson, Cendant and Choice Hotels. He later moved on to participate in various Expedia M&A activities, including the acquisition of Hotels.com, TripAdvisor and eLong.
Frederic joined the Board of Directors of MakeMyTrip.com in 2007. MakeMyTrip is India’s leading online travel company and books tickets for all major airlines and reservations at over 1,000 hotels in the country.




Hopper
As the first country to get into the crisis and the first to get out of it, Trip.com Group has been at the forefront of riding out and managing travel’s biggest existential crisis. It’s had the advantage of a huge home market to fall back on but it’s certainly not been resting on its laurels, transforming the organisation with “hybrid work” pilots, building up tech and product, scaling its platform and preparing for the future. What does that look like? Can the world live without Chinese travellers? When can the world welcome Chinese travellers again? We ask these questions and more during this opening conversation with the pioneer of online travel in China.




Trip.com Group
James Liang is one of the Co-founders and Executive Chairman of the Board of Trip.com Group Ltd. He was the Chief Executive Officer from 2000 to 2006 and from 2013 to 2016. Under his visionary leadership, Trip.com Group has achieved great milestones over the years. The company has successfully carried out transitions from offline to online, and from desktop to mobile. Furthermore, Trip.com Group has made strategic investments in key industry players, cultivated and invested in new business ideas, and established industry-leading operational standards and processes. Trip.com Group has grown to become one of the world’s largest online travel agencies.
Currently, James serves as Co-Chairman of Tongcheng-eLong (HKSE:0780) and on the boards of a number of other companies, including BTG Hotels(SSE:600258), Sina (NASDAQ: SINA), and MakeMyTrip (NASDAQ: MMYT). He is also Research Professor of Economics at Peking University.
James has been awarded various accolades for his contributions to the travel industry. Some of his recent awards include: 2019 Forbes China Multinational Business Leader, Best CEO in the Internet category in the 2016 All-Asia Executive Team Rankings by Institutional Investor, 2016 Top Ten Economic Leaders of the Year by Sina Finance, 2015 China’s Business Leader of the Year by Forbes, 2015 Most Influential Business Leaders by China Entrepreneur Magazine, 2015 Top Ten Economic Leaders of the Year by Sina Finance, People’s Daily, and The Paper, 2015 China’s Most Transformative Leader by Sohu Finance, and 2015 China’s Best Business Leader by Yicai.com.
In addition to his expertise in the travel industry, James is also a leading scholar of demographics and social studies. He has played an important role in shaping China’s population policies in recent years and in generating public interest in issues such as education and urban planning. As a co-author of the book Too Many People in China?, James analyzed the impact of the one-child policy and the adverse effects of demographic changes on China’s economy. He is also the author of multiple other publications, including The Rise of the Network Society, and his latest book published in 2018, The Demographics of Innovation.
Prior to co-founding Trip.com Group, James held a number of technical and managerial positions at Oracle Corporation from 1991 to 1999, both in the United States and China. He was the head of the ERP consulting division of Oracle China from 1997 to 1999.
James received his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology. He was also an attendee of the “China Gifted Youth Class” at Fudan University.




Trip.com Group
No one gives a better overview of the online travel market than Phocuswright which has been analysing the market since 1994. Here’s the latest look at top trends in both the global and APAC online travel space.




Phocuswright
Ms. Fadnis leads Phocuswright’s research team and is focused on delivering high quality data, intelligence and insights that help customers make strategic decisions. She previously worked at Phocuswright from 2014 to 2016 and recently returned to take on responsibility for research content, delivery and setting product direction. Charuta has broad experience across the industry and has worked across various functions at American Airlines, Egencia and BCD Travel. Her expertise lies in uncovering and applying technological and market trends to strategy, product development and marketing. Charuta holds an M.B.A. from HEC Paris and a Bachelor of Engineering from Saurashtra University, India.




Phocuswright
Nate Blecharczyk is the co-founder of Airbnb, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chairman of Airbnb China. Nate plays a leading role in driving key strategic initiatives across the global business, particularly those which require a combined understanding of the business, product, and data. Recently he oversaw the creation of the Airbnb City Portal, an industry-first software solution that addresses the needs of cities relating to short-term rentals. Previously Nate oversaw the creation of Airbnb’s engineering, data science, payments, and performance marketing teams. This conversation will be about how Nate sees the future of travel and insights on how countries in APAC can rebuild tourism.




Chief Strategy Officer & Chairman, Airbnb China
Nate Blecharczyk is the co-founder of Airbnb, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chairman of Airbnb China. Nate plays a leading role in driving key strategic initiatives across the global business, particularly those which require a combined understanding of the business, product, and data. Recently he oversaw the creation of the Airbnb City Portal, an industry-first software solution that addresses the needs of cities relating to short-term rentals. Previously Nate oversaw the creation of Airbnb’s engineering, data science, payments, and performance marketing teams.




Chief Strategy Officer & Chairman, Airbnb China
Investors used to be the kings. They held court while entrepreneurs approached the palace. But the kingdom has changed. Entrepreneurs are now the dragons – they can fly anywhere and cause havoc. Like any company or person who defies gravity, they have all the choices. We’ve seen a lot of changes in the investment landscape. And many of those changes will have a favourable impact on our industry, the world’s largest by some measures.




Queen's Road Capital
In 2005 Frederick “Fritz” Demopoulos co-founded and was the CEO of Qunar. Qunar was acquired by Baidu in 2011.
Fritz also co-founded and was the CEO of Shawei. Shawei was acquired by Tom.com in 2000.
Fritz held senior management positions at various online and traditional media companies in China including Netease, Hai Run Media Group and News Corporation.
Fritz currently coordinates his personal investment and entrepreneurial activities through Queen’s Road Capital.
A native of Los Angeles, Fritz was educated at UCLA, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Karls-Ruprecht University in Heidelberg. He has lectured on entrepreneurship and the Chinese Internet at Stanford, Harvard, UCLA, Tsinghua, Beijing University, Singapore Management University and the Communist Party College in Nanjing.




Queen's Road Capital
The first round of our annual competition to pick out the entrepreneurs who want to take travel to Infinity.O. Three will be picked to pitch at the Grand Finals on Oct 20. The WiT Startup Pitch 2021, powered by Amadeus, is held in partnership with AWS which will provide up to US$250,000 worth of AWS credits and technical support through the AWS Activate program. The winner will have the opportunity to present in person during the 5 minutes in the Spotlight session at The Phocuswright Conference in Fort Lauderdale/ Hollywood, Florida, November 15-17, 2021.
Who will the post-Covid traveller be? How will they travel? Revealing insights on the changing traveller culled from research done by Google based on apps and consumer-based data.




Hermione is a leader with 15 years’ experience in sales, marketing, strategy and business development in the technology & travel sector.
Hermione leads the APAC Travel team for Google’s Large Customer Sales business, working with leading online travel agents, airlines, hotel chains & vacation rental companies to develop digital business strategy & products for Asian consumers. Additionally she oversees the APAC Vertical search team, who help clients adopt our more technical solutions such as Hotel Ads, and work with our Product & Engineering team to build products for our region. Prior to this, Hermione worked in Google’s Sydney office managing major Retail clients.
Before her time at Google, she worked in the TV industry for 4 years, working for 7media West running the Key Accounts team. When she launched her career she started in Creative Advertising working initially for M&C Saatchi and then TBWA in Sydney.
Hermione was educated in Sydney Australia, completing a degree in Economics & Social Sciences from Sydney University and was awarded the Young Citizen of the Year (2009) by the Woollahra Mulinciptilty.
Hermione now lives in Singapore, and has done so for six & a half years. She is a mum to three young children and a Red Kelpie, and is an incredibly passionate traveler.




It’s been the most challenging of times for Japan’s travel industry. It’s had to cope with a tough Covid situation at home which dampened its massive domestic travel market. Yet it pulled off a historic Olympics 2020 which kept the world united and enthralled at a critical time. How have all these developments influenced the way different travel brands are thinking of the future, from traditional players to digital brands to new startups? We examine the trends from three unique perspectives.




JTB Corp.
The JTB Group traces its roots back to 1912 when “Japan Tourist Bureau” was formed to attract international travelers to Japan and assist with their travel needs. While our activities and clientele have expanded greatly since then, the JTB Group remains aligned around a core purpose: bringing people, places and possibilities together.
Over an 18-year career at JTB, Eijiro Yamakita was involved in the development of the company’s global strategy and then moved to Europe, where he was appointed to be a top management at the forefront of the company’s global business. Prior to becoming a Managing Executive Officer, he served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Kuoni Travel Investment Ltd and the European Head of JTB Group for 3 years. At the beginning of the year he returned to Japan, then became President and CEO of JTB Corp.




JTB Corp.




- TRAVEL.jp & Trip101
TravelTech entrepreneur based in Singapore and Tokyo with 20 years of experience. He led his company to an IPO, a buyout and two exits.
Kei co-founded Venture Republic in Tokyo, Japan in 2001 and has been serving as a CEO since foundation. Company runs a group of online travel websites and apps worldwide including TRAVEL jp, Japan’s largest online travel metasearch/media (Over 30 million monthly visits/23 million followers. http://www.travel.co.jp/), Trip101, Singapore based global online travel media (https://trip101.com/) and Allstay, mobile accommodation search app in Korea (http://www.allstay.kr/). In 2018, he led the company to bring in LINE Corporation, Asia’s leading mobile messaging company as an investor. In 2021, company launched the chat based corporate travel booking and management service, “TRAVEL jp for Business” by the partnership with LINE WORKS, a leading business communication platform in Japan that has over 20 million corporate clients.
He led the company to an IPO in 2008 (2177. JASDAQ) after 7 years of inception and to LBO by management in 2012. In its history, company had built one of the leading online comparison shopping businesses in Japan through running “coneco.net” which was acquired by Yahoo! Japan. He also led to acquire Flocations, a Singapore based travel startup, rebrand it to Trip101 and have it grown to one of the fastest growing online travel media sites attracting the users from over 200 countries worldwide.
As a co-founder/organizer, he also runs WIT (Web In Travel) Japan & North Asia, largest international business conference in North Asia focusing on technology & travel.
In 2019, he received the WiT Hall of Fame award which honors individuals who have had the greatest influence on the progress and professionalism of the digital travel industry in Asia Pacific.
Frequent speaker at travel & technology events and conferences. Among them are ITB, Google Travel Executive Forum, Phocuswright, TBEX, WiT and Digital Travel APAC.
Angel investor in travel & technology space across APEC and America regions over 10 years. He serves as a board of director for various startups including BeMyGuest (Singapore).
He also serves as a Chairman of Keio University’s alumni association for startup founders/CEOs, Executive Committee Member of Harvard Business School Club of Japan and co-chapter leader of Travel Massive in Singapore and Tokyo.
Kei received a BA of Law from Keio University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Avid nordic/alpine skier & snowboarder.




- TRAVEL.jp & Trip101




Reiwa Travel




Reiwa Travel
We look at the future through three different lenses. Seasoned corporate travel veteran Johnny Thorsen has left the corporate world to pursue a new startup that he believes will deliver “Traveltopia” to travellers. Mary Li, passionate about fixing flights, sold her previous startup Aslan to Fliggy, and is back building a new business to change the way people buy flights. Serial entrepreneur Turochas Fuad, who sold two startups – Travelmob and Spacemob – is back with a new startup in a hot space, getting people to “Buy Now, Pay Later”. How will these three stories play out in shaping the future of travel?




The Atlas
Mary Li has built her startup career in solving flight problems and is back with a new startup, The Atlas, which is a global airfare aggregator, offering unique content from low-cost carriers and domestic airlines. Before that, she was co-CEO of Mystifly where she managed its product, technology, operations, human resource, and APAC Sales from Bangalore, India. Her first flight startup was ASLAN, which she ran for eight years, building it from a 40-person offline travel agency into the largest B2B air ticket platform in China. In 2014, Aslan was acquired by Alitrip (Fliggy), Alibaba’s online travel platform.




The Atlas




Spotnana
Johnny Thorsen is a global technology evangelist in the corporate travel and mobile world with proven ability to start new business or develop new services within large companies as well negotiating and closing “impossible deals” between global enterprise buyers, start-up suppliers and major established industry players.
He has all-round background in software services ranging from actual code writing to marketing of new products and services and creation of completely new business models with associated go-to-market strategy and significant disruptive innovation resulting in new customer value creation.
He is also a proven presenter at very large travel industry events in both EMEA, APAC and US, with audiences ranging from 10 – 1,000 delegates.
Named as of the 25 most influential people in the travel industry in 2010 by Business Travel News as CEO and co-founder of conTgo, a UK-based startup acquired by Concur technologies in March 2013 Global network of business contacts within the travel, procurement and mobile world after living and working in 5 different countries in EMEA, APAC and now USA.




Spotnana




Pace Enterprise
Turochas “T” Fuad enjoys building companies and he has successfully launched and sold 3 startups thus far. T’s first startup was WUF Networks, Inc., an Internet of things software company based out of Silicon Valley. The company was acquired by Yahoo!, Inc in 2005. T was also the CEO and Founder of travelmob, an online marketplace for vacation rentals. Headquartered in Singapore, travelmob was acquired by HomeAway, Inc. (now part of Expedia) in mid 2013. In 2016, T established and ran Spacemob, a co-working operator based out of Singapore. Spacemob was later acquired by WeWork in 2017 and T was appointed as the Managing Director of WeWork Southeast Asia and Korea.
In between his startups, T was the Managing Director for Skype AsiaPac, responsible for its business expansion across Japan, China, Australia, Taiwan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia. T led and launched a mobile partnership with KDDI to make Skype available to the second largest mobile network in Japan. Prior to Skype, T was responsible for all business aspects of Yahoo!’s Mobile division across the Southeast Asia market.
T’s background has spanned across various industries which include enterprise software, e-commerce, mobile, travel, real estate, hospitality and consumer internet services. Born in Indonesia, T currently resides in Singapore, plotting out his next adventure.




Pace Enterprise
The first round of our annual competition to pick out the entrepreneurs who want to take travel to Infinity.O. Three will be picked to pitch at the Grand Finals on Oct 20. The WiT Startup Pitch 2021, powered by Amadeus, is held in partnership with AWS which will provide up to US$250,000 worth of AWS credits and technical support through the AWS Activate program. The winner will have the opportunity to present in person during the 5 minutes in the Spotlight session at The Phocuswright Conference in Fort Lauderdale/ Hollywood, Florida, November 15-17, 2021.
We round up those responsible for the purse strings and find out how they are thinking about bringing on the next billion users with their capital and initiatives, what trends they are betting on and the opportunities that have been accelerated during this period, plus a commentary on this year’s WiT Startup Pitch entrants.
Moderator:
David Peller
Managing Director, Travel & Hospitality
Amazon Web Services




Monk's Hill Ventures
Susli is a Venture Partner at Monk’s Hill Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage tech companies, primarily Series A, in Southeast Asia. She is based in Indonesia and is responsible for sourcing, analyzing, and executing deals, and working closely with portfolio companies. Prior to MHV, she co-founded ErudiFi, a tech-enabled education financing company in Southeast Asia. She is also the first female founder backed by Y Combinator from Indonesia.
Susli is a seasoned finance professional, having built a career at the cross-section of finance, development, and technology with global experience spanning North America, Australia, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Born and raised in Jakarta, she has spent the last decade advising, investing, and operating as a founder primarily in Indonesia. She began her career in strategy consulting at Oliver Wyman in the financial services practice, and subsequently pioneered the role of Asia-Pacific Chief of Staff. Her investment experience is focused on Indonesia and includes stints at LeapFrog Investments, Quvat Capital, and YCAB Ventures. Susli also advises on development finance projects for the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank Group.
Susli received her BA in Economics and Chinese from Yale, MBA from Wharton, and MA in International Development from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).




Monk's Hill Ventures




Amadeus
Frédéric Barou is Senior Vice President, Online Travel Companies, Asia Pacific at Amadeus. He is responsible for defining and delivering the commercial strategy for Amadeus’ Online Travel business in Asia Pacific, including all Online Travel Agencies and Metasearch in the region.
Frédéric joined Amadeus in 1999 and has held many different portfolios in locations around the world, including in Chicago, Bangkok, Nice (where he is currently based) and soon Singapore. Prior to his current role, he was responsible for the company’s Online Travel business in the Northern, Eastern, Central and Southern Europe (NECSE) region, and before that he drove the Amadeus Online Travel solution direction, investment, roadmap and marketing, globally. From 2014-2018, Frédéric was Vice President Products and Operations for Asia Pacific, in charge of leveraging Amadeus’ investment in leading-edge technology and services for the region.
Before joining Amadeus, he worked as a consultant for SAP and IBM.
A sports fanatic, Frédéric runs triathlons, sails and snowboards. A happy father of two children, he practices photography with his family as they share their passion of travel and exploration.
Frédéric graduated in 1994 from the University of Technology of Compiegne, France and the University of Waterloo, Canada with a degree in Computer Engineering.




Amadeus




Future Now Capital
Louise is Fund CEO responsible for coordinating and delivery of strategy and outcomes across the business. Louise was a member of the Fund’s Investment Committee until March before joining full time as CEO.
Prior to Future Now Capital, Louise was Deputy CEO of Accor Hotel Group Asia Pacific, operating more than 1,200 hotels and ancillary businesses across 22 countries with gross revenues of over $10 billion. Louise also sat on the Accor global disruption and growth board, the only member outside of France. Accor is one of the world’s most active enterprise adopters of technology, having developed its own unique digital ecosystem. Louis completed her Executive MBA at SMU Singapore has a Bachelor of Business (Accounting) and is a Certified Practicing Account (CPA).




Future Now Capital
It’s a tale of two startups who started their journey differently. One started in Singapore as an event registration business, then saw the future of virtual events early on and built an events platform, only to have the business catch on fire during the pandemic, and has expanded and innovated aggressively the last two years. The other started in San Francisco as a company that created virtual editions of physical venues, with tools to help them with designing and planning events. Then came Covid and it pivoted to bring its virtual venues to life with 3D design and interactive tools. Meet the builders of our two virtual homes this year and learn about how they see the future of events.




GEVME & GlobalSign.In
Veemal founded GSI in 2006, architected and coded the very first software platform of the company. GSI is today a leading event tech company with offices in Singapore, Australia, India, Myanmar and the US. Having graduated from the National University of Singapore with a degree in Computer Science, Veemal remains at the forefront of technology and spearheads the software products being crafted at GSI. GSI’s core SaaS product is GEVME, the award-winning enterprise event ticketing & marketing platform.




GEVME & GlobalSign.In




AllSeated EXVO
Yaron Lipshitz, CEO, has led rapid growth in Allseated for the past six years. Prior to that, he was an Investment Banker at Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Ridgecrest Capital where he led scores of strategic transactions in the high-tech industry. Yaron served in the 8200 unit of the IDF and holds a BA in Economics and Computer Science from Tel Aviv University, and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon. In his spare time, Yaron enjoys skiing, sailing and spending time with his wife and four kids.




AllSeated EXVO
Covid will end (we can’t wait for the day) but the sustainability movement will not. In this session, we connect the dots of what it takes to build a business infused with sustainability – the heart and sincerity to do it, the tech to deliver it and the dollars to ensure it pays off for stakeholders. We go behind the scenes of two major hotel groups to uncover how a CEO and tech leader view it from their perspectives, and we speak to a major OTA on how it is thinking about sustainability and travel’s impact on local communities.




Pan Pacific Hotels Group
Mr Choe Peng Sum is Chief Executive Officer of Pan Pacific Hotels Group, a member of Singapore- listed UOL Group, one of Asia’s most established hotel and property companies. He oversees nearly 50 properties with more than 14,000 keys across 29 cities in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America.
Mr Choe has more than 33 years’ experience in the hospitality industry managing and developing hotels and serviced apartments worldwide, and was formerly the Chief Executive Officer of Frasers Hospitality International Ltd. During his 22-year tenure, he grew the portfolio from two properties in Singapore in 1998 to more than 140 properties across more than 76 cities worldwide. His last appointment was Senior Advisor to Frasers Property Limited.
As CEO of Pan Pacific Hotels Group, Mr Choe is responsible for the expansion of the Group’s hotels and serviced apartments under its Pan Pacific, PARKROYAL COLLECTION and PARKROYAL brands. He is in charge of their performance, operations, marketing and brand standards, as well as the business development of the hotels and serviced suites.
Mr Choe started his hospitality career with Westin and subsequently Shangri-La International in 1981, where he was awarded the Shangri-La overseas scholarship. He graduated from Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) with a Bachelor of Science with Distinction. He was awarded the National Dean’s List (USA) as well as the Phi Kappa Phi for academic excellence.




Pan Pacific Hotels Group




Booking.com
As Managing Director & Vice President of Asia Pacific, Laura Houldsworth leads and oversees business growth, operations and strategy for one of Booking.com’s most vibrant and diverse regions globally.
Laura joined Booking.com in June 2021, following 10 successful years at SAP Concur where she last served as Senior Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China. Laura has previously held regional roles in BCD Travel and ABN Amro Private Banking; and is a commercial leader with more than 15 years of experience managing successful, multi-cultural teams.
Laura has lived and worked in Singapore for more than 15 years and holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Marketing Management from Bournemouth University, United Kingdom. Besides being an avid traveller and runner, she enjoys a good game of chess.




Booking.com




Accor
From France and then from Singapore, Khang has 20+ years of tech leadership in digital native companies and more traditional companies going for deep digital transformation. A strong advocate of “Management 3.0 | Agile Leadership Practices” and of “Tech for Good”, he is currently Group Chief Technology Architect at Accor, the world-leading augmented hospitality group, where he leads the middle and long term tech strategies of the Group.
He is also a shareholder of Time for the Planet, the first crowdfunded investment company and open source accelerator to fight climate change.
Finally, he enjoys advising startups which need to scale up their tech management practices.




Accor
With a background in the Economic Development Board and as a board member of the Singapore Food Agency, she’s now leading the charge at Sentosa Development Corporation, which last month laid out a sustainability roadmap to meet the island’s target of becoming carbon neutral by 2030, and a globally recognised and certified sustainable tourism destination. The multi-pronged roadmap includes electrification of all Sentosa transportation, leveraging underutilised spaces for renewable energy, development of low energy buildings, green events, and more. We find out how she intends to rally businesses on the island together in this collective push.




Sentosa Development Corporation




Sentosa Development Corporation
If you ask this travel technologist what his dream project is, his answer will probably be building tech to bring on the next billion users – to make travel and everything accessible and affordable to the emerging class, and it starts in India. In its prospectus filing for IPO, ixigo spoke of the opportunity of bringing on the next billion users. In this talk, the tech and product chief of one of India’s most successful travel startups, shares his dream and how he would make it a reality.




ixigo
Rajnish Kumar is the Group CTPO & Co-founder of ixigo, an intelligent AI-based travel app. Spearheading the company’s innovation and technology, he has created many global industry first products, that are revolutionising the way India travels. Under his leadership, ixigo trains app has emerged as the 6th most downloaded travel app globally and the second most downloaded travel app in India.
He holds a BTech degree in Computer Science from IIT, Kanpur. He has also published research papers on AI, one of which was presented at MIT, Boston in 2004.




ixigo
It’s probably the most iconic attraction in Singapore, which also means that the integrated resort has been right in the eye of the storm of Covid, which smashed the MICE business (on which it is hugely reliant) and inbound travel (on which it too is reliant). It has had to be nimble to survive and bold to change course. How has this period changed its thinking about its brand promise, customer experience and loyalty?




Marina Bay Sands
As the Senior Vice President – Marketing for Marina Bay Sands, Maunik leads the marketing organization in developing and delivering a strong brand proposition and alignment to the service culture for Marina Bay Sands. Data, analytics and technology are at the core of the personalized and seamless customer experience he is charged with developing for the brand. Maunik started his career in revenue management for hotels, working with brands such as Taj Hotels, Le Meridien and Starwood, in India, Bahrain and Dubai, before moving to Macau to join the pre-opening team for the Venetian Macau and other Las Vegas Sands properties. With the experience of the casino industry, he moved to Singapore where he is based now, as part of the pre-opening team at Marina Bay Sands with the remit of extending the revenue optimization practice across the casino as well, before transitioning to lead the marketing function at the Integrated Resort.
Maunik holds an MBA in International Hospitality Management from IMHI in Paris, a program jointly administered by Cornell University, USA and ESSEC, France. His personal interests lie in travel and he has always had a desire to live and work in different parts of the world, learning about different cultures. He also serves on the HSMAI Asia Pacific Digital Marketing Advisory Board and has been involved with the organization for several years.




Marina Bay Sands
“There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief”
How do we restart cross-border travel in Asia Pacific? That’s the biggest pain point in our industry right now, so WiT asked four travel tech leaders who have been thinking about the problem and monitoring the data to collaborate and come up with a solution. This is their pitch.




ZUZU Hospitality Solutions
Dan Lynn is the Co-founder of ZUZU Hospitality Solutions, focused on product and finance. Dan has built his career at the intersection of travel and technology. Prior to founding ZUZU, Dan spent much of his career with Expedia, building their Asia Pacific business as the CEO of the AirAsia/Expedia joint venture AAE. Dan also ran HomeAway’s APAC businesses – Stayz, Bookabach and Travelmob. Dan has served on the boards of international travel companies Elong in China, and Movenpick Hotels and Resorts in Switzerland.




ZUZU Hospitality Solutions




Wego
Ross is CEO & Co-Founder at Wego, which is online travel marketplace that provides top ranked mobile apps and websites for users living in the APAC and MENA regions. Wego harnesses powerful technology that simplifies the process of searching, comparing and booking flights and hotels across hundreds of airlines, hotels and online travel agency websites. Wego is has dual-HQs in Singpaore and Dubai and is backed by top-tier investors including Tiger Global, Crescent Group, Square Peg Capital and the MBC Group.
Ross is a veteran of the Asian internet industry having established Yahoo!s Southeast Asian operations in Singapore back in 1998 and leading product development efforts across the region for 6+ years. He is also Singapore Co-Chair of H2, the premier global leadership network for the digital industry. Ross has been an active angel investor in the technology sector for a decade and enjoys working with other passionate entrepreneurs. He has worked in Sydney, Melbourne, London, Kuala Lumpur and is now splits his time between Singapore and Dubai. He travels frequently for business but not nearly enough for leisure.




Wego




Spotnana
Johnny Thorsen is a global technology evangelist in the corporate travel and mobile world with proven ability to start new business or develop new services within large companies as well negotiating and closing “impossible deals” between global enterprise buyers, start-up suppliers and major established industry players.
He has all-round background in software services ranging from actual code writing to marketing of new products and services and creation of completely new business models with associated go-to-market strategy and significant disruptive innovation resulting in new customer value creation.
He is also a proven presenter at very large travel industry events in both EMEA, APAC and US, with audiences ranging from 10 – 1,000 delegates.
Named as of the 25 most influential people in the travel industry in 2010 by Business Travel News as CEO and co-founder of conTgo, a UK-based startup acquired by Concur technologies in March 2013 Global network of business contacts within the travel, procurement and mobile world after living and working in 5 different countries in EMEA, APAC and now USA.




Spotnana




T2Impact
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne is a principal at 777 Partners, a private equity investment firm based in Miami with deep experience in aviation. He is a frequent speaker and commentator on aviation, travel distribution, technology, startups and innovation at events around the globe. Timothy is also the head of product at Air Black Box, a global travel technology company founded to help airlines address the complexities of cross-selling travel product inventory. Air Black Box is headquartered in Manchester, UK with offices in the USA and Asia. Most recently, Air Black Box was recognized as a 2019 CIO 100 Award Winner.
Before founding Air Black Box, Timothy was a founding management team member with Expedia, heading its international and ground transportation portfolios. He also spent time with Worldspan as their international head of technology, where he managed technology services from infrastructure to product.




T2Impact
As with travel, the live music industry was crushed by the pandemic and institutions and iconic tourist attractions such as Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City found themselves untethered by the crisis. But there have been silver linings and this is the story of how this world-renowned musical center, whose mission it is to bring jazz to the world, may be having the biggest breakthrough moment in its 30-year history.




Jazz at Lincoln Center
NEW YORK, USA // Gabrielle Armand is a seasoned professional with 30 years experience creating, managing, and implementing global marketing, branding and sponsorship initiatives within the entertainment industry, not-for-profit and cultural arts landscapes.
In her current role as Vice President, Brand, Sales and Marketing for Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC), she oversees the Marketing, Creative, PR, & Communications, Corporate Partnerships/Sponsorships, Audience Development, Content Development and Intellectual Property teams, and is responsible for stewarding and strengthening the global brand.
Gabrielle has strategically designed and managed multi-layered partnerships with major global brands. Prior to joining Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2009, she was the Executive Director for Marketing & Communications for the United Nations Association of the USA, where she formed a groundbreaking strategic partnership focused on gender-equity and improving the lives of children in sub-Saharan Africa.
Gabrielle spent the first ten years of her professional career in the recording industry, working with a host of Grammy Award winning artists and shepherding the commercial release of more than 1,500 records.
She is a musician and writer and lives in New York City.




Jazz at Lincoln Center
We announce the three finalists who will pitch at the WiT Startup Pitch Grand Finals tomorrow, Oct 20 and it’s also time for you to vote for People’s Choice.
For those watching virtually, stay tuned for the next item on the agenda.
This year, WiT For Good is raising funds for Phare Ponleu Selpak, the 30-year-old NGO behind the social enterprise, Phare, the Cambodia Circus. As part of this partnership, their artistes will stage this special performance, themed “Home”, especially for WiT audiences.
Quote from Charles Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities” – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Are we past despair and into hope? Agoda, founded in 1998, has seen the best and the worst of times in Asia’s travel story. In its early days, it rode on the coat-tails of a rapidly rising, changing market in Asia and it changed the face of online travel in Asia. How has Covid changed it? And how is it looking to further change the face of online travel in Asia as well as globally? We do some soul-searching and forecasting with this travel leader.




Agoda
John Brown has been CEO of Agoda since June 2018 and during his 10 years at Agoda has overseen product, marketing, customer experience, and partner services teams.
He had a brief stint as advisor to Minister of Commerce in Afghanistan from June 2009 to May 2008 and prior to that, worked with Boston Consulting Group for nearly six years.




Agoda
Since the start of the pandemic, 70 million people – equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom – have become digital consumers in South-east Asia. Almost 8 in 10 people (78%) among South-east Asia’s population of 15-year-olds and above will be digital consumers by end-2021. The same 2021 Digital Consumer Report (Facebook & Bain & Company) projects that by end 2026, Vietnam’s ecommerce GMV is expected to grow 4.5x from 2021 levels, the Philippines’ is projected to grow 3.8x and Indonesia’s is expected to grow by 1.6x. South Korea, meanwhile, ranks second in the third annual edition of the Digital Quality of Life Index (DQL), which ranks 110 countries. It also ranks second in mobile speeds and 6th in broadband internet speeds. No wonder thus that these companies are riding on this boom – is this the beginning of the next wave of travel in Asia?




VNLIFE
Niraan is currently Group CEO and a Board member for VNLife, one of Vietnam’s largest and fastest growing technology groups. VNLife operates across digital banking, e-payments, online travel and new retail. VNLife’s largest subsidiary is VNPay, the largest financial technology and payments company in Vietnam.
Prior to VNLife, Niraan was a senior executive at a diverse Vietnamese conglomerate called Sovico Holdings.
Niraan started his career in Investment Banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he spent over 11 years reaching Head of Asia Pacific for Equity Linked Capital Markets and Head of Equity Capital Markets South East Asia for South East Asia.
Niraan has a degree in Commerce and Economics from Monash University in Australia.




VNLIFE




Yanolja
Jong Yoon Kim is the CEO of Yanolja & Yanolja Cloud, leading all strategic management of businesses regarding domestic/international accommodation and leisure activity platforms and cloud-based hospitality solutions. He also oversees the company’s ongoing expansion efforts with responsibility for investment attraction & corporate acquisition strategies.
As a digital professional and business strategy expert, Kim is leading the company to grow 2X bigger per year while spearheading the digital transformation of travel and leisure industry.
Prior to joining Yanolja in 2015, Kim worked across several innovative brands and sectors including 3M, Google, and McKinsey & Company




Yanolja
This infectious disease expert believes a “scientific, calibrated approach” is needed to manage future pandemics, otherwise the default mode by governments is likely to be to shut down borders. And we’ve seen first hand how challenging it is to reopen borders once they close. How can travel work with science to give confidence to governments? And what do you do when the issue becomes more about policy, than science which is usually the case early in a new infection? What can travel, caught between policy and science, do?
(To get context for this conversation, listen to this WiT Podcast)




Professor, Department of Medicine, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine;
President-elect, International Society of Infectious Diseases (ISID)
At the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Prof Tambyah is Professor of Medicine. He is also a Senior Consultant in Infectious Diseases at the National University Hospital and has served as the Research Director in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the National University Health System (NUHS). Outside of the NUHS, Prof Tambyah is the President of the Asia Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection. Other positions Prof Tambyah has held include being the immediate past-president of the Singapore Society of Infectious Diseases and Assistant Dean at NUS Medicine in 2015.




Professor, Department of Medicine, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine;
President-elect, International Society of Infectious Diseases (ISID)
Domestic is not enough, the past 20 months have proven that. There is no recovery without inbound or inbound within the region. Travellers want to travel but governments are fearful. What will it take to get cross-border travel in Asia Pacific off again? The session takes a look at the challenges and what the industry needs to do to get things moving again, and if there are lessons to be learnt from other markets that have started travelling again.
This panel is held in partnership with ATTIA.
Moderator:
Ang Choo Pin
MD of Asia, and Head of Government Relations and Corporate Affairs
Expedia Group




Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA)
Subhas Menon joined the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines in March 2020. Subhas has over 35 years’ experience in international aviation with the Singapore Airlines Group, having served in a wide spectrum of roles including international & government relations, marketing, product development, logistics, country & regional management.
In his various roles in the airline industry over the past three decades, he has developed a solid skill set that includes successfully building and managing relationships with different stakeholders, strong communications and public speaking skills as well as commercial acumen honed across different regions.
As Regional Vice President for an Asian airline in various regions around the world, and having also served as Chief Executive of SilkAir, Subhas is familiar with the Asian airline environment, its market dynamics and the region’s diverse political landscape. Building on his early experience in international relations, he has well-developed lobbying and negotiation skills as well as dealing with government affairs, which makes him well-placed to undertake the kind of advocacy and lobbying activities AAPA conducts as a trade association on behalf of its member airlines.
He is a graduate of the National University of Singapore, with a Bachelor of Social Science (Honours) in Sociology.




Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA)




Changi Airport Group




Changi Airport Group




Agoda
Timothy Hughes is the Vice President Corporate Development of Agoda (a Priceline Company). Timothy is a “retired” blogger and pundit. Previously he was the editor and publisher of one of the top online travel industry blogs (the BOOT: the Business Of Online Travel) and a writer at Tnooz.
Tim is a former lawyer and venture capitalist. As a venture capitalist and consultant he helped a number of start-ups (inside and outside travel) secure funding, set up online media companies, managed investments in public companies and held regular client briefing sessions for a brokerage house. As lawyer he represented technology, new media, Internet, telecommunications and broadcasting clients in Australia, Europe and Hong Kong.
He first joined the online travel industry in 1999 and has worked for top tier online travel companies in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Tim has a Bachelor of Commerce and Hons Law Degree from the Australian National University.




Agoda




International Air Transport Association (IATA)
Vinoop Goel is the Asia-Pacific Regional Director of Airports & External Relations for the International Air Transport Association (IATA). He is based at their Asia-Pacific regional office in Singapore. Vinoop leads a team that is responsible for all IATA’s activities in the Asia-Pacific region relating to Airports, Passenger Experience, Baggage, Ground Handling, Cargo Supply Chain, Security and Facilitation. In addition to this, Vinoop also heads the Member and External Relations department for the region that is responsible for IATA membership and government policy issues such as environment, taxation and aviation regulatory matters. Vinoop has a degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT, Delhi in India. He has 3 decades of aviation industry experience including a 15-year stint in Japan and has been with IATA since 2005.




International Air Transport Association (IATA)
It’s been better than nothing for cruises in Asia – at least they are going somewhere even if it’s nowhere. With a December 2020 restart in Singapore, and other “safe” pockets in the regions, cruise lines have been able to keep the wheels turning. But how does one of the biggest foreign cruise companies, operating in Asia, see the outlook of cruising when so much has changed in the industry – from customer behavior to distribution and sustainability awareness? What trends and opportunities does it see in the region which has its own set of distinctly different characteristics?




Royal Caribbean
Based in Singapore since 2018, Angie Stephen has been with Royal Caribbean for over 20 years. As Vice President of Asia Pacific, Angie oversees all commercial and operational activities for the region, and most recently led the restart of Royal Caribbean’s cruises out of Singapore, working closely with the Singapore Tourism Board.
Prior to this, Angie was based in Shanghai, where she led Market Development for Greater China, developing sales distribution, brand marketing and partnerships. She was also previously based in Miami at the RCL Global Headquarters, where she has held many leadership positions within the sales and marketing organization, including District Sales Manager, Trade Strategy, Training & Event Planning, and Marketing Operations.




Royal Caribbean
Exploring Wellness in an Urban City
Hear from these business leaders as they interpret their versions of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, sharing insights into reintroducing the concept of urban wellness in Singapore, making it even more relevant post-pandemic to the new traveller.
Powered by SingapoReimagine Global Conversations

COMO Lifestyle
Alexis is COO of COMO Lifestyle, part of the COMO Group of companies. Headquartered in Singapore, the Group represents an integrated approach to living well, grounded in a celebration of diversity and a deep respect for authenticity.
The Group’s interests extend across hospitality, fashion, wellness, organic living and specialty foods. COMO Lifestyle oversees the COMO Group’s food and beverage businesses spanning import and distribution, restaurants, retail, and wellness.
Prior to joining COMO, Alexis held a variety of positions, including CEO and COO roles in financial institutions in Asia. She has over twenty-five years of experience in financial markets and has a Masters in International Addiction Studies, a Masters in Counselling; and a BA Hons in Chinese. She was born in Hong Kong and educated in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Taiwan, Beijing, and England. She speaks conversational Mandarin, Cantonese, and French.

COMO Lifestyle

Unlisted Collection
Dynamic hotelier and restaurateur, Loh Lik Peng was born in Dublin, Ireland on May 4, 1972 to Singapore parents who were practicing medicine there at the time. He attended Law school in England, University of Sheffield and Postgraduate at London School of Economics followed by bar exams in London before returning to Singapore in 1997. Loh became a corporate litigator upon his return before leaving the profession to step into the hospitality industry. Since then, Loh has started ventures across Singapore, Shanghai, London and Sydney under the Unlisted Collection.

Unlisted Collection

Klook
As Klook’s General Manager for Singapore, Sarah oversees the travel and leisure platform’s operations, including business development, marketing and e-commerce. Over the past year, Sarah has led her team in tackling the domestic tourism market amidst a rapidly changing environment – from kickstarting Klook’s foray into hotels and cruises, to innovating and enhancing traditional tourism products to better suit local tastes.
Sarah was previously Southeast Asia Marketing Director (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore) for Klook. Prior to that, she worked in Edelman’s Brand practice – where she led consumer campaigns for prominent international and local brands including Diageo, Shell, Singapore Tourism Board, Lagardère Sports, Kimberly Clark and Nestlé.

Klook
At a time when the world went local, in-destination experiences managed to hold their ground and those who had a leg in this space found that, well, at least they had this leg to stand on. They didn’t stand still though, they pivoted, innovated, consolidated – what they look today is very different from what they looked like pre-this age of Covid. We catch up with two key players in this space and delve into how they see the future of possibilities.




Klook
Eric Gnock Fah is the COO & co-founder of Klook Travel, Asia’s leading platform or travelers to explore and book a curated selection of activities. These amazing experiences are verified and vetted by Klook’s team of travel curators and made easily bookable online and on-the-go at unbeatable prices of up to 50% off.
Prior to founding Klook Travel, Eric worked in hedge fund and Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley, focused on consumer and travel companies in Asia. Originally from Mauritius, an exotic travel destination, Eric grew up speaking 7 languages and is a cultural explorer at heart.




Klook




Go City
An experienced leader with a passion for high-growth digital businesses, Jon became CEO of Go City at the beginning of 2020, aer stepping up from his role as Chief Commercial Officer, which he had held since 2017. Go City is the world’s largest sightseeing pass business, operating in over 25 cities across the US, Europe, and Asia. During his time at the company, Jon has overseen rapid business growth, which has resulted in over 60% global pass market share, an expansion of the global destination footprint, and an increase in Go City’s customer base to more than 2.5m / annum.
As CEO, Jon has focused the business around a new mission of “transforming the way people see and experience the world’s greatest cities”, and driven a strong focus on customer satisfaction as a key measure. Jon is a passionate, customer-centric leader, focused on improving the sightseeing experience for travelers around the world. Go City enables its customers to see the best attractions, tours and activities in a city, whilst retaining the freedom to do what they want, when they want – all whilst making incredible savings.
Before Go City, Jon simultaneously served as CEO of Ribble Cycles, a disruptive, direct-to-consumer, technology-enabled cycling manufacturer, and a non-executive director at OVO Energy. Prior to that, he worked at U.K.-based online retailer Shop Direct, where he ran Very.co.uk, a digital department store which he grew to a £800 million business and £100 million in profit.
Outside of Go City, Jon leads a team he’s just as dedicated to: his son’s football team, which he coaches at home in Harrogate, England. Jon has a growing passion for rewilding and biodiversity, and loves travelling to the mountains of Europe and North America with his family.




Go City
She’s known among industry peers and colleagues as the voice of reason within the Tourism Authority of Thailand and when she was appointed deputy governor for policy and planning two years ago (BC, before Covid), hopes rose that she’d be able to put the brakes on unfettered development. But Covid came and put the brakes on. With tourism smashed, she believes Thailand has a chance to reposition and rebuild for the future, as a destination that goes beyond numbers and money. It’s a hard sell when so many businesses have collapsed and those left are struggling, but she remains resolute in her longterm planning and vision.




Tourism Authority of Thailand
Mrs. Numfhon Boonyawat is Deputy Governor for Policy and Planning of the Tourism Authority of Thailand. She oversees the organisational policy, overall marketing strategy planning, monitoring and evaluation.
Prior to this, she was the Executive Director of the Planning Department. Her previous positions and responsibilities at TAT have included TAT Director of Marketing Strategy Division, Director of the TAT Sydney Office, and Executive Director of the Human Resources Department.




Tourism Authority of Thailand
As recovery continues and travelers become increasingly confident taking trips, staying ahead of shifting consumer behaviors has never been more important. This session takes a high level look at exclusive Expedia Group first-party traveler data and custom research, sharing the latest trends and key considerations shaping the industry’s continued recovery. Brands can learn how to reach and reconnect with travelers who are dreaming of their next trip or are ready to travel again.




Expedia Group Media Solutions
Andrew van der Feltz is a senior director of business development at Expedia Group Media Solutions. His team works closely with agencies, destination marketing organizations, hotel and airline partners on display advertising opportunities and campaigns across the portfolio of Expedia Group brands. Andrew previously led business development and oversaw the partner-facing teams for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
Prior to joining Expedia, Andy was the director of business development and operations at the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions (NBTC) since April 2011. Prior to this, he also worked at NBTC in the London office as country manager for the UK and Ireland. He started his career at NBTC as marketing manager, after his role as an international marketing manager at VisitScotland.
Andy studied Marketing and French in Scotland, continued his postdoc education at the Institute of Marketing in Edinburgh, and attended the Executive Educational Programme in General Management at the London Business School.




Expedia Group Media Solutions
It can’t have been fun running an airline that couldn’t fly for most part of the last year and more but the runway lights are coming on in the world’s airports for this low cost airline out of Singapore. A catch-up with the CEO who launched the airline, returned to Singapore Airlines to work on digital transformation of the group and is now back at the helm of Scoot, steering the airline back into some form of normalcy.




Scoot
Campbell Wilson is the chief executive officer of Scoot.
He was appointed the founding member of the airline on 18 July 2011. Before his appointment, he worked for the SIA group for more than 15 years in countries like Japan, Canada, and Hong Kong. He left Scoot in June 2016 and he is now appointed as the acting senior vice president of sales and marketing for Singapore Airlines. He was once again brought back as the CEO on 1 April 2020.
Campbell joined Singapore Airlines in Auckland in 1996 and was appointed vice-president of the airlines’ operation in Canada in 2006. 2 years later, he was appointed general manager of Hong Kong and then of Japan operations in 2010.
In June 2016, Campbell left Scoot. He is now the senior vice president of sales and marketing for Singapore Airlines.
Campbell took the position in 2011 and was quoted as saying ‘my immediate task is to establish a strong management team and we will be actively recruiting to fill senior positions’. On 1 November 2011, Campbell officially unveiled the new airline.
Campbell left Scoot in June 2016.




Scoot
Anything that could have happened to aviation has happened. Flights stopped. Planes grounded. Cancellations. Refunds. Customer Confusion. Not Air Travel Pass, but Air Travel Mess. How will flights recover? What needs to be fixed? Direct or indirect? Online or offline in the initial stage? How much simplicity do you trade off for profitability? How has the marketing playbook changed pre- and post-Covid? What does this whole NDC thing really mean for the GDS, intermediary and customer? Join us as we take this trip through the stormy skies of flights.




Amadeus
Mieke De Schepper is Executive Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific at Amadeus. Mieke is responsible for Amadeus’ Airlines and Travel Agency business, and leads business development across the company’s portfolio of airport, payments and hospitality solutions in the Asia Pacific region.
Previously, she was responsible for Amadeus’ Global Online Travel business, a role she held since joining the company in 2019.
Mieke has a strong track record of managing B2C and B2B businesses over two decades. Before joining Amadeus, Mieke worked for the Expedia Group as Vice President of Lodging Partner Solutions Asia Pacific, and later as Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Egencia, Expedia Group’s corporate travel brand. Prior to Expedia Group, she spent 10 years with Phillips Electronics in various global, regional and local leadership roles in product, marketing and sales. She started her professional career with McKinsey & Company.
A Dutch national, Mieke has lived in Singapore for almost 17 years, and has worked extensively across multiple countries in Asia-Pacific, while also having worked and lived in Europe, Latin America and USA. Mieke holds an MBA from INSEAD and an MSc in Industrial Design Engineering from the Delft University of Technology.




Amadeus




Skyscanner
Paul Whiteway is Head of Asia, MD Japan at Skyscanner. Based in the regional headquarters in Singapore, he is responsible for helping lead the company’s growth across APAC, and he also heads up the Japan business based in Tokyo.
Paul has been working with Internet companies since the industry’s formation and is experienced at scaling businesses in both start-up and corporate environments. He was previously General Manager of the Internet Advertising Division for Yellow Pages Australia, VP for a telecommunications start-up in New York City and Business Manager for MSN in London. He has been working in Asia since 2007 where, amongst other roles, he held senior roles at Yahoo!, leading product, editorial and engineering teams across the region and was Chief Operating Officer for iProperty, based in Malaysia up till his appointment at Skyscanner in 2013.
Paul is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at INSEAD Singapore where he provides coaching and advice to students interested in entrepreneurship. In his spare time, he loves to cook with ingredients he directly imports from Australia and tries to practise Yoga regularly.




Skyscanner




Wego
Ross is CEO & Co-Founder at Wego, which is online travel marketplace that provides top ranked mobile apps and websites for users living in the APAC and MENA regions. Wego harnesses powerful technology that simplifies the process of searching, comparing and booking flights and hotels across hundreds of airlines, hotels and online travel agency websites. Wego is has dual-HQs in Singpaore and Dubai and is backed by top-tier investors including Tiger Global, Crescent Group, Square Peg Capital and the MBC Group.
Ross is a veteran of the Asian internet industry having established Yahoo!s Southeast Asian operations in Singapore back in 1998 and leading product development efforts across the region for 6+ years. He is also Singapore Co-Chair of H2, the premier global leadership network for the digital industry. Ross has been an active angel investor in the technology sector for a decade and enjoys working with other passionate entrepreneurs. He has worked in Sydney, Melbourne, London, Kuala Lumpur and is now splits his time between Singapore and Dubai. He travels frequently for business but not nearly enough for leisure.




Wego




FCM Travel Solutions Asia
Bertrand is the Managing Director for the Flight Centre Travel Group in Asia, after being in the role of General Manager for FCM Asia since 2015. Bertrand started his career in the telecom industry in Europe working for Orange and then moved to the aeronautical giant Airbus to lead the sales and marketing department of their IT division. He held multiple global management roles within Amadeus, an IT leader of the travel industry before joining FCM.




FCM Travel Solutions Asia
He was appointed to CEO, Expedia Group at the height of the pandemic. At the time, chairman Barry Diller said, “We have one mandate – to conserve cash, survive, and use this time to reconstruct a stronger enterprise to serve the future of travel. We are unable to make any predictions as to when travel will rebound but we emphatically believe that it will, for… “if there’s life, there’s travel”.” Since then, Peter Kern has been simplifying, streamlining and reshaping Expedia Group for the longterm future and the company is a very different animal from circa-2019 and before. We find out more about Expedia Group’s ambitions and how it plans to shape the future of travel.




Expedia Group
Peter Kern is the Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Expedia Group. Mr. Kern has been a director of Expedia Group since completion of the IAC/Expedia Group Spin-Off and has served as Vice Chairman of Expedia Group since June 2018.
Mr. Kern has spent decades in leadership roles in public and private settings. Previously, Mr. Kern was CEO of Tribune Media and Managing Partner of InterMedia Partners VII, LP, a private equity firm. Prior to joining InterMedia, Mr. Kern was Senior Managing Director and Principal of Alpine Capital LLC. Prior to Alpine Capital, Mr. Kern founded Gemini Associates in 1996 and served as President from its inception through its merger with Alpine Capital in 2001. Prior to founding Gemini Associates, Mr. Kern was at the Home Shopping Network and Whittle Communications. Mr. Kern has served on the Board of Directors of Tribune Media Company since October 2016, where he currently also serves as Chief Executive Officer, as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hemisphere Media Group, Inc., a publicly-traded Spanish-language media company, since April 2013, and since 2016, as a member of Supervisory Board of trivago N.V., a majority-owned subsidiary of Expedia Group. Mr. Kern also serves on the boards of several private companies.
Mr. Kern holds a B.S. degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.




Expedia Group
Time to pick the winner who wants to take travel to Infinity.O. The winner will have the opportunity to get up to US$250,000 worth of AWS credits and technical support through the AWS Activate program and present on Center Stage during the 5 minutes in the Spotlight session at The Phocuswright Conference “in Fort Lauderdale/ Hollywood, Florida, November 15-17, 2021.
A one-on-one conversation with one of the world’s largest travel investors on investment trends, SPACs, opportunities across its portfolio, including Tripadvisor Plus, his perspectives on business travel recovery and emerging categories of hospitality, as well as his interests in the Middle East.
Interviewer:
Charuta Fadnis
Senior Vice President, Research & Product Strategy
Phocuswright




Certares
Michael Gregory (Greg) O’Hara is the Founder and a Senior Managing Director of Certares. Prior to forming Certares, he served as Chief Investment Officer of JPMorgan Chase’s Special Investments Group (“JPM SIG”). Prior to this role at JPM SIG, Greg was a Managing Director of One Equity Partners (“OEP”), the private equity arm of JPMorgan. Before joining OEP in 2005, he served as Executive Vice President of Worldspan and was a member of its Board of Directors. Greg is the Executive Chairman of American Express Global Business Travel, Chairperson of Hertz Global Holdings and Vice Chairman of Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings and serves on the Boards of Directors of Hertz Global Holdings, Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings and Tripadvisor, The Innocence Project, World Travel & Tourism Council and Certares Holdings. Greg is the Head of the Investment Committee and a member of the Management Committee of Certares Management LLC.
Greg received his Master of Business Administration degree from Vanderbilt University.




Certares
Founded in 2000, MakeMyTrip is one of Asia’s online travel pioneers and indeed was the first OTA from the region to list on the NASDAQ in 2010, setting the pace for others to follow. Founded in 1999, Travelstart is one of Africa’s online travel pioneers and wants to own Africa. Parallel journeys, two different markets. How are these two homegrown brands in two huge markets facing the future as they emerge from the dust of Covid?




MakeMyTrip
Deep is the Founder & Group Executive Chairman of India’s leading online travel company, MakeMyTrip Limited. He has steered MakeMyTrip as CEO since its inception in 2000, to a successful listing on NASDAQ in August 2010.
Deep is the co-chair of CII’s National Committee on Tourism and Hospitality. He is a founding member of IndiaTech.Org, an industry body representing the interests of Indian digital companies. Deep is on the Board of TiE NCR Chapter and served as President from 2013 to 2016. He is also one of the founding members of Ashoka University and serves on their governing body and Board. A believer in citizens effort, he is a founding member of ‘I am Gurgaon’— an NGO focused on improving the quality of life in Gurgaon. Deep serves on the Board of GMDA, Gurgaon’s Development Authority.
Deep has been recognized by Ernst & Young as Entrepreneur of the Year—Business Transformation (2011), and as the most powerful Digital influencer in India (2012) by KPMG. TTG Asia awarded him Best Travel Entrepreneur of 2012 at the TTG Travel Awards.
Deep is passionate about Sustainable Tourism and has been championing this cause through MakeMyTrip Foundation.
He holds an MBA degree from IIM, Ahmedabad and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.
His interests include swimming, yoga, adventure sports, quizzing and of course, travelling.




MakeMyTrip




Travelstart
Stephan Ekbergh married father of 4, lives in Cape Town. Ex professional DJ for 10 years. Entrepreneur in Travel. Started the E-commerce revolution in Scandinavia 1999. Is now doing the same in Africa. Passion for releasing gifts and entrepreneurship with people. Writes and speaks about business, life and taking risks. Investor and active boardmember, also works with and finances non profits organization Thembalitscha foundation.




Travelstart
In the days of yore, online travel was focused on transactions – the easier, quicker, cheaper for consumers, the better. During Covid, the pendulum swung towards inspiration – because well, in the absence of transactions, what else could online travel brands do? Will inspiration continue to rule post-Covid or will it swing back to transactions? What will ultimately rule? You decide after this debate.
For:
Timothy Hughes
Vice President, Corporate Development
Agoda
Martin Symes
Returning WiT Debator
Syazanah Haniff
WiTtie
Against:
Shyn Yee-Ho Strangas
Director, Global Product Management
Expedia Group
Chan Chee Chong
CEO & Co-founder
GlobalTix
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne
Principal
T2Impact
Announcing the WiT Startup of the Year 2021, and our Charity Auction. This year, WiT For Good is raising funds for Phare Ponleu Selpak, the 30-year-old NGO behind the social enterprise, Phare, the Cambodia Circus. More than 1,000 youths go through its academy every year, becoming artists, performers, musicians. Pre-Covid, a main source of funding came from Phare, the Cambodia Circus. . Specifically, we are raising for its Visual & Applied Arts Living Scholarships which support students from difficult socio-economic situation to cover living and school supplies for the duration of their studies.
In 2019, WiT held its “Bird’s Eye View” closing party at AJ Hackett on Sentosa. It seems fitting that we should return home to the beach and adventure park this year for a gathering, in a new hybrid format.
Hosted by Skypark by AJ Hackett, Go City and Sentosa Development Corporation.
Virtual Skypark built by Allseated EXVO
See you in 2022, when the world should look very different