Main Stage Programme

Siew Hoon has been covering the travel industry beat in Asia Pacific for decades, starting off as a rookie reporter and going on to lead and launch the region’s key industry media titles. In 2005, she founded WiT (Web in Travel) to tackle how technology was changing travel in Asia Pacific and created a new space in the fast-growing, dynamic region with a dedicated media and events platform.

Over the years, she took WiT to new places, launching editions in Tokyo, Seoul, Middle East and Europe to keep the world’s attention focused on the three pillars of travel, technology and Asia.

Following the acquisition by Northstar Travel Group in 2014, she led the launch of Travel Weekly Asia and M&C Asia and formed the editorial team to execute the entry of Northstar to Asia.

Her work has been recognised by numerous institutions including the Singapore Tourism Board which recognised her as Tourism Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014. The WiT Singapore conference, which remains its tentpole event, has won several awards including Most Innovative Marketing Initiative and Trade Conference Of The Year.

In 2020, WiT Singapore became the first travel conference to go fully hybrid, paving the way for a new model in events.

Other than writing about travel, Siew Hoon is also a published author of titles such as “Around Asia In One Hour: Tales of Condoms, Chillies & Curries”, children’s books such as “Adventures of Habibie The Turtle” and “The Story of Baitong and Boon” and host of “A Life In Travel” podcast.

Travel is not only Ashley’s passion but also her career choice. From a gap year at a leading destination management company in Sri Lanka to becoming the Country Manager of tours and tickets at Trip.com, Ashley has deeply immersed herself in managing travel activity products.

Since moving to Kuala Lumpur in 2020, Ashley has focused on building a robust supply chain foundation for Trip.com. Together with her industry partners, from daily operations to marketing in diversified communities, she achieved a fast recovery post-pandemic. Currently, promoting outbound travel for Malaysians is her new agenda.

Ashley holds a master’s degree in ASEAN Studies from the Asia-Europe Institute at the University of Malaya. Born and raised in China and now localized in Malaysia, she is driven by a new credo: “Intra-ASEAN flow is the new domestic travel.”

As third-generation owner of the renowned eco-cultural destination Suan Sampran, Arrut is acclaimed for elevating the property by spearheading an Organic Social Movement known as the Sampran Model. This initiative serves as a sustainable solution addressing issues in tourism, food and agriculture, environment, health, and the economy. Holding a degree in chemical engineering, he garnered experience in investment banking before joining the family business. With a vision to procure quality produce directly from farmers for his restaurant outlets, Arrut undertook the challenge of persuading farmers to embrace traditional organic farming. To support them financially during the transition, he secured grants. Gradually, he established a collective comprising nearly 200 farmers, creating a network of buyers from the hospitality industry through the Thai Organic Consumer Association (TOCA) that was founded 4 years ago. Introducing blockchain technology, Arrut streamlined the distribution and authentication of food produced by the collective. In 2015, his brother launched Patom Organic Living, a traceable and sustainable Thai organic brand. The city-based Patom Organic Living Café, a part of this brand, donates 3% of its revenue to the Sookjai Foundation that supports initiatives related to organic farming practices.

Kim is the Regional Director for Southeast Asia in STR, a premium data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights provider for the global hospitality industry. STR is a division of CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP), a leading provider of online real estate marketplaces, information and analytics in the commercial and residential property markets.

Kim is a digital marketing professional with over 20 years’ experience within the hospitality industry. She has assisted independent hotels and hotel chains grow their revenue through their website development, traffic and revenue generation, channel distribution and reputation management combined with market intelligence and data analytics.

‘Architectural conservation shouldn’t just be about ‘lessons from the past’, it should really be about future sustainability’

After 7 years as a lecturer at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Lin Lee had a mid-life career change to the field of historic conservation and has served with the firm since its inception, cutting her teeth with the restoration of the famed Cheong Fatt Tze – The Blue Mansion. She serves as a UNESCO consultant, is a member of ICOMOS (International Council of Monuments & Sites) and is a Duncan Sandys-PATA Scholar for the Conservation Foundation of Britain.

Lin Lee is an acknowledged professional on intangible cultural heritage and remains the convenor of the Living Heritage Treasures of Penang Awards since 2004 and the initiator of the Penang Apprenticeship Programme for Artisans. She has also served as a UNESCO expert for the training of cultural heritage guides for World Heritage Sites as well as a UNESCO consultant for the Mountain Lushan World Heritage Site in Jiangxi Province, China.

In the Firm she works on conservation projects, research, management plans and reports and heritage impact assessments to the Local Authorities. Besides assisting in the management of the Blue Mansion and its interpretation for visitors, Lin Lee has authored several books on conservation and cultural heritage. As a senior council member of the Penang Heritage Trust and having worked successfully with the State Government for the listing of George Town as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, she is able to offer clients in-depth views and professional advice for conservation projects and adaptive re-use.

Ms. Arifah Sharifuddin is the Head of Digital Tourism at the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), a public company under the purview of the Ministry of Communications & Digital Malaysia. A graduate from Massey University, New Zealand, Arifah is a forward-thinking and value-driven leader who specializes in designing and implementing national-level digital adoption and ecosystem development programmes.

She leads the development of Digital Tourism as Malaysia Digital’s promoted sector, working closely with the Ministry of Tourism, Arts & Culture (MOTAC), its agencies, and various other public and private sector players towards the advancement & resiliency of Malaysia’s Tourism Sector. She leads the strategy and implementation of DE Rantau, Malaysia’s digital nomad programme, which is aimed at making Malaysia the preferred digital nomad hub in ASEAN. Previously, Arifah had led other initiatives at MDEC, including digital government transformation, Sharing Economy and digital agriculture.

Prior to joining MDEC, Arifah has gained over 15 years of work experience in various corporate sectors. Her rich career background includes corporate philanthropy, financial and project management, systems analysts, customer experience, and business development. She is passionate for evidence-based and interdisciplinary approach, recognizing the complementary roles that science, humanities, and arts have to play in the development of the nation.

Noredah Othman is the CEO of Sabah Convention Bureau. With 33 years of experience in the tourism industry and previously holding the position of CEO of Sabah Tourism Board, Othman heads the non-profit agency under the purview of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture & Environment Sabah, starting January 2024.

Her role in this newly-formed agency includes ensuring potential buyers get non-biased and impartial advice and information on the best services, products, and facilities available in the state. Noredah is also responsible for promoting Sabah as a leading MICE destination.

She forges strong public-private sector partnerships and bids to host meetings and congresses. Establishing this convention bureau will expedite and provide focus to grow the business events industry as one of the significant economic components for the state of Sabah.

Noredah has held positions such as deputy GM, senior marketing manager, marketing manager, and communications manager in Sabah Tourism Board. She was a PATA Board Member for two years (2019-2021) and is currently a PATA Executive Board Member from 2021 until 2025.

Born and bred in Penang island, Dawn has spent over 15 years in roles covering travel, marketing, technology, media and TV broadcasting in San Francisco, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Singapore​. Her foray into travel and tourism began at a digital and content marketing agency handling various airline and tourism clients before joining KAYAK under Booking Holdings. Now, she oversees all things marketing and ecommerce in APAC for Go City®, the global leader in sightseeing passes which includes brands like London Pass ®, New York Pass ®, Paris Pass ™, along with a growing list of 30+ cities globally.

Dawn’s current remit sees her leading B2C customer growth and ecommerce sales focusing on Greater China, North Asia, India and Australia. She joined Go City® six months before the pandemic hit, pioneered customer localization in the company, steered her team through travel recovery and is now leading the APAC customer growth beyond pre-pandemic levels.

She enjoys a good city break, cultural immersions, museum-hopping, deep-sea wreck diving – and of course, local Penang food.

Chee Chong is passionate about the tourism industry, so much so that his 15-year career has been centered around it. He has founded not one, but two start-ups to better meet the needs of the buoyant travel/tourism industry.

He is currently Chief Executive Officer and visionary of GlobalTix, an e-ticketing travel marketplace. Chee Chong was also one of the co-founders of Adventure Glamping, which has pioneered and built the first-ever “glamping” (glamorous camping) resort called Canopi, located in Bintan.

He began his travel industry career with SilkAir, the regional carrier owned by Singapore Airlines and subsequently was seconded to Singapore Airlines.

During his seven-year career with the two carriers, he handled various job functions, including postings to Thailand, Indonesia, and Central Japan which gave him invaluable exposure in the airline industry. In Central Japan, he started many initiatives, including several that continue to today, and the team was recognized with a CEO’s Merit Award for operational excellence.

Chee Chong next joined Sentosa Development Corporation as a member of the management team. He started as the Leisure Operation, Director where he was responsible for ongoing daily operations, from beach operation, attractions to ticketing and subsequently became the General Manager of Mount Faber Leisure Group.

Chee Chong holds a Bachelor of Engineering (2nd Upper) degree from the National University of Singapore.

Wan Xin is the visionary founder behind Wanderworks Lab and Remote Work Malaysia. As the driving force behind Remote Work Malaysia, she has cultivated Malaysia’s largest community of over 65,000 remote professionals dedicated to healthy, productive, fulfilling remote work. Meanwhile, her startup, Wanderworks Lab, is on a mission to provide greater freedom to remote professionals by offering productive workspaces wherever they roam.

Wan Xin holds a Master’s in Business Administration from Asia School of Business, established in collaboration with MIT Sloan. She was also a recipient of the China Synergy Program for Outstanding Youth. In her personal life, Wan Xin embraces an adventurous and zero-waste lifestyle, enjoying backpacking, diving and hiking.

With over two decades of experience in consumer banking, he has held key roles at Citibank, RHB, CIMB, and MAA. His expertise spans actuarial science, consumer financial products, product management, risk analytics, and sales performance analytics. Passionate about tourism and consumer analytics, he views analytics as the gateway to an uncharted realm, capable of unlocking a wealth of opportunities.

Born and bred in Penang island, Dawn has spent over 15 years in roles covering travel, marketing, technology, media and TV broadcasting in San Francisco, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Singapore​. Her foray into travel and tourism began at a digital and content marketing agency handling various airline and tourism clients before joining KAYAK under Booking Holdings. Now, she oversees all things marketing and ecommerce in APAC for Go City®, the global leader in sightseeing passes which includes brands like London Pass ®, New York Pass ®, Paris Pass ™, along with a growing list of 30+ cities globally.

Dawn’s current remit sees her leading B2C customer growth and ecommerce sales focusing on Greater China, North Asia, India and Australia. She joined Go City® six months before the pandemic hit, pioneered customer localization in the company, steered her team through travel recovery and is now leading the APAC customer growth beyond pre-pandemic levels.

She enjoys a good city break, cultural immersions, museum-hopping, deep-sea wreck diving – and of course, local Penang food.

Jason Chan is a co-founder of Cinewav and a filmmaker with over 15 years of hands-on experience in the film industry from writing, producing, directing, editing, composing, sound design, mixing and distribution. His startup Cinewav is a patented, scalable and personal audio system that allows that allows users to watch a movie on a big screen and listen to the audio on their mobile phones and headphones (perfectly in sync). This replaces speakers, scaling to as many users as needed and eliminates noise pollution allowing the activation of novel movie venues. The technology has since been used for many other applications including Vivid Sydney (world’s largest light festival), Sydney NYE fireworks, Danang Intl Fireworks festival and hundreds of movie outdoor movie screenings.

Yock Song is a tourism, hospitality and technology professional with over 12 years of experience, specialising in Government Relations, Go-to-Market Strategy, Business and Product Development for International Markets.

He is the Co-founder of Questeon, a creators’ enabled, on-demand platform for city discovery, where users can interact with their surroundings, uncover stories, complete tasks and discover new places. Think of the platform as a combination of Pokemon Go + outdoor escape room.

As a Partner and Head of Partnerships & Business Development at Tribe – a travel boutique start-up specialising in creating in-depth, experiential tours of Singapore – Yock Song is instrumental in the strategic direction, innovation and product development of the company. In a short span of time, he led the team to create various popular tour products, including Instawalk series – Singapore’s first and only Instagram tour in Singapore combining guide and influencer on every tour; HawkerWalk series – a tour designed to bring out the stories, passion and grit of our local hawker heroes; Niu Che Shui Game Tour, a world’s first tour concept that combines puzzles solving and storytelling of the precinct where the tour happened. Tribe was also the first few operators to launch a behind the scenes live stream tours offerings, creating new revenue stream for the business. To date, it has brought live stream tours to thousands of viewers globally. Under Yock Song’s strategic leadership, Tribe si the winner for Outstanding Tour Experience Award 2021, the most prestigious award by the Singapore Tourism Board.

Prior to Tribe, Yock Song works ni the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), holding different positions and portfolios across his 10 years in the organisation. As Senior Manager in STB Guangzhou, he was responsible for tech &media partnerships &Business Development, looking after the markets of Shenzhen, Xiamen, Fuzhou and Quanzhou. He also forged close partnership with technology giant Tencent Group, which led to the signing of Tencent’s first international MOU with a National Tourism Organisation. Such efforts resulted in improved accuracy in marketing to Chinese target audience and orchestrated Tencent’s QQ first international live shoot event at Zoukout Singapore 2017.

Yock Song graduated with a Masters in Public Administration and Management (Mandarin) from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and a Bachelor of Business Management, with a double major in Finance and Marketing from the Singapore Management University.

ERIC CHONG together with his wife KIM WONG juggle their time running their training consultancy company Extra Sensory Pursuits and their farm Green Acres.

Eric holds a Degree in Arts and Education from the University of Calgary, Canada and is a candidature in Master of Sports Management, and Kim holds a Computer Science & Management (Hons) from King’s College, University of London.

It was on their last corporate management project of cruise boats in Putrajaya in 2002 that they decided that it was not the most wholesome way to bring up their then just born child in a city.

In 2006, in between running their training and consultancy company, the couple with their young son on their backs hiked the hills of Penang looking for a suitable piece of land to embark on a more wholesome and sustainable lifestyle.

After 3 years of land hunting, the Chongs finally found their dream orchard tucked in the hills of Balik Pulau. The 16 acre farm had been left idle for some time but had a treasure trove of matured tropical fruit trees ranging from seasonal to the year-rounds. From the time the previous owner’s grandfather terraced the slopes ‘changkul’ by ‘changkul’ more than 60 years ago to date, no chemicals have been used on the land.

After two years of nurturing the farm and building their sustainable house, in 2011, Green Acres opened its doors during durian season for durian and seasonal fruit tasting sessions as it endeavors to share its sustainable practices and also to learn from its visitors.

For this family of three who had no prior farming experience, let alone farming without the instant-fix of chemicals, it was indeed a continuous journey of discovery and learning.

Li-Chin Kuo now is CEO of Co-create Planning & Design Consultancy which is located in Taitung, Taiwan. She majored in Anthropology and Urban and Rural Planning, and was greatly influenced by the concepts of livable cities and slow food.

In 2013, she moved to Taitung from Taipei and founded an unconventional planning and design consultancy, mainly promoting Slow Food Movement and providing counseling programs for local industry integration.

She has been focusing on the sustainable issues of Taitung, organizing the Taitung Slow Food Festival, which is super green and non-waste activity. The Festival once won the Gold award of Good Design Award in 2021. Slow Food Travel will be one of the next step of her team. Li-Chin values real-life experience and is dedicated to various innovative and creative practices of local community cooperation based on Taitung’s local customs and knowledge.

Jane’s love affair with Asia started on her arrival as a “wee lass” in Singapore (by boat!) in February 1963.

A native Brit, life has ensured that she has boomeranged back to Asia — as a trailing teenager in 1970, followed by two stints as a trailing spouse from 1999, in the middle of which she sandwiched six years in New York City.

She’s grasped opportunities to get involved, and sees her volunteer work with Friends of the Museums (FOM) as nothing less than life changing. She served as its president in 2003-2004, has guided in three museums, coordinated the Explore Singapore! Team, led study tours to other parts of Asia, and ran film and book groups.

An excellent organiser and administrator, she’s a passionate ambassador for her adopted home of Singapore. Particularly interested in heritage and history, she is also a keen supporter of the performing arts.

A true citizen of the world, she speaks mother tongue English, excellent Spanish and good French, with a smattering of other languages — Portuguese and Italian, poor Malay, and almost non existent Chinese — leaving plenty of scope for self improvement!

I am Henry, one of the top 100 Chinese travelers. With 9 years of experience as a foreign language tour guide, I used to specialize in introducing Taiwan’s beauty to inbound tourists from Europe, America, and
around the world before the pandemic. I’m familiar with Taiwan’s diverse cultures, landscapes, historical contexts, and hidden gems. After the pandemic, I shifted to leading in-depth domestic tours, focusing on cultural exploration. Additionally, I conduct Taiwan travel lectures, guide training, and cultural promotion courses at schools, communities, and relevant organizations. I’ve also ventured into themed tours like photography and cycling, continuously exploring unique ways to showcase Taiwan’s 368 towns and townships to travelers.