The Vision

Excellence in Online Travel

This year's Travel Innovation Awardswill be TravelMole's third for Asia Pacific, in partnership with EyeforTravel's Travel Distribution Summit Asia 2013, where the winners ceremony will be held on May 28th

Focusing on effective websites, not businesses
Most travel awards focus on the travel businesses themselves. They look at the success of nominated travel brands and reward those companies that have achieved impressive growth, have made an impact on the industry or have contributed to positive change on the environment.

Towards a strategy of more successful travel websites
Our aim is to use these prestigious awards to reward and promote examples of the best websites in the Asia Pacific travel industry and to hold them up high as shining examples. In this manner, we strive to help improve travel websites across the industry as a whole, for all of us.

The judging
To help ensure that the Travel Innovation Awards are judged according to industry best practice, we have enlisted the help of Asia Pacific travel technology guru Clement Wong, Founder and Chief Host at BeMyGuest.travel

Help us all learn and improve
We realize that this is an ambitious objective and we hope that you will rally around this goal and help us identify and reward those travel websites that are truly worth our praise.

Judging Criteria

Our vision for these awards is to find and reward websites, social media and/or mobile deployments for Asia Pacific travel businesses and destinations that are beacons to the rest of the industry in terms of their use of their innovative approach to design, graphics,videos, copywriting, and use online technology, to communicate effectively what the business is all about; engaging the visitor; providing visitors to memorable experience; ease of use and navigation; etc.

Some examples of what we are looking for:

Small, friendly hotel
If, for example, you are a small hotel that focuses on great service and a personalised approach, we want to see a graphic and copy concept that communicates personal service, the individuality of the property, and the appeal of the size of the hotel, etc.

Tourist board
If, for example, you are tourist board for a country or a region, we want to see a graphic and copy concept that communicates the appeal and the USP of that country or region. If your USP is about the friendly locals, then we want to see a graphic and copy concept that is full of friendly, smiley locals. If the USP is about the vast open spaces and the peace and tranquillity of the region, we want to see a graphic and copy concept that communicates how quiet, relaxed and peaceful that country or region is.

Why is this important?
We firmly believe that there are some incredible travel opportunities on offer for the Caribbean consumer and, by helping and encouraging the industry to improve their websites in this manner, we know that we will all be able to create more effective websites, which means more business for everyone.

Submitting an entry:
When submitting your entry, it is very important to tell us a little about the business itself and why you feel that the graphic and copy concept for the website communicates the core USPs. This is what we are looking for and winning entries will be judged on these criteria.

Together we can all help promote online tourism more effectively.

Sponsor the awards

Why Sponsor? Listen to what Agoda Founder and President, Robert Rosenstein, told TravelMole Publisher, what their sponsorship did for them as a start-up company in 2008

TravelMole Made the Difference - Says Agoda Founder...

What's included with sponsorship through the Award cycle period ? Nomination dates: From 2013-03-30 until 2013-04-30 Shortlist announced: 2013-05-17 Winners announced: 2013-05=28 - Awards home page - your company logo - Web page for the Awards Category you sponsor  - your company logo, link, and description - 5 eBlasts to all TravelMole subscribes in Asia Pacific, regarding the Award nomination, shortlist and winners - your company logo and link - Award Winner Ceremony at EyeforTravel's Travel Distribution Summit Asia 2013, on May 10th, at Raffles City Convention Centre, Singapore – your company will be recognized in all the hand out and AV material and your company representative will make the presentations to the winner of the Award category you sponsor.

Judging Panel

Clement Wong

Clement has worked with the top travel companies in the world - airlines, hotels, online travel agencies, tour operators, car rental companies, helping them with their strategies and market research. He has also advised banks and venture capital firms on their investments in the travel space. He has close ties with the media through industry commentaries, press & TV interviews. He is a regular speaker at travel conferences and judge at travel technology competitions.

Ric Shreves

Ric Shreves was one of the founding partners of water&stone, a full service digital agency based in Bali. In December of 2011, he left to form a new OTA venture, GottaGetaway. Ric has worked with travel industry clients for over a decade and served for four years as the Managing Director of luxury travel operator, the Elite Havens Group.

Kei Shibata

Kei co-founded Venture Republic Inc., that owns and runs Japan's leading online travel search engine "Travel.jp", hotel review search "Hotel.jp", shopping search engine "coneco.net", and a few other vertical online media. He took the company public in 2008 at JASDAQ market in Japan. Company's web properties combined generate over 16 million monthly visitors bringing over US$27 million of annual advertising revenue.
A seasoned executive with his extensive knowledge of e-commerce, online travel and his strong entrepreneurship, Kei is responsible for driving the company by shaping its strategy, making commercialization efforts and building organization.
Previously, Kei worked at Mitsubishi Corporation, Japan's leading trading & investment firm, for 11 years. During his time with the company, among other roles, he played the key role in company's largest M&A deal in its history to acquire the Lawson Inc., one of the largest convenience store chains in Japan and led the company's joint e-commerce businesses with Lawson to pursue its post acquisition strategy.
Kei received a BA of Laws from Keio University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He serves as President of Venture Mitakai, an official Keio University's alumni association for CEOs of venture businesses and also as one of the Executive Committee Members of HBS Club of Japan (Harvard Business School's alumni association in Japan). He is also a member of Japan Association of Corporate Executives "Keizai Doyukai."

Ewan Gray

Ewan Gray heads Skyscanner's Asia Pacific operation from their HQ in Singapore and office in Beijing, having been with Skyscanner for five years and in the online space for over 10 years. Skyscanner's primary focus in the Asia Pacific region is driving growth through SEO, SEM, Business Development and traffic acquisition for Skyscanner's website and mobile products. Skyscanner is a global leader in online travel search, headquartered in Edinburgh, and has experienced rapid growth globally over the past few years. In 2012, Skyscanner was awarded the prestigious Queen's Award for Enterprise for International Growth and the company was recently placed at no.17 on the Sunday Times Tech Track 100.

Dean Wicks

Dhruv Shringi

Dhruv Shringi is the Co-Founder & CEO Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd. Dhruv leads the company's business initiatives across continents.

Dhruv in a very short span of time, by making innovations in the field of travel and tourism, has made his unique identity in the online travel industry. He has contributed actively in rejuvenating the methods of the industry. Since its successful launch in January 2006, Dhruv, has lead Yatra.com to grow from a 3 member organisation to a 1,400 people strong organisation - thus making Yatra.com the leading travel brand in the country. In 2011, Dhruv was listed by Fortune magazine amongst the top 40 CEO's in India and he currently also serves as the Vice Chairman of the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

His most recent role prior to Yatra.com was as Director Group Operations and Technology of the Ebookers Group in London, where he led a team of over 600 people and was responsible for sales of $850 million achieved through across channels including online, call centers and retail shops.

Prior to his stint at Ebookers, he worked with Ford Motor Company in their Business Strategy team based in London, where he was part of the European Business Turnaround team. He also has significant work experience in India having spent over 6 years with Arthur Andersen based in their office in Delhi. Dhruv holds an MBA from INSEAD and is also a qualified Chartered Accountant.

Dhruv is an avid reader and enjoys playing golf in his leisure time.

Aaron Hung