Stellar cast of industry experts at TRAVELtech

With a stellar cast of speaker, presenters and interviewees, yesterday’s Sydney TRAVELTech, now in its fourth year, left many of its travel and tourism industry delegates with much more than food for thought at the end of the day, with many departing Cockle Bay’s Dockside conference centre, thinking to themselves, if we do not embrace all this, our business will fall behind and we will not be competitive.

Recognised for bringing the industry up to speed with leading edge approaches and technology in travel and tourism, mainly through presentations and interviews with industry leaders, this year’s TRAVELtech was no different with a machine gun like agenda of top speakers telling delegates what was new and hot in travel and tourism technology and how they could and must embrace it.

Organises and event facilitator, Martin Kelly is to be congratulated for ensuring such an impressive line up with Peter Smith, GM Zuji Australia, Tim Russell, MD Amadeus Australia, Tim Hughes, Blogger, the Business of Online Travel and Rod Cuthbert, CEO of Viator kicking off the day in the warm up slot, exploring Destinations On Line – Winner and Losers and it became clear that increasingly the destination is the key to travel and the reason people travel with air and hotels potentially relative incidental – interesting stuff and something I have been saying for a long, long time!

Speakers and interviewees included [click on any of the names for more information]: –

Keith Stanley, CEO, Stella Travel Services

Rod Cuthbert, CEO, Viator

Jamie Perry, GM Distribution and Commercial Systems, Jetstar 

Peter Smith, GM, Zuji

Yury Shar, Director, Hotelscombined.com

Adam Johnson, MD, Travel.com.au

Michael Walmsley, GM, Hitwise Asia Pacific

Liz Ward, GM, Australian Tourism Data Warehouse

Christian Bartens, Online Analyst, Tourism Australia

Robbie Hills, Managing DIrector, 24/7 Real Media

Todd Levi, Communications Director, Pleasetakemeto.com.au

Laurel Papworth, Online Communities Strategist, World Communities

Cameron Adams, The Man In Blue

Tom Petryshen, CEO, Amplify 

Dion Appel, CEO, Lifelounge

John Allsopp, Director, Westciv

Tim Hughes, Blogger, The Business of Online Travel

Jonathan Hume, MD, trainticket.com.au

Jonathon Pearson, Director, DriveNow

Tim Russell, Managing Director, Amadeus Australia 

Tom Hodgkinson, GM – e-Commerce, AOT Group  

With TRAVELtech founded in 1999 and Australia’s benchmark online travel marketing and distribution conference it is very hard to pick out one speaker, presenter or interviewee over another and quite frankly you really have to attend to appreciate how you will be bombarded with information in such a short period of time – all positive of course!

In what might be described as “the keynote speaker”, in a session titled Fast Mover, Big Opportunities, Martin Kelly interviewed Keith Stanley, the head man of Stella Travel Services, now without doubt the most influential player in travel retail in Australia, with a bit of chat about where Keith was born and so forth, but the really pointy end coming when Keith announced that he wants to see around one fifth of Stella Travel’s turnover generated from its online operations in the next few years, with the group’s new web strategy key to achieving that.

He emphasised that currently on line income was negligible so his objective for the next five years heralds a significant change in direction for the group that owns Harvey World Travel and TravelsceneAmerican Express. He said that online would drive business to retailers – even more interesting and whether that is realistic we will have to wait and see, although they providing their agencies with web sites and booking engine facilities.

For more information on TRAVELtech 2007 visit www.traveltrends.biz/traveltech

Report by The Mole