Speakers 2019

Dara is responsible for leading Ryanair’s Digital Transformation and overseeing the roll out of platform & product strategy across all digital channels. He leads a multi-disciplinary team of more than 75 Digital professionals across Product Strategy, Customer Experience, CRM, and Ecommerce/Digital Retailing. A creative problem solver and strategic thinker with over 10 years of experience in the field with the majority of time spent in digital marketing, brand advertising and conversion performance, Dara has held a variety of different roles since joining Ryanair’s marketing graduate program after completing his Bachelors of Business Studies Honours Degree. With three kids under the age of 5, spare time is limited but when he gets a chance he loves all things sport and when time allows he plays golf badly!

Simon Separghan is Head of Customer Contact for RBS and is responsible for the strategy, execution and delivery of Customer experience across a multi brand portfolio of RBS, Ulster Bank and NatWest. From high volume traditional Voice through to Social Media and the growing omni channel capability, Simon leads a team helping thousands of Colleagues make a difference by building emotional engagement in a digitally savvy world through cultural, proposition and performance transformation Prior to this Simon was at Barclays as MD, Global Contact and Digital Channels and Global Contact Transformation Director where Simon transformed the virtual capability and re-engineered the operating and process models to create a competitive advantage, developing Messaging and Biometrics capabilities and launching Europe’s first On-Demand Video Banking. Having worked with some of the worlds most recognised brands, Simon has been relentless around creating a culture of care and ownership in organisations globally; recognising that in the moment, empathy, knowledge and disruptive technology is key to driving the best customer experience. This culture has reaped real rewards; as NPS has grown by over 50 points and colleague engagement has risen by 15% globally.

A customer experience leader, with a track record of success delivering quality service channels globally. Currently Head of Customer Service for easyJet, focusing on becoming Europe’s leading aviation customer service provision. Whilst delivering an innovative digital  transformation,  Previous roles included Ooredoo, a leading Qatari based telco deliver high-performance teams within mature and emerging markets and John Lewis. 

Rufino Pérez Fernández studied Economics and Business Administration at the Universidad de Vigo and has an Executive MBA in Tourism Enterprise Management from the Instituto de Empresa. He has developed most of his professional career in the hotel industry, holding positions such as Head of Internal Audit, Organization and Systems Director and Chief Operations Officer.After the integration of Hoteles Hesperia in NH Hotel Group - December 2009- he has served as Commercial Director for Spain, Portugal and Andorra and Managing Director in this business unit. In February 2013, he was appointed Chief Commercial Officer in NH Hotel Group, leading hotel chain with close to 60.000 rooms in 29 countries. He led the areas of Sales, Pricing and Revenue Management, Reservations (individual and groups) and Commercial Business Intelligence.From June 2016 to mid-2017 Rufino served as Executive Managing Director of Resources, leading the Organization and IT, Human Resources, Business Intelligence and Procurement global disciplines, and reporting to the Delegated Commission of the Board of Directors.Currently he holds the position of Chief Operations Officer and Global Transformation Leader.

Geoffray Maugin is an expert in Strategy, Marketing and Guest Experience, with always the objective in mind to create value both the client and the organization. After a 1st experience at Coca-Cola where he fall in love with Marketing and Brands in general.

Geoffray had a 10 years experience at LVMH in various position in sales, operational and strategic marketing both in UK and in France HQ.

In his last mission at Moët & Chandon Global Marketing he contributed to reposition and modernize Moët & Chandon, shifting the brand from masculine Formula 1 podiums to feminine Fashion catwalks.

Launching for instance the Mini Moët drank with a straw to protect model from altering their lipstick make-up for the buzz and Moët Rosé drank in a more casual way for the bucks. (sales more than tripled the first 2 years)

He was then hired 11 years ago by the Accor Group to help reposition Sofitel in Luxury, making the most of the Brand French DNA and projecting it into the Digital age (2nd Luxury hospitality brand to reach 1 million Facebook fans in…2012)

A lot was about raising the brand perception collaborating for instance with Hermés for Amenities and collaborating with Christian Lacroix, Kenzo or Karl Lagerfeld to launch the So boutique hotel Lifestyle brand as VP Brand Marketing Sofitel.

This was followed 3 years in Midscale and Eco segments as VP Product & Service for over 3500 hotels worldwide (Ibis brands, Novotel, Mercure), injecting product flexibility, raising the design bar and improving the overall Guest experience across all the guest journey and with new dress code, new room, new lobby, new bedding concepts… and stronger service culture.

18 months ago, Geoffray came back to the Luxe brand division now over 500 hotels strong with brands like Raffles, Fairmont, Sofitel, Pullman, Mövenpick… as SVP Guest Experience & Business performance for Luxe brands.

Helping the brands and operations to take the best decisions in an ever changing environment. A great challenge with already great achievements like a +1,5pt Reputation Performance Score increase on average across all luxe brands.

Daniel Reed is currently a Vice President for Brand Expedia Group specializing in driving efficient and effective demand and engagement from potential and current customers. With over 15 years of experience leading technology and retail and marketing teams at Expedia and Microsoft he brings strong expertise in data-driven, long-term strategic planning to Expedia Group. As VP for the Global Marketing Organization, Daniel leads the Global Merchandising Organization which spans across 15 worldwide offices supporting 5 Expedia brands. He is responsible for delivering traffic and motivating consumers to the full Expedia product portfolio through outbound marketing channels and product engagement. His teams are responsible for end to end merchandising campaigns, the merchandising content strategy to drive top of funnel engagement, integrating customer data to deliver on the needs of the consumer, and brand loyalty through the Expedia Rewards program. 

Riko oversees distribution, e-Commerce, revenue management, and loyalty at Kempinski's headquarters, and is directly responsible for the strategic direction of digital marketing, pricing and guest engagement initiatives.  Riko’s main goal through his role is to constantly embrace the rise of technology deployment in the hospitality industry –successfully translating technical advances into market growth.

Yuki Huang (Huang Chao-Ying) leads KKday’s global sales and marketing teams in executing creative marketing programs, developing strategic brand management, and driving local markets’ sales. Prior to joining KKday, she was at the industry-leading retail company, VF Corporation, serving as Timberland Taiwan’s youngest-ever General Manager. Also notable is her nine-month tenure as the Brand Head for Kipling Taiwan, where she spearheaded the sales for Taiwan market to be champion amongst all Asian countries. 

With the outstanding performance, Yuki was promoted to be the General Manager of Timberland Taiwan, where she boldly led the team to kick-start an O2O (Online-to-Offline) retail revolution. By interconnecting online advertisement and offline in-store experience, and precisely targeting consumer groups with the use of digital monitoring tools, Yuki successfully drove an impressive revenue growth for Timberland Taiwan. 

Before joining VF Corporation, Yuki worked at Yahoo Taiwan for nine years, attaining the position of Senior Sales Manager. 

Alessandra Di Lorenzo is Chief Commercial Officer – Media & Partnerships at lastminute.com group. Heading up the group’s media business, Travel People, she oversees non e-commerce revenues for the group. With over a decade in digital marketing, Alessandra has previously held roles at eBay Advertising and Vodafone, with a focus on mobile and data-driven commercial and product development. Passionate about all things tech, Alessandra is also a member of the Board of Trustees for Youth for Technology.

Spencer is the Chief Executive Officer of AirAsia BIG (please remove BIG Loyalty), AirAsia’s award-winning loyalty programme and Travel360, the digital expansion of AirAsia’s inflight magazine and a content-driven online travel agent (OTA). Spencer has over 10 years of experience in the aviation industry from serving AirAsia in several positions since he joined the company in 2006, culminating in his appointment as Commercial Director of AirAsia Malaysia in 2015. He led the entire Malaysia commercial functions including product development, revenue management, marketing, sales and distribution, ancillary, government relations, partnership and customer relationship management and has received numerous industry awards. Innately innovative, he has pioneered a number of projects in the group, including the setting up of AirAsia BIG Loyalty programme and ancillary income department. Spencer is an advocate of talent development through effective leadership. With the backing of a solid work culture, he champions openness, innovation and a ‘can-do’ spirit in the workplace and has led the growth of the airline to be a leader in the region. He is a member of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and Malaysia Advertisers Association (MAA). When not conjuring new marketing strategies, the Commerce grad from Curtin University of Technology, Perth, supports Manchester United FC.

Kamil Jagodzinski has been project manager since birth but was officially accredited by the prestigious Stanford Advanced Management Program as an adult.  With over 10 years in project management working in some of the most remote places on earth, he moved to the Czech Republic to take the helm of the project management office for kiwi.com.  Late 2017 during a period of unprecedented growth Kamil was asked to become Chief Customer Officer as his project management approach would ensure that customer supports challenges would be tackled in the most effective way.  Kamil’s beliefs are aligning company culture, organisational strategy and structure.

Amro Khoudeir is a Digital Strategy and E-commerce professional with over 11 years of experience in digital marketing, operations and development. Prior to joining Mövenpick, he successfully delivered a number of multi-million dollar digital transformation solutions and online marketing strategies for Jumeriah Group, with a proven track record of generating positive returns on investment. Since joining Mövenpick in 2014, Amro has successfully formed the Digital & Distribution team, revamped the company’s web analytics suite, redefined its digital development processes and project management framework, implemented a variety of new A/B testing, personalisation, user experience, web analytics and mobile solutions, and has most recently launched movenpick.com's new responsive booking engine. In his current role, Amro manages all areas of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts' digital, e-commerce and, online distribution strategy on a global and regional level.

Victor is Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Ctrip. Victor accumulated deep experiences in the Internet and TMT space for the last 17 years. He has been involved in a couple of startups in the last couple of years. Most notably he was Chief Financial Officer of Lianjia, China’s largest real estate agency, helping them raise a series B capital of about RMB 6 billion. He was also Chief Financial Officer at Anjuke, China’s leading online real estate platform, helping drive the US$267 million M&A deal with Nasdaq listed 58.com. Previously Victor was also Director at Baidu, China’s leading search engine. And Vice President and Lead China Internet Analyst at Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong where you covered Ctrip and online travel industry 10 years ago. Victor obtained his International Master of Business Administration degree, a joint program from Tsinghua School of Economics and MIT Sloan. He obtained his Bachelors of Science degree from University of California at Los Angeles.

After 18 years in the marketing world of Consumer Electronics, Kelly joined Uber in 2018. As the Head of Social Media & Content for EMEA, her mission is to build brand affinity with human-lead insights—telling the stories that help driver-partners and riders set the world in motion.

An almost 20-year thrill ride in advertising, digital marketing and technology implementation has fueled Amanda’s passion to pair unique consumer insights and database analytics with unique brand offerings to drive business.  She has delivered winning B2B and B2C strategies for Fortune 500 public, private and non-profit environments alike.  Amanda is currently enriching American summer fun by driving personalized, behavior-based marketing programs for Herschend Family Entertainment’s 26 theme park and attractions across the U.S.  When she is not analyzing and strategizing, she is making memories with her own family in Atlanta. 

Kevin is responsible for digital marketing analytics and attribution, enabling more relevance and personalisation through our data-management platform towards all our online channels and cross-channel optimisation of the marketing spend. As the flag carrier airline of the Netherlands, the vision of KLM’s marketing programme is to humanise advertising through personalisation and relevance at scale. Supported by a data-driven approach, KLM wanted to address the proliferation of fragmented channels and develop smarter, more effective media buying models. By combining data to connect every touchpoint of the customer journey, Kevins aim aim was to serve more relevant advertising and improve media spend.

Kevin's goals are to develop smarter, more effective media buying models through data, Drive relevant advertising, and  scale predictive modelling across all touchpoints in the customer journey.

Yas is a digital executive with 20 years of digital product and services design experience. Yas is trilingual (Japanese, English and French) and has worked across markets in Europe, Asia and North America with wide range of projects and clients. Currently Mr. Inukai is a Director of Digital Business for Disney Parks, Experiences and consumer Products on international assignment at Tokyo Disney Resort. He leads the digital transformation of theme parks, attractions, hotels, food & beverage, photo imaging, merchandise and travel ecommerce.

• Director of Overseas e-Commerce & Marketing since 2008 (12 language, 26 regional sites) growth of 150% in sales for the past 10 years.

• Head of e-Commerce Alliance and Joint Business with oneworld, American Airlines, British Airways and Finnair.

• Experience in Japan Airline e-Commerce fields of Analytic, Tours (both online package and dynamic package), Ancillary and Mobile.

• Solution specialty in Ancillary, Affinity, Payment Solutions and Distribution.

• 30 yeas working for Japan Airlines in the field of Passenger Service, Sales and e-Commerce both within and outside of Japan.

• Contributing to the success of Japan Airlines e-Commerce of daily uu of 500 thousand,  monthly pv of 200 million, Daily sales of 1 billion Yen (≒ 9 million USD) 

Erik-Jan Ginjaar, Managing Director of Postillion Hotels Nederland, obtained his diploma at Hotel School Maastricht at the age of 22. After having practiced almost every possible job within the hospitality industry, Erik-Jan started as General Manager at Postillion Hotel Utrecht Bunnik in 2012. He became Director Region West of the chain in 2014 and as of February 2017 he is to be called Managing Director of Postillion Hotels Nederland. Erik-Jan’s leadership style is characterized by being hands on in combination with courage and a touch of humor!

Travelling a lot by plane his whole life Roel  joined Eurail.com as Head of Commerce as travel by train is much more comfortable than by plane. He likes to take out his boat, also known as floating terrace for having a drink and a snack with his wife and friends. Never having a dull moment in eCommerce as it is so dynamic motivates me. Roel worked before at Nike, Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. I love to empower the professionals to boost innovation, working cross functional to reach common goals. My perfect day starts with a nice cappuccino and ends with a glass of red wine!

Diane serves at the Interim CEO of the CXPA and helps support providing value and community for each and every member and partner. She is a firm believer that it "take a village" to help everyone succeed. She knows our work as CX practitioners is very tough and extremely important. Anyone who knows Diane would say she's very passionate about customer and employee experience and a driven change agent. She has over 25 years of experience building and transforming organizations around their customers and employees – from front line to infrastructure - working in and with brands such as Sysco, Invisalign and AT&T.

Christoph von Bülow, COO HolidayPirates Group – over 15 years of experience in the areas of operations and business development, primarily in the travel environment. Prior to joining the Holiday Pirates, Christoph worked for the European branch of Travelzoo for nearly eight years in various management positions at home and abroad alongside stations at Tomorrow FOCUS, lastminute.com and Humboldt Reisen Berlin. Most recently he was responsible for the German business of the global payment provider Adyen from Berlin.

Mark Struik, Commercial Director of Postillion Hotels, graduated at the International Hospitality University Leeuwarden. Mark worked in several sales positions in and out side the hospitality industry. He made a transfer from Starwood Hotels & Resorts to Postillion hotels in 2014 and started as Director of Sales. Early 2017 he was promoted to Commercial Director and is supervising Sales, Marketing, Revenue, Reservations and Productions. Mark is specialized in commercial strategies and makes translations between ideas and implementations.

Cathy specializes in customer experience management with a diverse background in hospitality, retail, and the online banking and travel sectors. She joined Hostelworld in 2012, having previously worked in senior roles with brands such as Fairmont, Marriott, HSBC, and Walmart. Her focus is to embed new customer insights across the business and develop new ways of engaging Hostelworld customers in their online and offline journeys with the brand. She holds an MBA from Seattle City University, an Honours Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University, and is a native of Vancouver, Canada.

Juanma Agudo is the Director of the connectivity area for eDreams Odigeo. He leads the product teams that manage the flight content for eDreams Odigeo brands: eDreams, Opodo, GoVoyages, TravelLink and Liligo.  Juanma has worked for GDSs, airlines and the largest travel agencies around the world. He designs the product strategy and advises his customers on digital transformation, e-business, online marketing, social media marketing and Mobile app development. He's a consultant for the travel industry with subject matter expertise in Online Travel. Juanma is a professor for Social Media marketing, Mobile Marketing and e-commerce at the MBA and Master Programs at the University of Barcelona. Juanma Agudo holds Bachelor and master’s degrees in Computer Science, Marketing Research and Digital Business Management. 

 

Santiago Garcia Solimei is the Global Director of Social Media for Meliá Hotels International where he has developed his career over the last 10 years with previous roles as Brand Manager for the Meliá and Innside Brands and Head of Marketing for the EMEA region. Santiago has extensive marketing and communications experience in the travel & hospitality and software industries working for multi-national organizations in Spain, UK and Australia. Currently he is an MBA, International Business and Master of Marketing Professor at ESERP, UIB and ESCOEX Business Schools and his qualifications include an Executive Management Program at IE and Marketing postgraduates at Cornell University. Over the last 2 years, Santiago has led Melia’s digital transformation in the area of Social Media implementing projects for Influencer Marketing, User Generated Content, Social First Marketing strategy and developing an internal employee ambassador Social Media program.

A customer-focused, challenge lover, changer and family-man. Erdinc Ugurlu is Vice President of Business Solutions and joined Pegasus Airlines in May 2017. In this role, he leads analysts teams who are bridge to business. After completing Istanbul Technical University, he joined to Bizitek in 2004 as software team leader. He was appointed to Project Manager at Coca-Cola Icecek in 2008. After four years, he started building IT department of Konica Minolta Turkey, and hold another position as well,  Application Development Manager, Europe at Konica Minolta Europe. He lead digital transformation in retail industry as Business Solutions Manager at Domino’s Pizza Turkey. After experience in various industries, he started a new career as an enterprenuer. His start-ups in eCommerce and Mobile Solutions industries bring new competencies in his corporate career. He back to corporate life and appointed to VP, Business Solutions after a short term career in retail sector. He is leading all digital things related to all business functions. He has experince in digital channels, innovation, mobile technologies and intelligent things. He will challenge rules to drive innovation

Finnbar is a Senior Industry Head in Travel at Google, where he works with some of the largest Hospitality companies in the world helping them get the best from Google. He previously worked as a consultant with McKinsey and at a travel startup that built a booking engine to connect niche lodging suppliers with bespoke tour operators, which won the European Business Plan Competition in 2014. 

Andrew Madar has over 30 years of executive management and leadership experience at multi-national companies including Boeing, GE, COMAC, CAMIC and Cobalt Air. He has a long history of work on airline startups, market and route expansion strategies for major and minor airlines including Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan, Shenzhen Airlines, Xiamen Airlines, Deerjet, Hong Kong Air, Okay, Skyview, and Cobalt Air. He has an extensive professional network and strong relationships across China, Asia, and the Middle East Aviation Industry leadership, as well as over 15 years of living experience and professional history in US, China, SE Asia, and Europe. 

Psychologist and former Head of Behavioural Science for Ogilvy Australia, Sam Tatam is Partner at Ogilvy Consulting’s Behavioural Science Practice in London, a consultancy that combines the gravitas of leading research in cognitive psychology and behavioural economics with the creative expertise of the Ogilvy Group. Sam’s experience stems from a background in Organisational Psychology and brand strategy, with a clear focus on understanding consumer behaviour on both a macro and micro scale. Today, he brings this thinking to Ogilvy’s clients across the globe, developing behavioural interventions and shaping the communications of some of the world’s most influential organisations.

When she’s not planning her next adventure, Allison Busacca is stationed in London, leading Travel Product Marketing for Facebook & Instagram across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Previously, Ali ran the Instagram Community Team, and spent 10+ years working in & covering the travel industry, most recently launching and directing the BBC’s first travel business (having worked at National Geographic and New York Times Travel before that). Sought after as an expert on helping brands use storytelling, data and social to connect with audiences, Ali’s spoken about the intersection of digital trends, social media and travel at industry conferences such as World Travel Market, SXSW, ITB Asia and City Nation Place.

Pedro Anderson is a social entrepreneur, fundraiser and proponent for open decentralized systems. Prior to Winding Tree Pedro sold millions of dollars of SaaS products and raised funding for numerous non-profit projects including his foundation to help disadvantaged youth start careers in hospitality. Winding Tree is a non-profit foundation that drives the development of open-source protocols for the travel industry, to allow any company, big or small, or even an individual developer, to integrate with the platform in no time.

A certified product manager with an overall eleven-years of work experience. Working as a product evangelist driving cross-functional teams in delivering technology driven e-commerce B2B and B2C products and commercially optimizing our products using a data-driven approach. Have been in digital travel domain in the past 6 years developing flights, train, ground transportation and optimally communicating our offering to the customers across different cultures and geographies. Moved across 3 countries within a decade, learned a new language with professional proficiency within 8 months and worked across different cultures. Besides owning and nurturing my products towards commercial success, I love traveling, reading and dancing.

Vladimir is heading the sales and marketing efforts of CheckMyBus, the leading global intercity bus search engine, simplifying ground mobility around the world. He is in charge of acquisition and account management of partner companies spread on 5 continents, along with revenue optimization and KPI analytics. During his career, Vladimir worked at marketing and communication departments of large global technology players, such as Microsoft, Siemens, and GFI Software, and has over 10 years of experience as a marketing consultant for global technology leaders and local tech companies in Southeast Europe. A transportation engineer by education, Vladimir likes to combine engineering methodologies with marketing tactics and his experience to reach the best results.

Jose Luis was working 8 years outside of Spain in digital agencies with a special focus on search engine marketing, social ads and display advertising, where he was able to improve his knowledge and gain a wide experience in the digital marketing world. In this stage he had the opportunity get extra insights of the industry with a special know how in verticals like finance, retail and travel, in which his overall experience in the travel vertical is more than 10 years. Right now he is leading the media advertising and mobile marketing strategy as well as the optimization of the different digital creatives at Meliá Hotels International

Ajit has over 20 years’ experience in Airline Loyalty, Pricing, Revenue Management and Marketing. At Oman Air, Ajit has developed and launched the award winning loyalty program – Sindbad. He leads the team responsible for execution of rapid delivery of complex operation projects, partnerships and digital communication. He also worked in pricing, revenue management and marketing areas with Swissair, KLM and Cathay Pacific. He is very strong at strategic management and passionate about delivering end to end solutions. 

Marco Ottaviani is an engineer with a Master in Marketing and with almost 20 years of experience in CRM, Marketing Automation, Customer insights and experience development. Marco is the global Head of CRM and Customer Activation at MSC Cruises where worked in last 7 years. In this position he has founded the CRM Centre of Competence, CRM Lab, new loyalty program, the Marketing Automation based on customer journey strategy. Precedent experiences are in Accenture as leader for the Gucci CRM, and with a key role for the analytical CRM for Nestlè. Marco worked 11 years for Costa Cruises as Head of Corporate Marketing Research & Competitive Intelligence, Chairman for the Excellence committee, Product Manager.

Alessandro is Director of eCommerce and Digital Department at Costa Crociere, the italian cruiseline company of the Carnival Group. He is leading the implementation of the Omnichannel Digital Strategy of the Company, aiming to deliver the same experience to Customers approaching digital touchpoints shoreside and onboard Costa’s ships. A new websites, a new app and a new digital onboard experience  are being delivered in the last 12 months, and these are just the first steps of a long digital transformation journey Costa is successfully doing. 

Simon is a Chartered Business and Consumer Psychologist and managing partner with the award winning psychological insight and behaviour change consultancy, Innovationbubble (www.innovationbubble.eu). Simon and his psychology team have advised well-known travel brands (Virgin Holidays, Virgin Atlantic, Swedish Airlines, British Airways, Thomas Cook, Hotels.com, Royal Caribbean) entertainment brands (BBC, Universal, CH4 etc) as well as global brands (Fedex, Microsoft, Sony, Deutsch Bank, Aviva, HTC, Insurance, Ericcson, SonyMusic, TalkTalk, Bupa, Microsoft, Unilever, Roche etc), in relation to the psychology of consumer behaviour. Simon and his team then advise marketing, sales and loyalty teams how to effectively engage with audiences (online and offline) and build proper behaviourally effective brand. Simon is an author and regularly presents at international conferences on the psychology of consumer decision making, emotion and communication. He has acted as an advisor to the UK and US governments.  He regularly appears on the TV and radio and in the press discussing consumer psychology and behavioural intervention.

Iris Taguet is the Head of the Blockchain Program at Air France – KLM. She is responsible for building the global Blockchain strategy for the Air France – KLM group, from awareness, to business uses cases; from defining the technical architecture to setting up the governance model; and finally building up a team of Blockchain ambassadors within the group. Previous to that, she managed several projects for IT Innovation at Air France - KLM. With almost 15 years of experience, Iris has a very strong knowledge of the airline industry. Creativity, enthusiasm and leadership are Iris’ greatest strengths. Her most recent success is the launch of the program she is now leading with a team of ten blockchain ambassadors for the Air France – KLM group. Iris holds a double Master degree in Business Management and Information System Project Management from the IAE de Paris (Sorbonne Business School).

After graduating in International Communications at the University of Leeds, Nick began following his ethos of always pursuing what he believed to be the biggest innovators in the travel market. Nick has had a successful career which has seen constant progression within the travel industry, starting as an Account Manager at Teletext Holidays in 2006, before moving to Travelzoo in 2010 where he grew from Sales Manager to Head of Sales, Travel before setting sail for a new adventure with HolidayPirates Group, where Nick was appointed as Head of Market, UK at the beginning of 2019.

Richard Alan Reid is BuzzFeed's International Head of Franchises, Shows and Branded Content. He is responsible for both universal and regional creative direction and curation, and leads and scales creative teams, branded operations and video production for BuzzFeed's editions in the UK, Europe, Australia, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Latin America and new markets. Additionally, Richard leads the global expansion of BuzzFeed's travel and experiential media brand, Bring Me!

In the advertising space, Reid has written, directed and supervised countless campaigns for major brands including GEICO, Citibank, Amazon, BMW, Coca-Cola, Sky, 20th Century Fox, Nestle and Google. Editorially, he was most recently Executive Producer of BuzzFeed's first international series, Worth It UK. Beyond BuzzFeed, Reid is also a writer, actor, producer and director of award-winning feature films, scripted series and reality shows. Reid is based in New York City.

Liu Weichun, co-founder and Executive Vice President of KKday, is in charge of KKday’s marketing and operational strategies in the Southeast Asian region.

Before taking on the role as Executive VP, Liu served as Chief Operating Officer at KKday, where she oversaw KKday’s global product management and customer services. She led groundbreaking achievements, including the build-up of KKday’s SCM (Supply Chain Management) system, the development of QR code redemption, and API (Application Programming Interface) integration with large tour providers, such as Taipei 101 and Hong Kong TurboJET.

Liu joined KKday as one of the founding members and subsequently held the position of Chief Financial Officer before her promotion to COO. Prior to KKday, she held the role of a supply chain manager at Dell and also served as an investment banker upon graduation from New York University/

Karan is the Managing Director for IHG in the UK&I and as such is accountable for the end to end performance of the business in this key priority market for IHG. Karan has been with IHG for almost 8-years and has held multiple roles during this time including VP of Design & Engineering and Head of Strategy

Prior to IHG, Karan was an Engagement Manager for McKinsey & Co, working in the Consumer & Retail sector. Before that, Karan worked for 5-years at Cadbury-Schweppes in various brand management, innovation and commercial strategy roles.

Karan has an MBA with Distinction from INSEAD and a BA (Hons) in Economics from Delhi University.