The two-day WiT flagship event welcomed 250 delegates on-site at Marina Bay Sands' Expo and Convention Centre and a virtual audience of 1,000.
Business and consumer travel companies need to innovate and adapt in
order to succeed in the post-pandemic world — this was the clarion call
from industry leaders attending the recent Web in Travel (WiT)
Experience Singapore 2021 event.
The leading travel technology conference in Asia Pacific took place
on 19-20 October as a hybrid event, with a physical space at the Marina
Bay Sands’ Expo and Convention Centre that accommodated 250
fully-vaccinated delegates, along with a digital space that granted
access to another 1,000 attendees.
“The
travel recovery in APAC is coming along fast, more so than the United
State. Businesses need to be nimble as we’re seeing that all around the
world demand is changing overnight,” said Hermione Joye, Sector Lead,
Travel & Vertical Search APAC at Google.
Kei Shibata, CEO of Venture Republic (TRAVEL.jp
& Trip101), believes that “there is no better time for creating new
products and setting up a new niche" because this is an era where
companies will have to “reset a lot of assumptions in the market”.
Hee added: “Corporate businesses should explore new solutions in
business travel bookings and management by leveraging technologies,
since corporate clients no longer want to rely on making a phone call or
sending an email to travel agencies, and they want the process
digitised instead.”
When Frederic Lalonde, founder and CEO of Hopper, a mobile booking
company, spoke about his plans to move forward, he mentioned that
innovation is key in thriving beyond the pandemic. His company used this
opportunity to explore new consumer demands based on systematic
research and analysis.
“We came out of this with the most robust set of data we could ever
ask for. The only good thing about the pandemic is that we have trained
our models with a data set that would have taken us decades,” Lalonde
said. “We have become a much safer investment with this pandemic.”
In a similar vein, Marina Bay Sands Senior Vice President of
Marketing, Maunik Thacker, said: “It’s not business as usual anymore.
The world has completely changed. It has turned upside down for
everyone... “Similarly for our guests, their mindsets have changed. The
way they travel or host and attend events is very different than it was
pre-pandemic.”
Thacker believes that if MICE events are able to have a virtual
meeting space where physical features and real-life experiences can be
virtually replicated, it would be the best of both worlds.
This is a sentiment collectively shared among 59% of WiT’s physical
and virtual audiences. Responding to whether “all events should have a
virtual component” even after the pandemic has passed, the majority of
participants responded that events should still offer a virtual option
as it allows for more flexibility and a wider reach.
Other topics discussed at the event include travel recovery,
sustainability in the hospitality industry, the reopening of borders,
and what the future of MICE events may look like.
The 13th edition of WiT is the first industry event to utilise Marina
Bay Sands’ newest events update — Virtual Meeting Place — which allows
event organisers to build their virtual venue set from scratch and
digitally replicate their real-life event space.
Hosted by WiT’s founder Yeoh Siew Hoon, the event spotlighted more
than 60 guest speakers, where interactive functions gave virtual
delegates the option of navigating to different rooms — whether to tune
into conference sessions, message and meet other virtual delegates,
learn more about WiT’s social initiatives, view the programme line-up,
virtually “hangout” at the Marina Bay Sands’ rooftop in a video
conference with others, and more.