PATA supports Brisbane Marketing’s new initiative
BANGKOK:The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) has suppored Brisbane’s new tourism initiative – Brisbane Global Cafe
The Brisbane Global Cafe was held from November 12-13, 2014, prior to G20 Leaders Summit, at Brisbane Town Hall and attracted over 70 speakers featuring the world’s top experts, CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs, industry shapers and thought leaders. The event attracted a total of 2,292 guests over the two days.
Through the support of PATA, Tourism’s New Frontiers brought together a wide range of travel and tourism industry speakers to address three topics, including The Contrarians – The Disruptive Energy of Genius, The Transformers- Urban Legends and Local Heroes and The Believers- The Power of the Passion.
The dynamic line up of international speakers aimed to disrupt and challenge global thinking of tourism and capitalise on the media, political and corporate spotlight during the lead up to the G20 Leaders Summit.
The sessions from the Brisbane Global Cafe were live streamed and broadcast in King George Square for public viewing. The live stream was extremely popular attracting a total amount of 5000 viewers from over 50 countries. Social media interaction with the hash tag #BNEGlobalCafe had a twitter reach of 1.1 million, an impressive result for this inaugural event.
The morning was opened by the Chairman and CEO of Taylor Street Consulting, Christopher Brown AM. Following the opening address, Dr Mathew McDougall, CEO of marketing and analytics company Digital Jungle, presented on Big Data and the new insights into public desires, explaining, “Tourism operators need to work smarter not harder to attract Chinese visitors, and technology is a key to improved progress”.
Former Tourism Vancouver CEO Rick Antonson focused on ‘Cathedral Thinking’ and the importance of a post-Commonwealth Games strategy for Games organisers, to ensure the legacy is maintained for many years after the event.
Ms Pansy Ho, Managing Director of Shun Tak Holdings, gave a comprehensive presentation on her company’s role in transforming Macau from a fishing village into one of the world’s largest gaming hubs, stating “a key aspect of Macau’s development was the transformation of its hospitality and gaming industries into new directions to provide more career paths for its citizens”.
Mr Murat Bas, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Sales for Turkish Airlines, explained how niche markets in the Middle East, Europe and Africa had helped propel the airline’s success in recent years, with passenger numbers doubling in the past seven years through a network of 219 destinations in 108 countries.
Managing Director of Urban Regeneration at Lend Lease, Jonathan Emery, noted that, “Urban Regeneration can transform a city’s image and attract global investment and tourism dollars, for example Sydney is repositioning itself as one of the world’s most livable cities, and a real global city.”
Mr David Gavaghan, CEO of Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, discussed the overcoming of adversity and the story of the Titanic Quarter, stating, “Urban Regeneration has restored a sense of civic pride to Belfast, with tourism to Belfast predicted to increase by 300-500 percent over the next ten years due largely to the revitalisation of the city”.
Darrell Wade, Founder of Intrepid Travel, was involved in an engaging interview where he discussed the establishment of Intrepid/PEAK adventures, and the need to establish partnerships with local communities as a means for delivering social and economic value to both parties.
TripAdvisor’s Asia Pacific President Lily Cheng spoke of the ‘Latest Learnings from TripAdvisor’, and introduced the audience to the new offline function, established due to recent demand from travellers. The new function allows users to download packages relevant to the city they are visiting to read reviews, find restaurants and tourist locations, see photos and access maps offline.
After the main auditorium presentations, guests joined the speakers in ‘Deep Dive’ sessions, which allowed guests to interact further with speakers in an intimate setting on areas such as Technology in Tourism, Cities as Destinations, Creative Tourism Investment and Renewable Tourism.
When appearing in the Creative Tourism Investment session, Rory Hunter, CEO of SongSaa Hotels and Resorts, discussed the balance between the three “P’s”, People, Profits and Planet, when defining his reasons to build and maintain a fully sustainable resort in Cambodia.- PATA
Nov. 20, 2014
