TTE Conference Programme

Joakim is responsible for identifying emerging trends and technologies in travel, and then overseeing the development of these trends into value-add products for Sabre’s customers. He has been a frequent keynote speaker and panelist around mobile technology and wearable devices in some of the major EMEA travel trade shows such as WTM, ITB, IFTM and Arabian Travel Market. 

Prior to joining Sabre, Joakim managed a successful company in Sweden, which provided Multi Variate Testing (MVT) and web analytics to help e-commerce companies optimise their e-commerce funnels. Before this, he worked at Scandinavian Airlines in the e-commerce department responsible for the front-end optimization on their web sites. He has also co-architechted two corporate booking tools and worked as a hands-on developer on different online projects using open source technologies such as PHP, MySQL and Javascript/jQuery.

Paul Richer is Senior Partner of Genesys, a management consultancy specialising in providing advice on technology for the travel, tourism and hospitality industries.   Genesys has built a worldwide reputation for its knowledge and experience of new system procurement, online technology and strategies including website audits and online booking systems, reviewing and formulating companies’ IT strategies and more.   Clients include many of the best known names in travel.

Paul has co-authored several reports examining the impact of technology on the distribution of travel, including “Distribution Technology in the Travel Industry” originally published by Financial Times Retail and “Marketing Destinations Online – Strategies for the Information Age” published by the World Tourism Organisation. 

He has presented at and chaired many online travel conferences, is regularly quoted in the press and has also been invited to make several appearances on television to debate the subject.  

Prior to founding Genesys in 1994, Paul was Business Development Director of Finite Group plc and Head of the Group’s IT strategy consultancy.

He holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management, is a Fellow of the Institute of Travel & Tourism and Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.  

More information at http://www.genesys.net/ 

Richard Harrison is EMEA Managing Director of Reputation.com, the leading digital reputation and privacy management company (www.reputation.com).  He is responsible for accelerating the company’s rapid growth across EMEA, working with businesses of all sizes to help them manage and protect their online reputations.

Before joining reputation.com in 2013, Richard was MD and COO of webuyanycar.com, the largest car buying company in the UK, with revenues of more than £300million. Here, he managed the business through a period of significant change in brand values, culture, operational efficiency and IT infrastructure.

He is an experienced business leader, having led large sales and operations teams in multinational organisations, including as Head of SME  sales at O2 (Telefonica), and Group Operations Director at PC World Business (part of Dixons Retail).

Richard has an MBA from Lancaster University Management School, and has a degree in electronic engineering, and a post-grad diploma in marketing.

Betty Low is an economist by training but works as a journalist, publisher and business travel writer.

She is also, with Mark Frary, a co-founder of Businesstravelwire, a corporate business travel and communications strategy company, and co-content director of Business Travel iQ (www. Businesstravel-iq.com).

She was formerly editorial director of Business Travel World for 15 years.

Simon became a full time director of Syntec in 2011, to support its growth and development in leading-edge integrated contact centre management systems, across multiple industry sectors.

A director of the Institute of Travel & Tourism, Simon has extensive travel industry experience, having joined the executive board of the Thomson Holidays Group after studying modern languages at Oxford and business administration at INSEAD in France.

As managing director of three well-known travel companies he then gained his client-side experience of contact centre management in our fast-moving and IT-driven travel  industry. After setting up his own strategy, marketing and sustainability consultancy Travelwatch, he was also appointed chairman of Equator e-learning and Visiting Industry Professor at Regent's Business School London.  

Adam Faulkner is an executive director, owner and founding member of Sabio.

With over 15 years' experience in the Contact Centre arena Adam has worked with some of the world's leading organisations including, DPDHL, Rentokil Initial, Eurostar and Lebara  to deliver contact centre systems and applications that have helped transform their customer service organisations and significantly improve customer experience. 

Adam's strong leadership skills have allowed him to create teams of experts that are focused on solving problems and delivering results for clients quickly, efficiently and creatively. These teams have a common set of values namely a passion for client results, professionalism and partnership.

Adam is also responsible for building and leading Sabio's network services business that delivers a full range of advanced network services.

Brendan Jones is Director of Travel & Leisure at Ve Interactive, a multi-award winning global technology company, which helps over 7,000 businesses acquire, engage and convert more online.

In his capacity as Director of Travel & Leisure, Brendan’s team specialise in developing digital strategies which help over 400 leading Travel brands across multiple territories, including: Mark Warner Holidays, Pontins, P&0 Cruises, Etihad Airways and a number of sports brands including Liverpool FC and Speedo.

Prior to working at Ve Interactive Brendan worked for The Sunday Times running the commercial arm of The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work

Simon became a full time director of Syntec in 2011, to support its growth and development in leading-edge integrated contact centre management systems, across multiple industry sectors.

A director of the Institute of Travel & Tourism, Simon has extensive travel industry experience, having joined the executive board of the Thomson Holidays Group after studying modern languages at Oxford and business administration at INSEAD in France.

As managing director of three well-known travel companies he then gained his client-side experience of contact centre management in our fast-moving and IT-driven travel  industry. After setting up his own strategy, marketing and sustainability consultancy Travelwatch, he was also appointed chairman of Equator e-learning and Visiting Industry Professor at Regent's Business School London.  

Siân is a regulatory compliance consultant focused on digital  currencies and consensus-based technologies. She advises financial innovation startups on regulatory, tax and jurisdictional  strategy and helps established regulated businesses evaluate Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Siân is a founder member of the UK Digital Currency Association  and co-lead of its Exchanges Regulation and Accounting working  group. She convened the first roundtable meeting of European  digital currency associations and is co-founder of the European  Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology Forum, a Brussels-based public policy platform.

Siân contributes regularly to Europe’s leading cryptocurrency  podcast, EpicenterBitcoin; briefs Members of (the UK) Parliament  and Members of the European Parliament about virtual  currencies; and frequently speaks and sits on regulatory panels at  conferences and meet-up groups. Siân currently divides her time between London, Brussels and the  Isle of Man.

Liam is one of the founding members of Zapp acting as both Product Owner for the digital payment experience and as Head of Innovation. He is passionate about delivering a market leading payment experience by developing a mobile product that meets demanding consumer and merchant checkout requirements. He also enjoys the challenge of working with many of the UKs leading Banks, Acquirers, Gateways and Merchants to make sure Zapp delivers key business benefits across the payment ecosystem.

Prior to Zapp, Liam encountered a breadth of payment solution experience working with some of the largest financial institutions in the world, most recently with PayPal and TSYS.

Thomas Helldorff has been working in the travel and payments industry for the past 14 years and is currently the Vice President of Travel at Worldpay.

He previously worked as the Head of Strategy and Innovation at Datacash, and prior to that Thomas was the Senior Product Manager for payment services and passenger mobile applications at SITA (Air transport communications and IT solution provider). One of his key projects was the development of a central payment platform for the air transport industry, linking airline distribution applications with the payment world. This service is used by UATP for its next-generation authorisation and settlement infrastructure. Thomas has also published the "Airline Payments Handbook", a complete guide to payments in the air transport industry. It is a comprehensive book offering insights for readers new to airline payments as well as for advanced practitioners (see: www.payments.aero)

Mark Frary is a writer specialising in travel, social media and technology. He writes the weekly Sunday Times On Your Side advice column and is a frequent contributor the The Times on a variety of topics

Along with Betty Low, Mark is content director for Business Travel iQ and co-founder of Businesstravelwire (www.businesstravelwire.com), a firm offering strategic advice to business travel companies on their client communications.

He also runs the social media and digital editorial consultancy Travel Perspective (www.travelperspective.co.uk), is a regular speaker at conferences and has written eight books.

Ross Tuffee is Managing Director of award winning mobile software development company DOGFI.SH Mobile Ltd.

Co-founded in 2009 by Ross Tuffee and Paul Burrowes, DOGFI.SH has quickly become the leader in its field, delivering technical solutions to a number of high profile clients in the travel sector.  Their groundbreaking company has delivered enterprise grade mobile solutions for major global travel brands such as TUI Travel (eg, Thomson, First Choice, Crystal Ski, LeBoat & Exodus Travels), enabling them to increase their customer reach and drive richer customer engagement.

Ross said: “Over the past five years, mobile has exploded onto the scene with hundreds of different handsets and millions of mobile applications.  Smartphone & tablet usage has become mainstream and savvy businesses are now investing in mobilising their consumer and employee offerings.”

In tandem with this expansion of the mobile market, DOGFI.SH has quickly grown from a small start-up to a large team of “mobile passionate” professionals, delivering mobile strategy and enterprise mobile solutions to leading brands across a number of sectors including leisure (Merlin Entertainments and English Heritage), retail (Value Retail, IKEA) and utilities (Network Rail, SSE and SGN).

Ross’s interest in the travel sector stems from earlier in his career when he was part of the Management Team at First Choice Holidays as it emerged from what was Owners Abroad.  He also brings to the table 5 years experience as a Management Consultant with Ernst & Young, as well as 12 years in business change and IT roles for Diageo. His in-depth knowledge of how technology can make a difference to both consumers and employees serves him well as MD of DOGFI.SH, where he works with CIOs and business leadership teams to develop mobile strategies and solutions that deliver key business outcomes. 

Ross said: “We don’t just design and build apps….  We build strong, long lasting relationships with our clients.  In mobile development, it is not the case that ‘one size fits all’, we ensure we match our innovative solutions with clients’ specific needs.  Our aim is to help our clients deliver compelling digital experiences to their customers that support specific business goals.”

As well as delivering bespoke mobile services to large enterprises, DOGFI.SH has also brought several mobile products to market that are designed to deliver “off the shelf” mobile capability to smaller organisations at a lower cost. 

Ross also has his sights on the app developers of the future. He enjoys giving young people the chance to experience mobile development first hand.  He runs regular “Dragon’s Den” style sessions with local high school pupils and DOGFI.SH sponsors ‘hackathons’ for university students, as well as offering a number of paid graduate internships.

Ross Tuffee
[email protected]
+44 79 1234 6165

Following completion of a management buy-out in 2013, former editor Daniel Pearce is now managing director and owner of TTG Media Limited. The new company continues to connect buyers and sellers of travel across the UK trade and beyond, with a business stretching from busy websitettgdigital.com and quarterly magazine ttgluxury to an innovative portfolio of events including the TTG Travel Awards, the TTG On Tour series of roadshows and Luxpo, the ttgluxury Seminar, and more events in luxury travel. More than 60 years since it was founded in 1953, the business continues to be underpinned by TTG, the magazine that continues to inform, inspire and champion the UK travel industry every week. 

Passionate about technology and the positive impact it can have on business excellence.  A business geek at heart with over 20 years experience of digital transformation for large enterprises and start-ups alike. 

Commercially aware technology leader and entrepreneur having held senior roles at companies such as Flybe, Virgin Holidays, Centrica, Avis Budget Group, Pfizer and having founded several start-ups across energy management, sports tracking and mobile social networking.

Robert joined Directski.com as a Systems and Software Engineer back in May 2011 and was part of the Technology team that developed the companies reservations systems and websites (directski.com, skimcneill.com, skibeat.co.uk). Recognised for his ability to lead he was later promoted to Technical Project Manager. In early 2014, Directski.com and related companies merged with Topflight.ie under a new holding company called Topflight Travel Group. Having delivered many successful Technology projects and taking on the additional responsibility of the expanding company, Robert was promoted to Chief Technology Officer at the end of 2014. Robert is now responsible for establishing the company’s technical vision and driving innovation in the company though the use of technology.

More about Topflight Travel Group https://www.linkedin.com/company/topflight-travel-group

Mark Frary is a writer specialising in travel, social media and technology. He writes the weekly Sunday Times On Your Side advice column and is a frequent contributor the The Times on a variety of topics

Along with Betty Low, Mark is content director for Business Travel iQ and co-founder of Businesstravelwire (www.businesstravelwire.com), a firm offering strategic advice to business travel companies on their client communications.

He also runs the social media and digital editorial consultancy Travel Perspective (www.travelperspective.co.uk), is a regular speaker at conferences and has written eight books.

FCm’s Global Technology Leader is John Morhous. John oversees the development and integration of FCm’s global technology platforms, product and customer offering. He also is the driving force behind the development of FCm’s global technology strategy, management, project execution and technology product delivery. As part of his role, John ensures FCm and parent company Flight Centre Travel Group maintain proactive industry relationships with key partners.

John is focused on creating greater global coordination and technology consistency between FCm’s regional businesses in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Americas and Asia Pacific.  

With more than 15 years of experience in the technology industry and over eight years within the travel industry, John brings to FCm broad knowledge of product and systems, having worked in technology management roles within the travel, health care, large enterprise and financial services markets.

To date John has been instrumental in the development and delivery of FCm's technology suite, which includes globally leading solutions for travel reporting, data analytics, mobile, online booking and customer portals.

John works closely with FCm’s regional network leaders as well as the different business divisions to ensure FCm's approach to technology is globally consistent and progressive, to help companies around the world achieve maximum travel efficiency.

Pablo A. Padilla Jargstorf is an architect, sound artist and composer born in Madrid in 1975 and moved to London in 2009. He specialized in the field of soundscape, working with textures and sound manipulation. Pablo is the London partner of BROOMX TECHNOLOGIES, the brand new startup by SerranoBrothers. They've been creating together since 2011, when they first discovered their shared interests about perception, technology and sensorial spaces in a joint installation at Soho, London. SerranoBrothers is a multidisciplinary design studio with headquarters in Barcelona, focused on creating special spaces. It was founded in 2000 by Diego Serrano and Pedro Serrano. In 2011 they started researching new technologies related to hospitality, and above all, related to new ways of communication between people vs spaces and people vs objects. They founded Broomx as a company in 2015, where they develop immersive experiences that are able to transform and personalize the space in real-time. The press named this project the “room of the future”, but they always say “it’s not a room, it’s beyond a room, and it’s not the future... it’s now”.

Betty Low is an economist by training but works as a journalist, publisher and business travel writer.

She is also, with Mark Frary, a co-founder of Businesstravelwire, a corporate business travel and communications strategy company, and co-content director of Business Travel iQ (www. Businesstravel-iq.com).

She was formerly editorial director of Business Travel World for 15 years.

Charles Armstrong is a social scientist and entrepreneur based in London. He’s the founder of The Trampery, London’s premier network of working environments for innovators. Since opening Tech City’s first workspace in 2009 The Trampery has expanded across seven buildings in London, launching its latest project Traveltech Lab in February 2015. Partners include Publicis Worldwide, the Barbican Centre, the London College of Fashion and London & Partners. Charles studied Social and Political Sciences at St John’s College Cambridge and went on to be mentored by Lord Young of Dartington, one of the architects of Britain’s post-war society.

Mark Frary is a writer specialising in travel, social media and technology. He writes the weekly Sunday Times On Your Side advice column and is a frequent contributor the The Times on a variety of topics

Along with Betty Low, Mark is content director for Business Travel iQ and co-founder of Businesstravelwire (www.businesstravelwire.com), a firm offering strategic advice to business travel companies on their client communications.

He also runs the social media and digital editorial consultancy Travel Perspective (www.travelperspective.co.uk), is a regular speaker at conferences and has written eight books.

Alex is CEO & Co-Founder @ Ladder Digital, the rapid growth agency combining creative thinking (or ’zags’) with lean analytics and marketing principles to help businesses in Europe and the US really put their foot on the gas. Currently his analytics work is squarely focused on creating frameworks for fast, iterative and positive decision-making - and teaching others to do the same. However as former EU Head of Digital at the world’s biggest specialist fashion eCommerce aggregator (with over 15 million searchable SKUs on each site), he also possesses a strong background in search and behavioural analytics at scale, a track record of driving through data-driven businesses cases and some interesting theories on building analytics functions. Alex is an obsessive optimiser, analyst blog fan boy and formerly both a Publicis Groupe Group brand strategist and Social Media lead for a major world travel player - and is very much looking forward to bouncing ideas backwards and forwards with you!

Jon Reeve is Trade Relations Director at Evolvi Rail Systems, the company powering the market-leading EvolviNG online rail booking and fulfilment platform that is available exclusively to travel management companies and their corporate clients.

Jon is one of the most respected and approachable professionals within the business travel sector and was a member of the team that originally developed the online rail booking tool aimed at the corporate market.

Since then he has been instrumental developing system enhancements, to the point where EvolviNG is the acknowledged market leader in the UK corporate agency rail sector, offering around 20,000 corporate organisations – and their employees – the greatest number of booking and fulfilment channels of any online rail booking platform. The system also integrates with other SBTs, Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) and expense management tools, including Sabre, I-FAO Cytric, Micros, ATRIIS, AeTM, and Concur.

Always willing to share his experience and knowledge, Jon is well-known on the industry circuit through participation in, and delivery of, a wide range of seminar programmes. He has also served as a board director of ITM and as Chair of their Education Working Party.

Thomas Drexler joined Amadeus in October 2011 and holds the position of Director of Rail and Ground Travel. He has overall responsibility for developing and expanding the Amadeus Rail and Ground Travel business. 

Thomas has extensive knowledge of the travel industry and has been a well-respected and senior figure in the sector for many years. His combination of experience in travel distribution, airline and rail industries makes him an ideal person to lead the business unit in times of deregulation within the rail industry and as the travel industry works to develop improved multimodal travel solutions.

Prior to joining Amadeus, Thomas held the position of Vice President of Sales at Deutsche Bahn. During his eight years with the company he held several other senior commercial roles including Vice President of Regional Sales and Vice President of Distribution Channel Management, managing several hundred employees in each role and overseeing turnover of several billion euros. 

Prior to that, Thomas worked at Lufthansa as Managing Director of Lufthansa eCommerce. He held previous positions as Director of Corporate Development, and Director of Online Sales. Earlier in his career (1996-98), he worked at Start Amadeus - now Amadeus Germany.

Thomas holds a Master’s degree in Business Informatics from the University of Vienna. 

He is an Austrian citizen, is fluent in English and German and is currently based in Madrid.

Betty Low is an economist by training but works as a journalist, publisher and business travel writer.

She is also, with Mark Frary, a co-founder of Businesstravelwire, a corporate business travel and communications strategy company, and co-content director of Business Travel iQ (www. Businesstravel-iq.com).

She was formerly editorial director of Business Travel World for 15 years.

• Joined IATA in May 2011  where he was accountable for leading and coordinating the development of new solutions and new industry services.
• He has over 25 year’s airline experience, most of which at British Airways where he began as Senior Manager Revenue Management in 1996.
• From 1999 to 2009, he held several positions as Area Commercial Manager, based in Stockholm, Frankfurt and Paris, covering most of Europe.
• In 2009 he returned to the head office in the UK and his last positon at British Airways was Head of Worldwide Catering.
• In July 2013 he was appointed to lead the global NDC program.

As Head of Commercial Strategy, reporting to the Chief Commercial Officer, Fergal is responsible for the ongoing definition and development of Travelport’s commercial strategy worldwide including identifying and delivering key strategic initiatives to advance Travelport’s mission to redefine travel commerce.

Fergal joined Travelport in 2009, and, before moving into his current strategy role, held a number of senior leadership positions in the company.  Notably, he was responsible for developing and delivering the Travelport Merchandising Platform, an award winning solution which was launched in 2013.  Since that time, the platform has firmly established Travelport’s leading position in intermediary merchandising and distribution with airline customers worldwide.

Before that, he led the product strategy for Travelport’s hotel, car and rail products, which, along with Travelport’s eNett payments business, are now collectively known as its “Beyond Air” category.

Before joining Travelport, Fergal held a number of programme and delivery roles across eight different industries working in both large, well-known, global organisations' as well as start-ups including Marrakech in Dublin (acquired by AMT-Sybex) and SITA.  At Marrakech, Fergal led the product team delivering procure to pay cloud based platforms.  At SITA, he successfully launched solutions in airfare shopping and pricing and Total Fares Management.

Gianni took the global role of Strategic Marketing Director, Airline Distribution, in 2013 where he oversees the Department’s Strategy, Product Portfolio, Marketing Communications and Knowledge Management teams.

Previously, he was Director of Commercial Finance reporting directly to the Chief Financial Officer. In this role, he led the department that provides deal, pricing and negotiation support to commercial teams worldwide, across all Business Units.

Gianni joined Amadeus in 2005 as Manager in Airline IT Marketing, in charge of defining pricing for Airline IT products such as Amadeus' Altéa suite Passenger Service System solutions, and providing support to commercial deals.

Prior to Amadeus, he worked in private equity at Permira, covering technology and telecoms, and in strategy consulting.

Gianni is of British-Italian descent, born in Hong-Kong and brought up in France. He holds an MBA from INSEAD, a Master of Science from the London School of Economics, and a Master of Engineering in Aeronautics from Imperial College London.

As Regional Managing Director, EMEA – Global Accounts, Eric oversees the regional team which manages Sabre’s relationships with its Global Account customers across Europe, Middle East and Africa.  Based in London, he is responsible for developing and executing on Sabre’s strategy to grow with its global agency partners across the region. He reports directly to the Global Accounts leadership team at Sabre headquarters in Southlake, Texas, while working closely with the EMEA leadership team based in London. 

Formerly, Eric served as Global Account Director, Asia.  As part of the TN APAC team based in Singapore, he worked side-by-side with Sabre’s strategic partner, Abacus International, helping grow Abacus and Sabre agency business in the varied markets across the region.  And working closely with the APAC regional team from Australia to Japan and points in between, he helped develop and execute the company’s APAC strategy while driving nascent business development efforts in China.

Eric has served in several roles since joining Sabre in 2004, encompassing sales, account management, business development, data management, product development and product marketing.  Before joining Sabre, he spent several years working in political and academic positions and holds undergraduate degrees in History and Finance and a graduate degree in Economics. 

Mark Frary is a writer specialising in travel, social media and technology. He writes the weekly Sunday Times On Your Side advice column and is a frequent contributor the The Times on a variety of topics

Along with Betty Low, Mark is content director for Business Travel iQ and co-founder of Businesstravelwire (www.businesstravelwire.com), a firm offering strategic advice to business travel companies on their client communications.

He also runs the social media and digital editorial consultancy Travel Perspective (www.travelperspective.co.uk), is a regular speaker at conferences and has written eight books.

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Mark Frary is a writer specialising in travel, social media and technology. He writes the weekly Sunday Times On Your Side advice column and is a frequent contributor the The Times on a variety of topics

Along with Betty Low, Mark is content director for Business Travel iQ and co-founder of Businesstravelwire (www.businesstravelwire.com), a firm offering strategic advice to business travel companies on their client communications.

He also runs the social media and digital editorial consultancy Travel Perspective (www.travelperspective.co.uk), is a regular speaker at conferences and has written eight books.

Paul Smithson is Southern Europe Regional Sales manager at SOASTA. A 10 year veteran of the IT industry, Paul has held similar positions at companies including Mercury (now HP) and Nimsoft (now CA) and brings a detailed understanding of the commercial landscape and culture that shapes the business world across Southern Europe. In his current role, Paul is focused on helping companies and partners capitalise on SOASTA's performance and load testing platform to deliver a better online experience to their customers.

Co-founder and director of iGeolise. Had the idea for Travel Time and co-founded iGeolise almost straight after graduating from Cardiff University (Politics and Philosophy) in order to build it. Role in iGeolise is to run all aspects of the company with co-founder Peter with particular responsibility for the Travel Time Platform.

Joakim is responsible for identifying emerging trends and technologies in travel, and then overseeing the development of these trends into value-add products for Sabre’s customers. He has been a frequent keynote speaker and panelist around mobile technology and wearable devices in some of the major EMEA travel trade shows such as WTM, ITB, IFTM and Arabian Travel Market. 

Prior to joining Sabre, Joakim managed a successful company in Sweden, which provided Multi Variate Testing (MVT) and web analytics to help e-commerce companies optimise their e-commerce funnels. Before this, he worked at Scandinavian Airlines in the e-commerce department responsible for the front-end optimization on their web sites. He has also co-architechted two corporate booking tools and worked as a hands-on developer on different online projects using open source technologies such as PHP, MySQL and Javascript/jQuery.

Vijayanta Gupta is the Head of Product and Industry Marketing at Adobe Systems Europe. He leads Adobe's Industry-specific Go To Market initiatives as well as the Adobe Marketing Cloud Product Marketing initiatives across Europe, Middle-East and Africa regions. He advises senior executives across industries on their Digital Strategy and his perspectives on digital transformation is regularly published at CMO.com. He also serves on the advisory board of Jigserv Digital, a digital marketing company in India, of which he is one of the co-founders. Prior to joining Adobe, Vijayanta has held multiple leadership roles in Accenture, Microsoft and Tata Consultancy Services across UK/Europe, USA and India. Vijayanta holds an MBA in Strategic Marketing, a Master's in Computer Applications and a Bachelors in Physics. He is based out of London and thoroughly enjoys the multi-cultural experience that the city provides.

In 2013 Charlie launched Triptease (www.triptease.com) to add a touch of joy into online hotel booking. Triptease builds digital tools that help hotels build stronger relationships with guests and increase direct bookings.

Charlie was named UK Young Entrepreneur of the Year by Esquire Magazine and was profiled in Seth Godin's most recent book, Icarus Deception. He is a member of YPO Mayfair, a Companion of CMI and a Fellow of the British American Project. He is a Member of the British Airways Advisory Board. 

Paul co-founded intuitive in 2003 as the Technical Director and was responsible for building their now market leading, end-to-end reservation platform.  In 2010 Paul took the role of Managing Director and after 2 years of strong growth completed an MBO with new private equity partners. Paul is still heavily involved in the technology side of the business whilst overseeing the professionalisation of the business through the next period of growth.

Matthew has been covering the sector for the magazine for more than three years, and has previously worked for Commercial Aviation Media, as well as publishing companies including UBM and Informa

Maria heads up Amadeus UK & Ireland’s sales and account management organisation as Commercial Director. She joined the company in October 2013 and has spearheaded a renewed focus on IT consulting services among other strategic initiatives. During 2014 her team has successfully introduced new online shopping and mobile travel solutions to sit alongside an expanded GDS content offer. Maria has a wealth of experience in tour operating as well as 4 years digital experience as CEO of an online travel company. Highly driven and results focussed, Maria is a catalyst for positive change through hands on experience of adapting business to react to an evolving market as well as identifying innovative ways to improve operational performance.

Nic Gilbert has been running Aerial Empire for nearly two years where they have now shot nearly 200 hotels using drones for the leading Tour Operators and Hotel Chains. Aerial Empire have used the drone to allow hotels to be shown off in a new light, from unseen angles, and most importantly allowing hotels to entertain their audience with something thats new and entertaining, driving hotel reservations online and in travel agents.

Nic comes from a background of film and flying, operating his first aircraft at the age of 10 and developing a passion and accordingly building them. During his film career, he has shot music groups such as The Pretenders, The Sex Pistols and Mott the Hoople.

Joakim is responsible for identifying emerging trends and technologies in travel, and then overseeing the development of these trends into value-add products for Sabre’s customers. He has been a frequent keynote speaker and panelist around mobile technology and wearable devices in some of the major EMEA travel trade shows such as WTM, ITB, IFTM and Arabian Travel Market. 

Prior to joining Sabre, Joakim managed a successful company in Sweden, which provided Multi Variate Testing (MVT) and web analytics to help e-commerce companies optimise their e-commerce funnels. Before this, he worked at Scandinavian Airlines in the e-commerce department responsible for the front-end optimization on their web sites. He has also co-architechted two corporate booking tools and worked as a hands-on developer on different online projects using open source technologies such as PHP, MySQL and Javascript/jQuery.

Henry, a pioneer in immersive digital content since 2006, has been shaping the way for virtual reality (VR) production and 360 photography for the world's leading brands, events and locations. This past year Henry has created phenomenal 360 and Virtual Reality experiences for FIFA, Sony Music, Sochi 2014, The British Army, Mercedes, Samsung, Thomas Cook, and many more. Henry's experiences and content, produced through his market leading VR production agency Visualise, has been viewed over 30,000,000 times worldwide in 2014 alone. 

As a prized partner of Oculus Rift and Samsung, Henry is a thought leader on the future of virtual reality and it's many and varied applications in our world. Henry and his company are leading a niche market in to the public eye, changing digital as we know it, and supplying a more engaging and immersive future. 

John joined JacTravel in 2011 as the IT Director. His role is to ensure that the operational infrastructure is supported and developed to meet the requirements of the business and to implement the roadmap of development
projects.

Prior to JacTravel, John worked at Miki Travel where he undertook the role of eBusiness Manager.

He has previously worked at GTA as a Development Manager responsible for its hotel reservation systems.

Gaurav Garg is an experienced and passionate leader for driving a strategic approach to innovation across products, services, processes and organizations.

He is a visionary technology advocate, assessing the potential impact of emerging technologies and driving organizations to establish a culture of sustainable innovation.

As a result-oriented person with a passion for innovation, he shares new ideas and builds strong ecosystems to monetize these ideas for organizations. He propagates his views through regular blogs and speaking assignments at various conferences.

Gaurav brings more than 18 years of experience with global multinational companies such as Goldman Sachs, Emirates, Infosys and Barclays, and he is backed with a sound academic foundation from Chicago Booth University and NIT Trichy India.  He continues to add to his knowledgebase through his work and this makes him an even more valuable asset as he learns about your own specific needs and organisation

Jamie’s work focuses on the ways in which social media and modern communications and technology are changing political and social movements, with a special emphasis on terrorism and radical political movements.

The Centre for the Analysis of Social Media is a collaboration between Demos and the University of Sussex. The Centre combines automated data extraction and sentiment analysis with social science statistics, analysis and ethics, to produce insightful and robust policy research.

Jamie's current research areas include the dark net, crypto-currencies and the evolution of counter-surveillance measures. In 2014, Jamie published 'The Dark Net' with William Heinemann about hidden internet subcultures. The Dark Net has been shortlisted for Debut Poltical Book of the Year and for the Transmission Prize. 

He writes a weekly column for the Telegraph on technology and is a frequent commentator in national and international media outlets.

Riaan van Schoor has worked in travel all his life, starting as a student travel consultant more than 23 years ago as part of a summer job in his home country of South Africa. He fell in love with the industry and has been in it ever since.

After working as a travel consultant he moved to Galileo Southern Africa, where he became involved in new product development.

In 2000, Riaan was appointed eCommerce Manager for Galileo International and relocated to the UK. Here he formed a customer facing eSolutions team and became part of the team that lead the way for the development of Galileo Web Services.

Riaan co-founded the Inside Group in 2005 with Edd McArdle and initially focused on technical consultancy to agency customers all over the world.

In 2011 Inside launched Agentivity, that now help agents build better agencies in almost 50 markets around the world.

He is still learning new things about the industry every day and loves interacting with clients, solving problems and see the industry evolve. In his spare time Riaan enjoys time with his friends and family, off-roading, camping and walking his dog Olli.

Ed Bussey is the Founder and CEO of Quill, a fast growth global content creator. Prior to launching Quill in 2011, Ed held the position of Chief Operating Officer at ZYB, an award-winning mobile social networking pioneer acquired by Vodafone Plc. Ed was also part of the founding team and Global Marketing Director of online clothing retailer Figleaves.com. Ed launched Figleaves.com into the US and acquired over a million online customers across 66 countries. Figleaves.com was acquired by N Brown Plc in Oct 2010. Ed has held a number of non-executive director, chairman and internet advisory positions throughout his career with companies including, Mr. & Mrs. Smith Boutique Hotels, Bauer Media Group, Charles Tyrwhitt, Secretsales and Evans Cycles. Ed began his career in the Royal Navy where he saw service in the Middle East, Falklands and the US. Following this, Ed held various security and diplomat appointments around the world.