HBX Group recently held its MarketHub 2025 summit in Macau where it served as a vital platform upon which to discuss emergent trends and developments in the fields of tourism, travel, and hospitality among peers.
We at Travel Daily Media had an opportunity to catch up with Patrick Torres, HBX’s vice-president for sourcing in the Middle East and the Asia Pacific (MEAPAC), and he shared his views with our own Gary Marshall regarding potential growth sectors within his current regions.
Travel Daily Media (TDM) I want to drill down now on your particular role or your mandate per se.
Patrick Torres (PT) My role as the vice-president for the MEAPAC region consists of taking the responsibility of the hotel sourcing strategy for the region and really bringing that to life with our partners across the Middle East, India, and the Asia Pacific, along with a very keen focus on how we actually then go in and segment our customers.
This ensures that we’re able to really deliver the value and drive the overall engagement with our partners, and also ensure that we look at how we actually can evolve in growth markets that we’re looking at as a global organisation.
Within one of those regions, specifically the Asia Pacific, we’ve identified two major areas which are Japan, along with India.
A big part of it is really driving the overall strategy and in the implementation of the new ways of working that we have within the commercial part of our business.
Key markets in 2025
TDM Based on your data, what are the current top one, two, and three markets, and what other markets are you particularly really focusing on?
PT Japan is certainly on top in terms of intra-APAC to APAC travel; it’s certainly the hottest destination at the moment.
That is very much in line with the growth plans we have within the business.
Japan was identified a year ago as a market where we, as a business, wanted to heavily invest; and we came in at the right time because, coming out of COVID, Japan’s economy was in a very unstable position.
The Japanese yen dropped to record lows, but that also meant that, from an inbound perspective, it became far more attractive and compelling.
So we saw a major shift in terms of how business moved in and across the region, and obviously Japan was certainly that area that for us, we were able to capitalize in, along with taking advantage of the investment that we were making, where we were already planning to actually go in and really invest around how we not only have people in market.
[We also needed to rethink] how we localised our business as well, which, in a market like Japan is extremely important, because it’s not a market that operates like many other regions in Asia.
Japan is very closed, so the way that we do business obviously requires fundamental changes in terms of how we operate.
Simple things like payment solutions and also how we go to market from an entity perspective really defines how quickly we can actually be relevant in that market.
That obviously allowed us to ensure that we were able to really capitalise at the right time as we were expanding through that market plan.
If you asked me five years ago, Japan was probably the top tenth destination in the region, where now it’s between one and two.
I believe this year it’ll move very quickly into the first position, followed by Thailand.
Thailand remains a major player within the Asian region and it will continue to be.
And Bali: Bali is always an area that has a wealth of air access and it really has a lot to offer from beach to mountains to wellness experiences.
As Asian markets, those are the three biggest ones that we continue to see exceptionally huge demand for at the moment.
Next steps
TDM It sounds to me like you’ve actually captured a very large part of the market. That said, what sort of uplift do you think is still to go?
PT I think in most of these three areas, they’re at very different stages.
I think in Japan for us it’s the investment that we’ve made in the last 12 months.
We saw record performance as an organization in 2024; on the back of that in 2025, we continue to grow (8:16:01) at very high triple digit growth consistently.
Also, we’re just tapping into the market at the moment: we’ve captured a very small percentage of the market.
The opportunity is huge, but with that comes obviously the scalability of putting more people in the destination to be able to service and manage our partners in a far more meaningful way.
We have people based today in Tokyo and Osaka; currently we’ve ten commercial people there; by the end of the year, we will ramp that up to 15, and then into 2026, we will continue that expansion.
So I think Japan is really limitless for us at the moment, but I think the biggest challenge we face there is that the destination is so highly compressed that it’s difficult to get access because there is too much demand.
I think for us, we can provide a very good solution for hotels in that market whereby we really help them diversify.
That, for us, has been the biggest value proposition that we bring to the table whereby we can help hotels reduce that dependency on the domestic market and really be able to grow that inbound market that is booking six to 12 months in advance; that is a very, very long lead for us in Japan.
Plus, inbound travellers are staying much longer and they are doing multi-destination trips.
It’s not just that corporate traveller coming in from Tuesday to Thursday or that leisure traveller that comes in over the weekend.
It is really allowing them to fill the whole 12 months and having a very stable fill profile across the seven days of the week.
That for us is a game changer because, in a market like Japan, language is a barrier.
For them to access the markets that we can deliver has really been something that we’ve been able to open up a gap in the market where, previously, our partners had neither the ability nor the skill, let alone the know-how to actually tap into the international segment from a B2B perspective.
About Patrick Torres
Currently based in Hong Kong, Patrick Torres was appointed vice-president for sourcing in MEAPAC in November of last year.
In this capacity, he plays a key role in expanding the company’s sourcing capabilities, leading the development and management of supplier relationships across the region.
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