Discovery Hospitality's Blessy Townes shares her insights on how her company copes with the evolving preferences of modern travellersDigital Travel APAC 2025, the tenth edition of the annual event, came to a successful conclusion on Wednesday, 13th August.
Throughout its two-day run, a total of 33 speakers shared their insights regarding the most pressing tech-related issues currently pressing the travel, tourism, aviation, and hospitality sectors.
Travel Daily Media was honoured to be a media partner for the event and, by being present, gained a significant understanding of a number of key concepts that are set to transform the travel industry over the next several years.
That said, we would like to share the following insights that stood out from the conference.
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group's Alex Schellenberger shares the company's evolving vision for the next three years
Do not fear the coming of AI
Artificial intelligence is, understandably, the single most controversial subject that comes up in the context of technology.
In the case of travel technology, experts opine that it is not something to fear, but more of a tool that can make things easier for both businesses and their customers.
Consider this: rather than use ChatGPT and similar generative AI platforms to simply answer questions, some people are learning to use them to book flights, hotel rooms, and even plan whole trips.
While understandably imperfect at this current stage of development, this changes the game for all players as the process of searching for travel options and consequently planning trips becomes considerably easier.
At the same time, tourism boards should also consider the use of nascent technologies to program their promotional campaigns, building on relevant insights on traveller preferences which, much like technology, are evolving at a rapid pace.
Tourisam Fiji's Haaziq Buksh moderates the discussion on going beyond Google SEO
Companies should be more than SEO-savvy; they need to be AEO/GEO-savvy, too
One of the more insightful talks during Digital Travel APAC was a fireside chat featuring Dusit International’s vice-president of marketing Chetan Patel and Chroma Hospitality’s vice-president for e-commerce Sunish Sadasivan who talked about how companies need to think beyond search engine optimisation (SEO).
Indeed, the terms we now need to know are AI search engine optimisation and generative AI engine optimisation, AEO and GEO respectively.
Sadasivan, in particular, pointed out that Google may still be the go-to when doing online searches, but other platforms now need to be considered.
He said: “If you look at recent search activity worldwide, 92 percent of the searches are still happening on Google. On the other hand, AI engines like Open AI, Gemini, and everybody else only get around one percent. But that one percent is rapidly increasing, which is something to look at for the future. What’s happening now is that we are also seeing a lot of other searches happening on newer platforms.”
However, the platforms that are coming into use these days have yet to reach a point when they become the tools of choice for sales and marketing professionals; after all, experts claimed that social media would prove to be more influential than search engines for the travel industry.
Sadasivan invited listeners to think about how just a decade ago experts said that social media was going to be big.
He said: “Ten years ago, people said that social media is going to be big. But today, you cannot really see any kind of return on social media, and that’s been my biggest challenge in marketing or in e-commerce.”
For his part, Patel feels that a hybrid scenario wherein both standard search engines and AI-centric options will be used simultaneously.
He said: “I think AI is coming in, and the approach we are taking is that it's still a hybrid scenario. We don't necessarily see that it’s going to lead to a zero-clicks situation; but if somebody is asking a specific question about your hotel, and your website can either give that answer or your AI tool can give that answer, that traffic was not meant for conversion.”
Patel added that the approach that Dusit is currently taking revolves around what customer behaviour is like and what questions are they asking.
He said: “Instead of trying to interrupt the customers with loud noise and a lot of irrelevant messages, how can we be helpful? What we are trying to do is make our content a bit more conversational, a little more AI-summarisable.”
By doing so, anyone using a generative AI tool to scope out options for a hotel stay can get more concise and accurate descriptions of a property, and this goes a long way towards driving them towards a booking which they could also ask their platform to do for them.
Travela's Sam Woollard discusses the pros and cons of digital payments in the contemporary context
The use of cryptocurrencies as the coin of the realm is still up for debate
While Travala.com ‘s CMO Sam Woollard gave a compelling presentation on how crypto payments can help travel and hospitality firms tap into a 700 million-strong market base, people are still ambivalent about the use of both cryptocurrencies and digital wallets in the sector.
In fact, in a piece we featured on our site just a week ago, a report from TerraPay pointed out that there is still a great deal of resistance, particularly on the part of smaller hospitality management companies who stand to lose a great deal if tokens go south.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that digital wallets in the long run could prove to be a more secure option than most financial instruments currently in use on both analog and digital levels.
Banyan Group's Jeanette Ho joins Booking.com's Nuno Guerreiro, ITC Hotels' Dilpreet Singh, and Traveloka's Tejveer Singh Bedi in a chat regarding India and China in the contemporary travel sector
The travel sector needs to be more open to innovation
Admittedly, many companies get comfortable when they find a system that makes work easier and more productive for them.
However, given the rapid pace of technological development as well as evolving tastes among consumers, what works today may be obsolete and useless tomorrow.
Attending events like Digital Travel APAC is a great way for companies to keep themselves on their toes, seeing how the bulk of the discussions presented throughout the event centred on topics that most aren’t aware of or are aware of only on the surface level.
Such events expose professionals to innovative ways of thinking, as well as working concepts that could significantly improve operational efficiency throughout organisations.
Innovation also covers sustainability, drawing professionals out of the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mindset and into regenerative ways of thinking that will lead to greater community involvement, a much better use of available resources, and a significantly smaller carbon footprint.
Dr Nisha Abu Bakar (first row, second from left) poses for a group photo with participants at her spotlight talk on women in travel leadership
There is definitely a place for women in leadership positions throughout the industry
We had the privilege of taking part in Dr Nisha Abu Bakar’s spotlight hour on women in leadership wherein she discussed the ongoing challenges of women in the sector and how they need to take ownership of their careers if they are to make it to the top of the game.
Currently, 80 percent of travel decisions worldwide are made by women; but only 21 percent of C-Suite posts in the travel and hospitality sectors are held by women.
Abu Bakar said of this: “It's good but it feels like we can do better. Can we do better? We can go the distance! It’s not too bad in the hospitality sector, as about 49 percent of those in leadership roles are women. But look: did you know that there are only five female general managers in Singapore?”
This, in and of itself, is a galling revelation, given how Singapore is one of the leading destinations in Southeast Asia and one that has a particularly dynamic hospitality sector!
It also comes as a shock that only 20 percent of the world’s tourism ministers are women, putting those like the Philippines’ Christina Frasco and Indonesia’s Widyanti Putri Wardhana in a particularly elevated position.
As both situations merely skirt the bare minimum for gender equality, Abu Bakar reminded participants of the banner-cry for International Women’s Day 2025: Accelerate Action.
Accelerating action in this context calls for women to become more proactive when it comes to their professional growth.
In the context of the forum, this calls for personalised coaching by qualified professionals and investing in relevant courses to augment their working knowledge of both contemporary and nascent technologies, both of which will help drive their individual advancement.
Travel Daily Media was an official media partner of Digital Travel APAC 2025
Where AI is concerned, trust and transparency remain key
As we draw to a close, let’s take a look back at what conference chair Chris Legaspi said at the beginning of the event regarding the challenge posed by the rapid adoption of AI and related developments.
Earning and keeping the public’s trust moving forward will be difficult, given how AI has been used to run scams, produce deepfakes, and a means of bolstering false information.
Legaspi quickly pointed out: "Research is clear. Transparency, data ethics, and human oversight are the foundations of AI trust in travel. Be upfront about how and why AI is used. If we lead in this transparency, we'll not only win in terms of efficiency, but we'll win with regard to customer loyalty."
That is not just a challenge to developers working on the advancement of such technologies, but also the rest of us who will be in a position to use them in our work, possibly now and certainly in the future.
Indeed, what we need to think about is how we can make the use of AI visible in our respective operations and use it to enhance human judgement and not replace it.
