Martin Kelly is a passionate travel industry commentator and the founder of No Vacancy conference, which he started last year with the aim of building it into the sector’s benchmark event. It certainly got off to a good start and is shaping up well for 2008. Apart from No Vacancy, Martin writes all the stories for the Travel Trends website and regularly files hotel and property yarns for The Australian newspaper. He also owns the TRAVELtech and Search Engine Room conferences.

Based in Sydney, Martin has been involved in the travel industry for almost 20 years, starting as a PR Manager with Australian Airlines following a career as a daily newspaper journalist with News Limited and a couple years’ backpacking. Martin has also worked as a Communications Consultant for some of Australia’s best-known corporate brands, most notably Macquarie Bank, where he toiled for three years at the coalface of capitalism.

Martin still dreams of getting paid to do nothing but now realises this is not going to happen. So he will continue to develop conferences and write stories so his family can eat and the mortgage gets paid. In the meantime, he will continue persisting with the notion that his next idea will be the Big One.