John Allsopp
Founder, Western Civilisation

Software developer, long standing web development speaker, writer, evangelist and self proclaimed expert, I've spent the last 15 years working with and developing for the web.

As the head developer of the leading cross platform CSS development tool Style Master, and developer and publisher of renowned training courses and learning resources on CSS and standards based development, and author of the highly regarded "Dao of Web Design" I've been widely recognized as a leader in these fields.

As a presenter and educator, I speak frequently at conferences around Australia and the world. I'm a co-founder of the Web Directions conference series, and author of one of the earliest books on Microformats (publication date March 2007).

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Malcolm Auld
Principal, Malcolm Auld Direct

Malcolm is the Principal of advertising agency Malcolm Auld Direct, known as MAD; specialist marketing education company The Marketing Campus; and e-marketing agency BuzzMail. He’s also run a few multi-national advertising agencies in his career – including Ogilvy & Mather Direct, J. Walter Thompson and EuroRSCG Partnership – and been the National Marketing Manager of TNT.

Malcolm has worked across most marketing categories during his 25+ year career and brings a depth of local and international experience to help grow his clients’ businesses.

Malcolm has worked with various organisations associated with the Tourism industry including: TourismNSW, British Tourist Authority, NZTourism, Australia and NZ Food and Wine Tourism, NT Tourism, Queensland Travel and Tourism, Tourism Victoria Alliance, Qantas, Ansett, Air NSW, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Hyatt Hotels and Resorts (currently they are our client in over 20 countries), The Observatory Hotel, Hotel Nikko, Renaissance Hotel, Star City Casino and Hotel, Manly Pacific Hotel, The George Hotel (NZ), Queenstown Convention Bureau, Townsville Aquarium, American Express, Thomas Cook, UTAG, P&O Cruises, NZ Conventions & Incentives.

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Hans Belle
Vice President Asia President, Sabre Pacific

Hans Belle is Vice President and General Manager for Sabre Travel Network for the Asia Pacific region. Hans is responsible for Sabre Travel Network in Asia Pacific which includes subscriber and airline account management. Hans also fulfils Board positions on several of Sabre’s APAC-based joint venture companies including Abacus and Sabre Pacific.

His previous Sabre roles have included Vice President of Marketing APAC and General Manager of the Sabre Pacific business unit for Australia and New Zealand.

Prior to joining Sabre Pacific he owned and managed a hospitality based business in the Australian ski industry for 10 years, in addition to roles within the Alpine Group of companies. Hans has enjoyed working stints in Europe, Canada and the United States.

Scott Blume
President, Travelocity Asia Pacific

In his role as President Travelocity Asia Pacific and ZUJI Chief Executive Officer Scott is responsible for leading the Travelocity-owned ZUJI online travel business throughout Asia Pacific, as well as managing Travelocity's growth and industry relationships in the region, which encompasses the Travelocity India and New Zealand branded sites, teams and relationships.

Scott has more than 30 years' experience of business management in the leisure, corporate and online travel industry for listed and privately held companies. He joined ZUJI as Chief Executive Officer in January 2003.

Scott brought with him to ZUJI a legacy of successful business leadership, and he has a travel and financial management career pedigree. Scott's prior posts included direct responsibility and broad strategic involvement for businesses in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, America and Europe. His depth of experience in the area of travel commerce is unrivalled in Asia Pacific as his scope of knowledge includes online travel, corporate travel, MICE and traditional bricks and mortar travel chains.

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James Cassidy
Managing Director, Stayz - Fairfax Digital

James has been with Fairfax Digital since February 2006, leading the post-acquisition integration and growth of Stayz Pty Limited, the main Travel site for Fairfax Digital.

Stayz comprises over 1072 websites, with the main site being www.stayz.com.au, which is No. 1 for Holiday Rental Accommodation in Australia.

Over the In the past year, Stayz has sent more than $100M of successful bookings to its properties. Previous to Fairfax Digital, James worked for Sensis/Telstra on their Travel and Advertising products.

Karen Grinter
Senior Client Advisor, Global Reviews

Karen Grinter is a Senior Client Advisor with customer experience benchmarking consultancy Global Reviews. Specialising in the area of usability, Karen provides advice in improving online customer experiences to some of Australia’s leading companies across a range of industries.

Global Reviews have offices in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Clients in the travel sector include: Virgin Blue, Qantas, Air New Zealand, Flight Centre and Whereis.com.au. Global Reviews provide advice across key communication channels including online, contact centre and branch network.

Karen has been working in the online space for over 11 years as a usability practitioner, interface designer and consultant. In that time she has worked for Opodo.co.uk in the customer experience team and on the redevelopment of australia.com for the Australian Tourist Commission.

Mark Frawley
Managing Director, Roamfree Group

Mark Frawley was the co-founder of the BreakFree Resorts and Holidays which debuted on the ASX in September 2002. Following the merger of BreakFree Ltd and MFS in 2005 Mark assumed the role of CEO of Stella Hospitality Group until February 2006. As CEO, he was responsible for the operational and acquisition strategy of the group. Mark was also instrumental in the integration and re-branding of the Stella Hospitality Group.

From early 2006 Mark has been dedicated to the launch and development of the Roamfree Group. Roamfree is principally an infrastructure business for the Accommodation industry.  The Roamfree infrastructure has been designed and acquired around moving on line real time room availability to as many distribution points as possible.  This ensures Accommodation Providers and Resellers can obtain the maximum number of bookings with the minimum amount of effort.

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Brad Gurrie
General Manager, Travelzoo

Brad Gurrie joined Travelzoo in November 2007 as General Manager Australian and New Zealand to launch the NASDAQ listed company into the local market.   Five months since the launch of Travelzoo in February 2008 it has grown its database to exceed 70,000 Australian subscribers.

Prior to joining Travelzoo Brad spent 3 years with lastminute.com.au and travel.com.au as the General Manager Hotels.   During his time there he was responsible for the domestic launch of Secret Hotels.

Brad has over 17 years experience in the tourism industry and with a focus of online, distribution, technology and marketing.

Tim Harcourt
Chief Economist, Austrade

Tim Harcourt is the chief economist of the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade). As chief economist Tim analyses the global economy to help Australian exporters and Austrade devise its own international business strategies. A prolific author and globetrotter, Tim has visited over 40 countries in the past 4 years alone.

Tim is an active commentator in the Australian and international media on economic and trade issues. Tim appears regularly on TV and Radio shows including on Business Lateline, Lateline, Business Today, Mornings with Kerry-Anne, Sunday, Sunrise, Bloomberg, CCTV, BBC and CNBC Asia. Tim also writes for a number of major publications including The Australian Financial Review, The Business Review Weekly, The Age, The Australian, The Advertiser, The OECD Observer, The Economic Times and various website and blogs.

Before joining the Austrade, Tim was an economist and industrial advocate with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). Tim has also worked for the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and has overseas experience in the corporate sector in the UK the USA and Israel.

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Claire Hatton
Head of Travel, Google

Claire Hatton is Google's Head of Travel for Australia/New Zealand. Claire leads a team of industry experts in travel and search marketing who work closely with Google's travel industry customers and their media agencies. The Google Travel team provides marketing solutions to a large range of travel-related businesses, including Transportation (Air, Car, Cruise, Bus, Rail), Hotel Accommodation, Tours & Package Holidays, Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) / Tourism Boards and Travel Publishers.

Prior to joining Google, Claire held the position Director of Marketing and Product Management, Pacific for Travelport, a global travel distribution company, where she was responsible for the Galileo and Gullivers Travel Associates brands. Before this she was Head of Product Marketing, Asia Pacific for ZUJI, the online travel agency based in Singapore ,where she led the commercial strategic direction for pricing, customer experience, supplier relations and product across the region.

Arthur Hoffman
Managing Director, Expedia Asia Pacific

In his role as Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Arthur Hoffman is responsible for Expedia’s operations in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and India, as well as the growth of Expedia in the Asia Pacific region. In addition, he serves on the board of Nasdaq-listed eLong, Inc., the second largest online travel provider in China in which Expedia, Inc. is the majority shareholder.

Arthur Hoffman joined Expedia in December 2004 as Managing Director, Australasia to spearhead the launch of the company’s Australian website, Expedia.com.au, in late 2005. The expansion of his role to Managing Director, Asia Pacific follows his success managing Expedia in Australia and New Zealand (which was launched in October 2007), where the company has rapidly claimed a strong market share.

Prior to joining Expedia, Arthur was general manager for Qantas Holidays, where he was responsible for strategy, e-commerce and IT. During this role he oversaw the development and implementation of a new IT platform for the company, which included online booking tools for both consumers and the travel trade. 

Martin Kelly
Director, TravelTrends.biz

Martin Kelly is a passionate travel industry commentator and the founder of the TRAVELtech, No Vacancy and Search Engine Room conferences. Martin also writes all the stories for the Travel Trends website and regularly files hotel and property yarns for The Australian newspaper.

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.

Peter Kelly
Peter Kelly, General Manager - Distribution Strategy and Planning, Qantas

Peter Kelly is currently the General Manager Global Distribution Strategy and Planning, Qantas Airways Limited, based at the airline’s headquarters, Sydney Australia.

Peter has considerable airline experience having held senior roles in Sales and Distribution; Marketing; Corporate, Government and Retail Sales; Commercial Strategy; Loyalty Programs; Industry Sales; Pricing, Inventory and Yield; Airline Operations; Airport Services; Departure Control Systems and various line management and operational roles at airports within Australia.

Peter joined Qantas at the beginning of 1994, soon after the merger of Qantas and Australian Airlines, in the role of General Manager Loyalty Programs. Prior to joining Qantas, he held a similar role at Ansett Australia, having commenced his airline career with this company.

The role of Global Distribution Strategy at Qantas encompasses all channels of distribution and all distribution booking media. The objective is to optimise all available channels to maximise global Qantas sales in what is an intensely competitive and rapidly evolving aviation market place. Technology plays a major role as does market segmentation and allowance for regional variances in distribution strength. Cost of sale is a key metric.

Sue Klose
Director of Corporate Development, News Digital Media

Ms Klose joined News Digital Media in May 2007 from Tribune Publishing in Chicago, where as director of planning she was responsible for the strategic planning process and critical cross-business unit projects for Tribune’s newspaper businesses.

Prior to that, Ms Klose was the director of advertising development, leading major initiatives impacting Tribune’s newspaper operations.

She also served as director of business development for the Chicago Tribune and director of strategy for the Tribune’s classifieds business where she played a key role in identifying, negotiating and integrating several key online classified partnerships.

Gordon P. Locke
VP Airline Strategy and Marketing, Sabre Airline Solutions

Gordon Locke is the Vice-President of Airline Marketing and Strategy for Sabre Airline Solutions / Sabre Travel Network. He is responsible for global airline marketing strategy solutions to help airlines market, sell, serve and operate, including multi-channel distribution, customer management, and self-service airport products.

Gordon has 23 years of diversified marketing, ecommerce and business development experience within the travel and transportation industry, including several executive and management roles in airline and distribution technologies, hospitality sales and marketing, as well as global travel services.

Prior to joining Sabre Holdings, he was Senior Vice President of Marketing for Hawaiian Airlines; Vice President, Global Marketing for Rosenbluth International (now American Express Business Travel); Chief Marketing Officer for T-Direct.com; and, held roles with Grand Heritage Hotels International and The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.

He remains in the forefront of distribution technology innovation, as well as B-2-B-2-C CRM trends in the airline and travel agency sectors.  During his career, Gordon has served on a multitude of advisory boards and with many travel trade organizations. 

Simon Monk
Chief Executive Officer, World Nomads

Simon Monk founded WorldNomads.com in 2001 to provide better travel insurance for independent travellers.

His belief that innovation should be at the heart and soul of a business is reflected in the technology, design and marketing of WorldNomads.com.

He has seamlessly blended patented technology together with a network of underwriters and claims managers around the world to provide a unique service to customers in over 150 countries.

In 2005 in the aftermath of the Tsunami, he invented the Footprints API, a disarmingly simple 'opt-in' online fundraising mechanism which has since raised over $500,000 from a multitude of micro-donations.

Prior to starting WorldNomads.com, Simon was an internet consultant with clients such as Toyota, olympics.com.au, hcf, and Vodafone.

Simon is a passionate traveller and has travelled widely for the past 25 years, particularly across Asia.

Richard Noon
Chief Executive Officer, Webjet

Richard Noon has worked in many areas of the travel industry, from hotels, airlines, retail and tour wholesaling to airfare consolidation. Collectively he has 25 years travel and 10 years internet marketing experience.

Richard developed the first electronic travel industry payment system "Moneydirect" and 'Smartfares' an airfare distribution product. Together both products have won 5 travel industry best product awards.

He joined Webjet in 2004 initially as CFO and now CEO. Since 2004 sales at Webjet have grown sixteen fold and the company moved from loss to profit.

Webjet is Australia's largest transacting online travel agency site and the 16th fastest growing company in Australia as ranked by BRW in 2007. Hitwise ranks Webjet # 1 travel agency site in Australia and # 3 in New Zealand.

Dan Russell
Managing Director, Cleancruising.com

Dan Russell is Managing Director of GlobeNet Travel, a leading online leisure agency established in 2000 that was recognised as an Australian Deloitte Fast 50 Tech company in 2005, one of only two from the travel sector in that year.

In March 2007, Dan launched Clean Cruising with the aim of reinventing cruise research online. The site lets users easily compare over 8,000 cruises with the help of rich mapping and arguably the most powerful search tool around. Dan doesn't mind getting his hands dirty with code and is responsible for usability and design aspects as well as ensuring the site is highly optimised for search engines, user load times and conversion. The site got a stamp of approval from the developer community in June 2008 when it was selected as the favourite mashup at Google's Developer Day in Sydney.

Prior to joining the family owned and operated business, Dan cut his teeth as the Internet Marketing Specialist for Eyeball Networks, a Vancouver based tech startup. There he was responsible for growing the user base of a consumer video chat application to over a million people before defining the usability specs for subsequent versions.

Michael Walmsley
General Manager - Competitive Intelligence and Search Marketing Services, Hitwise

Michael joined Hitwise in July 2004. After two successful years growing the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence business in the Asia Pacific region, Michael was appointed General Manager in July 2006.

Michael has extensive knowledge in applying data and information to client businesses. Previous appointments consist of Bankers Trust in Australia and Digital in the UK. Here, Michael established new office based sales operations which were expanded nationally and then into Project Management becoming involved in cutting edge service delivery projects that included packet switch mobile technologies.

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Darin Walters
Managing Director, Jetabroad.com.au

Darin has extensive general management experience in major Australian businesses with a strong consumer focus. From 1995 to 2003, Darin worked at Blackmores - Australia’s leading, natural healthcare company - in roles that included General Manager Sales and Marketing, Managing Director and CEO. More recently, Darin was CEO Exhibition Australia/New Zealand for the Hoyts Cinema Group. Darin has also worked with The Boston Consulting Group and received an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Jetabroad is a Sydney-based online international flight specialist. The business provides IATA accredited travel agency services in Australia and New Zealand and has a growing global customer base. Jetabroad’s booking engine covers most of the world’s e-ticketable airlines and offers itineraries from anywhere in the world to anywhere else.