PATA Supports Brisbane Marketing Initiative

Bangkok (Thailand) – November 22, 2014 – The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) is honoured to have been a supporting partner of the Brisbane Global Cafe-Tourism’s New Frontiers. The Brisbane Global Cafe was held from November 12-13, 2014, prior to G20 Leaders Summit, at Brisbane Town Hall and attracted over 70 speakers featuring the world’s top experts, CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs, industry shapers and thought leaders. The event attracted a total of 2,292 guests over the two days.

Through the support of PATA, Tourism’s New Frontiers brought together a wide range of travel and tourism industry speakers to address three topics, including The Contrarians – The Disruptive Energy of Genius, The Transformers- Urban Legends and Local Heroes and The Believers- The Power of the Passion.

The dynamic line up of international speakers aimed to disrupt and challenge global thinking of tourism and capitalise on the media, political and corporate spotlight during the lead up to the G20 Leaders Summit. The main auditorium attracted over 700 guests including media, VIP, invited and registered guests, and local and national travel and tourism industry professionals.

The sessions from the Brisbane Global Cafe were live streamed and broadcast in King George Square for public viewing. The live stream was extremely popular attracting a total amount of 5000 viewers from over 50 countries. Social media interaction with the hash tag #BNEGlobalCafe had a twitter reach of 1.1 million, an impressive result for this inaugural event.

The morning was opened by the Chairman and CEO of Taylor Street Consulting, Christopher Brown AM. Following the opening address, Dr Mathew McDougall, CEO of marketing and analytics company Digital Jungle, presented on Big Data and the new insights into public desires, explaining, “Tourism operators need to work smarter not harder to attract Chinese visitors, and technology is a key to improved progress”.

Former Tourism Vancouver CEO Rick Antonson focused on ‘Cathedral Thinking’ and the importance of a post-Commonwealth Games strategy for Games organisers, to ensure the legacy is maintained for many years after the event.

Ms Pansy Ho, Managing Director of Shun Tak Holdings, gave a comprehensive presentation on her company’s role in transforming Macau from a fishing village into one of the world’s largest gaming hubs, stating “a key aspect of Macau’s development was the transformation of its hospitality and gaming industries into new directions to provide more career paths for its citizens”.

Mr Murat Bas, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Sales for Turkish Airlines, explained how niche markets in the Middle East, Europe and Africa had helped propel the airline’s success in recent years, with passenger numbers doubling in the past seven years through a network of 219 destinations in 108 countries.

Managing Director of Urban Regeneration at Lend Lease, Jonathan Emery, noted that, “Urban Regeneration can transform a city’s image and attract global investment and tourism dollars, for example Sydney is repositioning itself as one of the world’s most livable cities, and a real global city.”

Mr David Gavaghan, CEO of Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, discussed the overcoming of adversity and the story of the Titanic Quarter, stating, “Urban Regeneration has restored a sense of civic pride to Belfast, with tourism to Belfast predicted to increase by 300-?500 percent over the next ten years due largely to the revitalisation of the city”.

Darrell Wade, Founder of Intrepid Travel, was involved in an engaging interview where he discussed the establishment of Intrepid/PEAK adventures, and the need to establish partnerships with local communities as a means for delivering social and economic value to both parties.

TripAdvisor’s Asia Pacific President Lily Cheng spoke of the ‘Latest Learnings from TripAdvisor’, and introduced the audience to the new offline function, established due to recent demand from travellers. The new function allows users to download packages relevant to the city they are visiting to read reviews, find restaurants and tourist locations, see photos and access maps offline.

After the main auditorium presentations, guests joined the speakers in ‘Deep Dive’ sessions, which allowed guests to interact further with speakers in an intimate setting on areas such as Technology in Tourism, Cities as Destinations, Creative Tourism Investment and Renewable Tourism.

When appearing in the Creative Tourism Investment session, Rory Hunter, CEO of SongSaa Hotels and Resorts, discussed the balance between the three “P’s”, People, Profits and Planet, when defining his reasons to build and maintain a fully sustainable resort in Cambodia.

PATA would like to thank John Aitken and the team at Brisbane Marketing for developing and pioneering the inaugural Brisbane Global Cafe, along with Tourism’s New Frontiers sponsors including Brisbane Airport, Virgin Australia, Singapore Airlines, Tourism and Events Queensland, Council of Mayors (South East Queensland) and Treasury Hotel & Casino.

About PATA
Founded in 1951, the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) is a not-for profit association that is internationally acclaimed for acting as a catalyst for the responsible development of travel and tourism to, from and within the Asia Pacific region. The Association provides aligned advocacy, insightful research and innovative events to its member organisations, comprising 90 government, state and city tourism bodies, nearly 30 international airlines, airports and cruise lines, 57 educational institutions, and hundreds of travel industry companies in Asia Pacific and beyond. Thousands of travel professionals belong to the 43 local PATA chapters worldwide. The chapters organise travel industry training and business development events. Their grassroots activism underpins PATA’s membership of the Global Travel Association Coalition (GTAC), which includes ACI, CLIA, IATA, ICAO, WEF, UNWTO and the WTTC. The PATAmPOWER platform delivers unrivalled data, forecasts and insights from the PATA Strategic Intelligence Centre to members’ desktops and mobile devices anywhere in the world. PATA’s Head Office has been in Bangkok since 1998. The Association also has official offices or representation in Beijing, Sydney, Dubai, London and New York. Visit www.PATA.org.

Media Contact:
PATA
Paul Pruangkarn
Manager – Communications
Bangkok, Thailand
Tel: +66 2 658 2000
E-mail: Communications@PATA.org