“I didn’t know how much I had missed this.” “I didn’t think I’d be able to sit through seven hours straight.” “I wouldn’t usually have stayed for dinner.” “We didn’t want to leave.”
These were some of the comments expressed by those who were physically present at WiT Experience Week’s hybrid Day 4 with 40 local delegates gathered at Marina Bay Sands’ Hybrid Broadcasting Studio while the event was streamed to a virtual audience.
I too had forgotten what it was like to be in front of a physical audience. For the first three days, my team and I had been holed up in the SKAI Suite on Level 69 of Swissotel The Stamford, broadcasting to a virtual audience.
Virtual may be limitless – in terms of reach and content – but it’s limiting in terms of the human exchange you can have with speakers through a screen. It takes extra energy to project across the ether.
In a physical format, you feed off the energy of the people in the room. You hear their laughter, you see their nods, you sense when you are losing their attention, you figure out when you need to cut off a particular topic and move on.
Even if you are still interviewing people on screens, and their sound may be patchy or their video doesn’t come on, there’s the energy of the people in the room to carry you through – particularly so when it’s a small audience.
And so for seven hours on Oct 1, day of the Chinese Mid-Autumn full moon, I was transported back to the roots of WiT when we started in 2005 to a small audience of 120 – when the industry was smaller, we knew each other well and we were all at the beginning of something new, the advent of online travel that we sensed would change our industry.
Events set for shake-up and the entry of big tech
It felt like a few new beginnings with Hybrid WiT on Oct 1 – the beginning of a new WiT, the beginning of something new in events, and the beginning of something in travel.
Just as we will stop saying online travel and offline travel, we too will stop saying virtual, hybrid or physical events – because all events going forward, when we can have them physically again, will have hybrid in them. And that means completely different thinking – the way you format, programme, deliver, produce, cater to two audiences simultaneously …
I have always regarded events as part of the media and communications business, and trade shows as a part of marketplaces. When technology comes along to flatten this industry called MICE collectively – and the tech is only going to get better and better – the future is up for grabs.
In the panel on “Rewriting Events”, which featured the tech partners, GEVME, Jublia and Pigeonhole Live, which came together to rewrite WiT from analogue to digital and to hybrid, Ong Wee Min, vice president of MICE, Marina Bay Sands, said the competition to trade show organisers, in particular, would not come from within but from tech giants – for example, Tencent Cloud or Alibaba – for their ability to wrap tech around marketplaces and content.
In his session, Ng Chee Soon, managing director of Carousell Singapore, whose e-commerce business has been sent on hyperdrive during Covid, said that not having its physical fair, Carouselland, this year had not put a dent in its business and that the company, which recently raised US$80m from a consortium led by Naver, would probably rethink having a physical event, even when circumstances allow.
This shift in thinking represents huge stakes for the travel industry – MICE, including corporate travel, accounts for the lion share of profits for hotels, airlines and destinations.
Fighting, fixing and acting – activism with pragmatism and diplomacy
What I found most rewarding during the four days of WiT Experience Week is that travel is no longer playing victim, but fighting back as it faces life-or-death moments with Covid. We are way past the passive “OMG, what happened” and into the active “we have to get out of this” phase.
Brutal cuts to workforces have been made, investments have been made in tech, we are churning out product after product, some are even building new businesses – Wego’s new e-commerce brand to be unveiled before “the big shopping season” – some are doubling down on their core.
We are hearing messages of activism from global travel brands. In the opening panel, “The Future of OTAs in A Global World Gone Local”, Cyril Ranque, president, travel partners, Expedia Group, said that travel recovery will require governments to work together to create consistent protocols with speedy Covid-19 testing “so the 90% [of people] that are not sick get a free pass” that will open up more international travel.
“If we rely only on domestic, we have an industry that works on only half of its cylinders, maybe less,” he said.
Not only messages but acts of activism that are both pragmatic and diplomatic – no beating at the chest but a carefully thought-out-and-supported plan to give government the confidence to act.
During the panel on “The Safe Opening of Leisure Green Lanes”, we heard how a consortium led by Expedia Group, with participation by Singapore Airlines and Singapore-owned hotel groups, is working on persuading the Singapore government to open a corridor to Maldives as a pilot.
The panel detailed the steps that would be taken by all stakeholders to create a bubble within a bubble, facilitated by tech. It showed the thorough logical thinking that had gone into making the process as risk-free as possible so as to make it palatable to governments. The panel’s message – the technology is there, it’s the mindset that needs to be persuaded, and mindsets can be persuaded through rational and logical thinking, and precise execution.
“He who shuts the door must open it,” said Ang Choo Pin, senior director, government and corporate affairs, and managing director, Asia, Expedia Group.
The idea is if this pilot works, then corridors can be slowly opened, in a safe and considered manner, to destinations such as Phuket or Bintan where bubbles within bubbles can be created. They will by no means save travel in Asia from the coming long winter but it is a start towards unlocking it, piece by piece.
Local players do their bit to stoke travel demand
Local OTAs are doing their bit to unlock travel on the ground. In India, Ixigo’s CEO Aloke Bajpai said he was seeing healthy growing from Tier 2 and 3 cities in India where it had developed local language capabilities in its app.
Traveloka’s chief marketing officer Christian Suwarna said it is focusing on its “greatest strength” – its inventory of more than one million accommodation of all types, across cities of all sizes. And it has added very locally focused experiences with suppliers such as neighborhood restaurants and children’s playgrounds. (For a wrap-up of this panel, read Phocuswire’s report.)
Klook has launched Klook Live! in record time to leverage the live streaming phenomenon that surfaced during Covid. In his talk on “What Covid rewrote for me”, Eric Gnock Fah, COO and co-founder, said it had made him rethink growth and how it was about generating demand now versus capturing demand. That requires a different lens on which it grows its customer base.
The biggest positive out of this is that Asia will have a much stronger domestic travel market after Covid, said Ho Kwon Ping, executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings. We’ve always relied on overseas markets to fill our hotels and now we have to look towards ourselves, he said.
Even Singapore is having to dig deep and travel brands on Sentosa, the primary beach destination, are rethinking strategies and operations to cater to local travellers (which formed 20% of visits pre-Covid) – from daycations to behind-the-scenes tours and nature trails to change local perceptions of the island. “You think you know Sentosa but you really don’t,” said Chin Sak Hin, assistant chief executive and CFO of Sentosa Development Corporation.
The themes that will rewrite travel – consolidation, contraction, convergence
So at what point are we at the beginning of in travel? Which themes will rewrite the future?
Consolidation and contraction for sure – there will be a mass exodus of individuals and companies out of travel. Many of us will not make it out alive. However, John Brown, CEO of Agoda, does not believe it will be any less competitive. Ranque said it was important the small businesses make it through, otherwise travel will be poorer as a result.
Convergence – tech, customer behaviour and trends, social and economic forces. As travel contracts, marketplaces and superapps will get bigger. Will travel then become a small part of something bigger?
Climate change is an issue that will outlast Covid, believes Ho of Banyan Tree Holdings. This will affect people’s decision on whether they should travel for business or events or where they travel to for leisure as he spoke about a return to meaning. (See this report on his interview)
Beyond meaning, the future will be more direct, more value-driven, more demographic-driven particularly in a region like Asia.
So if you are an intermediary, figure out the value you bring. Yes, it’s been said before but it’s now literally life or death. Deliver real value or be squeezed out. It was interesting to hear what Ranque said about commoditisation and the role OTAs played in it, and perhaps this was now the moment to dial back on commoditisation and driving everything down to the point of price. Is it too late?
And if you want to succeed in Asia, Brown told Ranque, “Bring your A game.” Or heed the words of Michael Issenberg, outgoing chairman and CEO of Accor Asia Pacific, who built up the region from practically nothing, “You got to be in the local markets.” In effect, running Asia is like running several local businesses and each has to be led by someone on the ground, not by remote control. And this is arguably even more important as the world decouples.
Is hybrid worth the effort? Or will virtual win, as tech improves?
Circling back to the now of events – remembering William Gibson’s famous words, “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” – venues like Marina Bay Sands have created a moment for themselves with the creation of its hybrid broadcasting studio and we are so thrilled to have been the first travel event to be held in that setting.
I can imagine they will be very busy indeed – many of our delegates represent corporations which, now having seen how a hybrid event can be delivered, will be planning to execute one of their own. Let’s face it, most of us are suffering from virtual fatigue.
Curious, I asked a couple of folks who had attended our first three virtual days and then our hybrid day virtually as well, if there was any difference in their experience as a customer?
This is from Sydney-based Elizabeth Rich, a meetings industry professional, “If it was a business events conference, I would have preferred to be there so I could chat to people and get the vibes on what’s happening out there. But for me, the WIT content was good enough via virtual and hybrid, except of course I’d be happy to be in Singapore. So maybe destination selection will be even more important to maximise the desire factor when people are able to travel again.
“I suspect that as virtual improves it will be the winner. But we are still in transition so who knows – there might be a stampede back to in-person physical events.”
This comment came from Stephan Ekbergh, CEO, Travelstart, “Watching the hybrid day felt more like I was watching live entertainment, there was more action, more energy. It looked like you were having more fun.”
What do you think?