Web In Travel (WIT) gathered speakers and participants from its first edition, to discuss, 12 years later, what
changes they had seen and how they imagine the future business of online travel. The WIT pioneers spoke
alongside new and emerging players from across Asia, to discuss how they are innovating and disrupting the
business of travel in their geographies. WIT 2016 attracted 100 speakers, featuring senior executives from
global companies such as AccorHotels Asia Pacific, Expedia, Kayak, Booking.com, Google and TripAdvisor,
alongside Asian companies including as Ctrip, MakeMyTrip, Alitrip, Rakuten and Agoda. "As the online travel
industry matures and technology evolves, changes are happening rapidly and we need to adapt," said Yeoh
Siew Hoon, founder of WIT. "With WIT this year, we wanted to bring together people who have participated in
WIT for years with mavericks who have fresh ideas and energy, to inspire everyone attending to raise this
industry to its next level."Building on previous editions of WIT, the conference kicked off with a Bootcamp for
travel start-ups. From a record number of entries, the most diverse in terms of geography and business
models that WIT has received, seven entrepreneurs competed for the chance to present their ideas at WIT,
and three emerged at the conference – Cape, Backstreet Academy and Sports Where I Am. Of the three,
Cape won the Start-Up Pitch Competition for their flight-booking platform that focuses specifically on selling
standby tickets, generating incremental revenue from last-minute seats sold. Cape won a place in the
Travelport Labs Accelerator programme, which comes with seed funding of US$30,000 and US$120,000
worth of cloud credits under the IBM Global Entrepreneurship programme."The travel startup ecosystem is
maturing in Asia," said Jason Nash, global vice president of marketing and product incubation, Travelport.
"Their thinking is fresh and their ideas very innovative. Cape was outstanding in their presentation and
bringing their ideas to fruition. We look forward to mentoring them and seeing their business come to life."
The conference also awarded best in class in online travel with its annual WITovation Awards, powered by
Sojern, which honours visionaries for their excellence in digital marketing and customer experience in travel.