An essential conference at an essential time for Australian tourism

Dan Monheit is a Co-Founder of Hardhat, a creative agency built for today. A student of the old and a driver of the new, Dan works with ambitious marketers to build enduring brands. Hardhat clients include Tigerair, Bupa, Victoria University and Simply Energy.

Dan is also creator/host of the innovative ‘Real Big Things’ event series, a seasoned presenter at global conferences including SXSW, a university guest lecturer and a regular contributor to many of the region’s leading marketing publications (including Mumbrella).

Dan is also co-host of Bad Decisions, the behavioural economics podcast your competitors have been listening to for months.

As Intrepid Travel’s General Manager of Marketing for the APAC region, Louise sets the strategy for brand, digital, partnerships and PR, driving direct business and continuing to build the brand and sales with incredible travel industry partners.

With experience in growing niche categories in the Australian and New Zealand markets, Louise’s current focus is growing the number of people seeking responsible travel options.

Louise has more than 15 years agency and client-side experience across a range of consumer and tourism brands. Highlights include working with Jetstar during its start-up days, and alongside Tourism Australia, The Walt Disney Company and Booking.com. Prior to joining the Intrepid Group, Louise was the Director of Marketing AU NZ at G Adventures.

Louise speaks ‘un poco Espanola’, sings in the Melbourne Indie Voices choir and has recently completed her MBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Avi Mannis is Hawaiian Airlines’ Senior Vice President of Marketing, responsible for the airline’s brand, direct sales channels, loyalty program and product. During his tenure his team has developed many consumer marketing campaigns in domestic and international markets, designed new cabins on several aircraft types, transformed Hawaiian’s mobile and desktop digital experience, and led a comprehensive refresh of the brand’s visual identity. Prior to leading marketing, Avi was Vice President of Revenue Management and Network Planning for the airline during a period of explosive growth. Over his twelve years there, Hawaiian Airlines has more than doubled in size, while continuing to be a global leader in both operational and financial performance.

Prior to joining Hawaiian Airlines, Avi worked as a management consultant with The Boston Consulting Group in New York and Paris, and in management roles at Christie’s Auction House in New York. He is a graduate of Brown University, with a degree in Old World Archaeology and Art, and received his MBA with a concentration in Statistics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

With over 30 years’ experience, Robyn Sefiani is well known in the Australian public relations profession as a specialist in strategic communications counsel and issues and crisis management. Robyn has advised some of Australia’s and the world’s leading companies on high-stakes communication with positive outcomes.

Robyn established Sefiani Communications Group in 1999 with the goal of being a world’s best practice public relations firm, providing corporate leaders with highly effective communications counsel and services to solve business challenges. Sefiani was named Mid-Size Agency of the Year at Mumbrella’s 2018 CommsCon Awards.

To broaden the Group’s service offering, in 2013 a second agency was established – Kite Communications – with a focus on consumer and challenger brands.

Prior to Sefiani, Robyn was Co-President of the Asia Pacific region of Edelman and a member of the Edelman’s global Board of Edelman.

Robyn graduated with Distinction from Charles Sturt University. She is a Fellow of both the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Public Relations Institute of Australia, and served for many years on the board of Special Olympics Australia.

Zoë is Co-Founder of Alpaca Travel – a travel itinerary tool helping the tourism industry unlock the power of maps to fuel discovery and encourage exploration.

Started in 2015, Zoë identified that there was a need for a platform that enabled the easy creation of beautiful, interactive itineraries that could support the traveller journey from planning through to in-destination. Zoë believes that itineraries are not just a way to get from point A to B, it is about inviting visitors to go further, see more along the way and stay longer.

Alpaca is currently being used by travellers, travel writers and tourism organisations around the world to power their itinerary content.
Prior to launching Alpaca, Zoë consulted across a range of industries on digital marketing, strategy and product innovation, and most recently was responsible for growing the brand and market position of another Australian startup.

Zoë has travelled to over 30 countries and is a self-confessed cartophile, with a healthy addiction to maps.

Josie Brown leads consumer insights and marketing at Tennis Australia. She is committed to bring to life the organisation’s vision, “To create a playful world through tennis for everyone”. Through the design of iconic experiences, engaging stories or through attending events such as ATP Cup or AO, her team aims to get more people to play and watch the game.

Josie has worked at Tennis Australia since September 2018. Her career started in the travel industry, working at Lufthansa at a time where digital distribution was transforming the industry. She later moved to online travel portal Opodo in their offices in London and then Hamburg. Her career includes time living and working in Europe and Asia; she became an Australian citizen in 2010.  With a focus on digital marketing strategy and brand building, she held regional roles at JWT and P&G prior to joining the tennis.

Vivienne Kelly is the editor of Mumbrella. Throughout her career she has worked as a journalist and editor across a number of consumer and B2B finance and real estate titles. She has also spent time in public relations across the health, finance and energy sectors.

Head of Travel at Facebook ANZ, Paul partners with Tourism and Travel companies to more effectively reach and drive business results with the people that matter most to them. Leveraging the latest traveller behaviour insights in combination with innovative creative, audience and attribution solutions, his team helps their partners build brand, increase sales, and grow loyalty across Facebook’s Family of Apps and Services.

Paul is an avid swimmer, traveller and “Stories” creator, and you can follow his adventures on Instagram @lifepwn.

Katherine O’Neill has extensive experience working in senior roles within the travel, tourism and airline sectors – providing strong brand, marketing and strategic insights across the Asia Pacific region.

She joined Scenic Group as their Director, Brand and Marketing in mid-2019. In this role, she leads the brand development, content and campaign delivery for Scenic’s portfolio of luxury River and Ocean Cruises and land journeys for the Australia and New Zealand Markets.

Prior to Scenic, Katherine managed Etihad Airway’s regional marketing efforts across their Eastern region covering 16 key markets as diverse as India, China, Korea, Japan and South East Asia in addition to Australia and New Zealand.

Katherine was also the Head of Marketing at Trafalgar, growing their business across multiple brands and channels to market. During her eight years at Travel Corporation,
Katherine lead their multi-phase brand transformation, creating compelling content and working with domestic and international talent. Her team’s effectiveness was recognised in winning ‘Brand of the Year’ at Mumbrella’s 2018 Travel Awards.

Randall has travel in his blood and is a ‘challenger’ by DNA. From General Manager of one of Australia’s largest privately-owned resort groups, to orchestrating an industry
consolidation and ASX float for Mantra Resorts, to starting his own business, Randall is all about challenging convention and making a difference.

Randall founded Ignite Travel Group (Ignite) in 2005 which pioneered a whole new travel industry segment that has been the industry’s fastest growing for the past five years. Ignite’s retail and wholesale brands have won, many times, Australia’s coveted ‘fastest growing travel business’ award, an achievement that also earned Randall multiple ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ awards. Ignite was also awarded the ‘Disruptor of the Year’ award in 2019 at the Mumbrella Travel Marketing Awards. Recently, Australia’s largest travel business, Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG), acquired 100% of Ignite’s Australian and New Zealand businesses. This move is aimed at fast tracking Randall’s global roll out plan for Ignite’s unique travel marketing and distribution models in joint venture with FCTG, in other
international markets.

Chris Fundell is a well-known figure in the travel industry with more than 20 years of travel marketing experience in the UK and across Australasia. Chris has worked for small independent and large multi-national travel companies, which has allowed him the knowledge and confidence to be innovative and bold with his marketing campaigns in his current role at the Globus family of brands. Working across leading tour operators – Globus, Cosmos, Monograms and Avalon Waterways – Chris is a firm believer that the travel industry must develop with the needs of the consumers – brands must transition to a multi-faceted approach that integrates the traditional retail environments as well as the highly targeted, personalised communications.

Chris has played a major role in taking Globus family of brands’ marketing from a traditional structure and delivery, to a data driven, customer-centric environment. As Head of Marketing for Australasia, implementing long term strategies to increase brand awareness and engagement, whilst delivering short and long term growth, has been one of Chris’ achievements to date.

A journalist and media executive with 18 years’ experience across broadcast, digital and publishing.

Alex is a specialist in news, current affairs and morning television, with broad experience across strategic, industry and commercial partnerships.

He spearheaded Today show’s We Love Australia and Top End Wedding broadcasts helping bring regional and state tourism campaigns to life across breakfast television.

Philippa Walker is the Head of Travel for Nine, and previously Fairfax. Philippa has spent more than 25 years in the travel industry in Senior Sales & Marketing Management roles leading teams in the hotel, wholesale, touring and river cruising categories. With a passion for ensuring Travel Brands and the industry ignite Australian’s love for travel through the right media choices and creating a full marketing funnel approach lead by strategic partnerships. Philippa’s passion for travel was ignited at the age of 17 after living in France for a year as an exchange student, she now wants to ensure her children also love the joy and wonder travel can bring to their lives.

As the Marketing Lead for Klook in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), Jonathan
Williams is responsible for promoting the platform and thousands of inspiring
experiences to Australian and New Zealander travelers. Based in Klook’s Sydney
office, Jonathan oversees integrated marketing efforts to build Klook’s brand
presence in the ANZ region, ranging from social media campaigns and affiliate
partnerships to marketing activations.

Originally from London, Jonathan is a seasoned marketer and avid follower of tech
innovation. He began his career driving growth at PayPal and later launching key
products for Google in Australia, including Google My Business and Google Pay.
With a passion for travel and adventure, Jonathan enjoys coming up close with
nature and exploring the great Australian outdoors. During his free time, he teaches
kitesurfing or practises his Spanish while exploring South America.

Brent joined the SATC in November 2015 as a marketing specialist with senior experience across a number of industries including telco, retail and banking. During Brent’s tenure at the SATC, tourism expenditure has grown to record levels in South Australia. Brent oversaw the launch of a new global brand for tourism in South Australia, a number of global advertising campaigns and a wide ranging digital program. Brent also oversaw the successful partnerships with Chinese megastar Huang Xiaoming and Masterchef Australia. In 2018 and 2019, Brent was recognised in the top 25 on the CMO50 list of Australia’s top marketers, and won a number of awards for the Rewards Wonder and Tell us Where campaigns successfully delivered that year.

Michelle is Head of Travel for Google Australia. She joined Google in 2011 and has 15 years experience in the travel industry in France, Spain and Australia having previously worked for Amadeus. Michelle is passionate about understanding consumer behaviour and how travel companies can be more efficient with their branding and distribution by winning the traveller through technology, insights and customer experience.

Jan is a trusted advisor with a practical approach to strategic growth. With highly tuned global brand-building and marketing instincts, Jan is a storyteller with a message and a mission.

With significant international experience, as former Managing Director within the Ogilvy group, Director and board member of The Nielsen Company, CMO of South African Tourism, CMO of Deloitte Consulting Africa, CMO of Destination Gold Coast and currently GM Marketing for Destination NSW, Jan’s career path has been deliberately unconventional, a combination of management consulting, strategy, marketing and place development. A well regarded senior executive, a clear thinker with an ambitious spirit, Jan makes an impact by bringing insight and inspiration to maximise results.

Yin has enjoyed a dynamic international career with a passion in building meaningful connections between Western and Chinese businesses, people, and cultures through her extensive professional reach and unique trilingual mix.

Co-founder of ReadySetGo China, Yin’s mission is to help Australian and international brands to market to Chinese market more efficiently, using her extensive experience in advertising, business development, sales, client relationship, and learning and development across the globe.

Yin has called Sydney home since 2008 after spending four years in France and many years in various cities in her native China. A highlight of her travelling experience is a 10-month round-the-world tour with her family including a toddler in tow. She is also the founding president of the not-for-profit Chinglish Bilingual Toastmasters Club in Sydney, and an advocate for multilingual parenting in her spare time.

Amplify Me Director Andrea Plawutsky is an experienced travel and tourism consultant, communications specialist and China expert, with an almost 30 year association with China.

Backed by research and extensive industry experience, and a Mandarin speaker, Andrea offers training and consulting programs to help tourism operators and destinations ready themselves for the important Chinese market, with guidance on tailoring products and services, distribution channels, marketing, media and social media.

Snezna has over 20 year’s experience working across journalism, brand marketing and PR. She has run her own PR agency, worked for both global and local agencies, and has created and successfully launched her own skin care brand in the US.

Her varied experience has given her a full 360 perspective on branding that she brings to life when working on unraveling brand challenges through strong insights and strategic direction.

She has worked across consumer brand and corporate communications with both start-up and global brands in the health, beauty, FMCG, travel/tourism and retail sectors.

Key specialities include: strategy; stakeholder engagement; public relations; issues and crisis management; and influencer marketing.

Graham is a seasoned senior executive working across the global travel, tourism, media and hospitality sectors. The thread that flows through his career is a passion for the ever-evolving travel distribution and technology landscape.

After graduating with a Bachelors Degree in Hotel, Catering and Tourism Management from Surrey University, Graham spent his formative years with Utell International (at the time the world’s largest hotel reservations and marketing company) where he rose to the position of Managing Director, EMEA. His passion for hospitality continued with Disneyland Paris as Director of Sales Distribution.

Graham moved to Sydney with his family in the mid 1990s and spent 5 years with Ansett Australia as Chief Executive Officer, Traveland, where he grew the business to become the largest travel business in Australia with a turnover of $1.3B and 400 franchisees. He was appointed CEO, See Australia in 1999 with responsibility for growing domestic tourism. After 5 years’ the organisation was amalgamated with the ATC and the Tourism Forecasting Commission to form Tourism Australia. Since then Graham has worked as Managing Director Classifieds at Fairfax Digital and CEO Inland NSW Tourism. He has also operated as Commercial Advisor to a number of successful leading edge travel start-ups (including eRoam and Loft Digital) who are applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to transform travel distribution. 

In May 2018, Graham was appointed Managing Director, Best Western Hotels & Resorts, Australasia. He also fulfills the role of Managing Director, BWH Group, Australasia, a new entity formed following the acquisition of World Hotels in March 2019 with responsibility for World Hotels, Best Western and Sure Stay.

Gordy Bayne is now the Marketing Lead for one of the world’s most love travel brands all about Bali called The Bali Bible. They have recently launched into the Australian market their partnership with Network10 with Australia’s newest Online Travel Marketplace 10TRAVLR.com. Gordy manages the amazing team of people that manage all of their Marketing, Commercial Partnerships and Acqusitions for the new and exciting Travel Group. Gordy has been the Head of Travel at disruptive brands like Luxury Escapes, Bon Voyage and Scoopon Travel and has illustrated to all of how to take a start up from conception to  a muli million dollar business within 2 years. Gordy loves to focus on the connection between the consumer and his brand combined with a strong and compelling offer that drives an ROI for his Trade partnerships. The Bali Bible now has over a Million Followers on IG alone and with a total community of 2.5 million tribe their engagement and social activiations are show no sign of slowing down.

YourLifeChoices is Australia’s longest established and largest digital retirement community, with 230,000 members aged between 50 and 75. As publisher of YourLifeChoices website, eNews and eGuides, Kaye has over 20 years’ experience in writing about income and lifestyle issues for Australians planning or in retirement.

With a mission to deliver timely and independent retirement information on any device at any time, YourLifeChoices website has now gone ‘offline’ with Retirement Bootcamp events in major capital cities. Frequent surveys (10-12 per year) undertaken with our baby boomer members typically deliver up to 7000 responses to 25-40 questions on retiree needs, concerns and attitudes. YourLifeChoices has also been present at the past seven Federal Budget lockups to cover policy relevant to retirement, including the Age Pension, superannuation and aged care.

In her role as publisher Kaye is a regular commentator on retirement, retirement income and travel as well as baby boomer attitudes and trends. This includes frequent appearances on A Current Affair, ABC Radio, Macquarie Radio Network, commentary for major digital news sites and speaking at industry conferences. Kaye is also author of two best-selling ‘how to retire’ books published by Allen and Unwin.

Carolyn Childs is a Travel Futurist, Strategist and Co-Founder of MyTravelResearch.com. Carolyn has spent more than 25 years helping travel and tourism businesses achieve their goals by using research and other evidence to guide strategy and planning. She has worked in more than 35 countries on every inhabited continent and brings a detailed understanding of customers and how to connect with them.

Quentin Long cofounded Australia’s largest travel media company, Australian Traveller Media in 2005.

The company’s founding product, Australian Traveller magazine quickly became the best selling travel magazine in the country.

Known for its editorial independence, savvy reporting and supreme photography, Long quickly became a sought after media commentator on travel. From 2006 he has held weekly radio segments across the country and regular TV appearances commentating on issues and destinations for news and lifestyle programs.

He currently has a regular segment on TV with CH9’s Today program and is seen on Ch9’s A Current Affair and News programs. He also is a regular guest on several ABC radio programs and Macquarie Radio Network through 2GB and affiliated networks.

In 2012 he launched International Traveller, which went on to eclipse sister title Australian Traveller as the best selling travel magazine in the country.

The company also produce bespoke travel and lifestyle content for Australia’s leading travel clients under the Travellers Studio brand.

Tony Quarmby is the Executive General Manager of Marketing for the Northern Territory’s tourism agency, Tourism NT.

Tony is currently responsible for creating demand for one of the Territory’s largest economic drivers, the tourism sector. He achieves this through the creation of the global marketing strategy that covers destination brand development, national and international travel retail and media partnerships as well driving all the awareness, consideration and sales campaign work.

Having previously worked for Tourism Tasmania, Tourism and Events Queensland and Tourism Sunshine Coast Tony has been instrumental in some of Australia’s largest tourism’s brands and campaigns. Prior to settling in Australia Tony’s international marketing experience was founded across the TV industry, trade and investment and the Information, Communication Technology sector.

Richard leads FutureBrand’s commitment in Asia-Pacific to driving brand transformation. As a brand and marketing leader with experience across multiple sectors including travel and tourism, he has helped countries, governments, listed companies, private equity firms and start-ups grow the brand and business.

With a degree in Litterae Humaniores from Oxford University, he started his career in Bangkok as an account planner before switching to media planning in London and then brand strategy on his arrival in Australia in 2001. He has contributed to a wide range of significant branding programs, all in the name of creating a positive future and many of which have been recognised by Cannes Lions, Brand New, REBRAND and D&AD.

Brent joined the SATC in November 2015 as a marketing specialist with senior experience across a number of industries including telco, retail and banking. During Brent’s tenure at the SATC, tourism expenditure has grown to record levels in South Australia. Brent oversaw the launch of a new global brand for tourism in South Australia, a number of global advertising campaigns and a wide ranging digital program. Brent also oversaw the successful partnerships with Chinese megastar Huang Xiaoming and Masterchef Australia. In 2018 and 2019, Brent was recognised in the top 25 on the CMO50 list of Australia’s top marketers, and won a number of awards for the Rewards Wonder and Tell us Where campaigns successfully delivered that year.

Samantha is the Marketing Manager for Trafalgar in Australia, one of The
Travel Corporation’s flagship brands. With over 15 years’ experience agency,
destination and client-side, Sam is inspired by creative that generates
conversation and organisations with a wider social purpose. Prior to Trafalgar
she led Brand Communications for Air New Zealand in Australia, and is most
proud of contributing to the airline being named 'Most Reputable Brand In
Australia' for three years in a row over that time.

Andrés is a marketing strategy consultant, speaker and educator, the Head of Strategy at Storyation and a travel marketing commentator. From 2014 to 2017, he was responsible for the global content strategy for one of the world’s most respected tourism organisations, Tourism Australia, where he implemented a data-first approach. During his tenure, Australia.com was rated amongst 25 of the best websites in the world by leading travel industry publisher, Skift. Andrés has also developed marketing and content strategies for Tourism Tasmania, Destination NSW, Pfizer, PlayStation, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Coca-Cola, Nespresso and more. Andrés is also a lover of (making and eating) baked goods and the internet’s most famous export, cats. You’ll find him @hackjack on Twitter.

Lauren is Co-Founder of Storyation – a content marketing agency that counts Tourism New Zealand and Carnival Cruises among its clients. She is a former General Manager of Travel for Fairfax Media ­where she worked  with major travel brands on content-led advertising solutions. Lauren was once an award-winning journalist who covered everything from people smuggling to September 11 for publications such as The Sunday Times in London before taking a much less life-threatening job. She regularly judges media and marketing award shows in Australia including ADMA, BEFest and Publish and was named one of the top 15 women in the world in content marketing in 2015. When she’s not helping travel clients, she continues her quest to visit every Australian island writing travel stories for Qantas magazine among others. You’ll find her @lquaint and @storyation on Twitter.