Gregg Brockway, president of Tripit, said he is very interested in learning about the Chinese travel industry on his upcoming trip to China to speak at the China Travel Distribution Summit in Beijing this September.
Brockwayโs trip to China comes at a time when the entrepreneur (a co-founder of Hotwire in 1999) has a little more freedom to look at new markets. If the company looks at expansion into a new market, he says that factors it will consider are the maturity of the travel market; e-connectivity for hotel data, and tour and flight information; what is the equivalent of a GDS in a given market; and how much travel activity takes place online.
โIโm very curious to learn more about the state of the travel market there,โ Brockway said about his trip to China. He already has some experience in the Far East, having worked in Hong Kong for five years in the mid-90s.
Heโs well aware of the pitfalls of charging into a new market without soberly evaluating the opportunity or finding good local support. โEven when I was working in Hong Kong, people would come in with misguided preconceived notions about how they could bring their business model there.โ
โIโm looking forward to meeting people doing innovative things in travel, and perhaps help someone as an adviser. Thatโs not something I had time to do the past couple of years, but now that the company is really up and running, itโs something I would consider.
For more information about the China Travel Distribution Summit, please visit the event website at http://summit.traveldaily.cn/12/index_en.aspx .