Boulder and Singapore, two more different places you couldn’t find. One’s dry, the other’s humid. One’s mountainous, the other’s at sea level. One’s cool, the other’s hot.

But one thing they do have in common is an extremely active environment for online entrepreneurs and that’s something Helibronner is finding out since her move to the tropical city this month to be where her company is headquartered

It’s also the reason the company, Swiftfrank Pte Ltd, was set up in Singapore and why TravelShark, which describes itself as “the global travel network” has a US presence in Boulder.

Heilbronner said, “My personal relocation in early November of this year was to ensure that the CEO of the company was resident in the HQ office and of course to help our company better establish a foothold and accelerate growth in Asia.”

She noted the trend in American online travel companies looking towards Asia for growth opportunities. “Online travel as an industry has been in large part centered in the United States and I do think that’s changing. More and more we are seeing major US companies in online travel establishing major offices in Singapore to service Asia.

“Singapore is an obvious choice for this purpose and with Asia being the fastest growing travel market in the world, there are a wealth of strategic reasons to be here.”

This trend was also taking place in industries beyond travel, said Heilbronner. “Pharmaceutical companies are increasing their R&D resources here; manufacturing companies like Crocs (founded in Boulder) enjoy being here, near their manufacturing facilities in Asia; and the list goes on.”

With just three weeks under her belt in her new home in Singapore, she said she is just finding her feet and learning about the market.

“Our primary focus is in hospitality, and I think one interesting fact I’ve noticed is that the industry leaders in Asia tend to circulate all over Asia. It is a quite different group than the group I’ve been closely connected to in the US.

“The hoteliers here seem to take a very regional view of the market. They think more internationally in that more travellers in Asia travel internationally and much of the hospitality market in the US is serving ‘domestic’ travellers.”

She said she’s seen some real innovation coming out of the region in online travel. “I met with two companies recently, which seemed to be very motivated and creative. In both cases, the ideas were very well-suited, or uniquely well-suited to Asia. I found this interesting and pretty illuminating because it’s clear that the way people travel here is different than what I’m used to seeing. Plenty to learn.

“As for markets, frankly Singapore is perhaps most interesting. We operatewww.SingaporeHotels.com, and the occupancy and RevPARs here are strong and growing in a way that the industry in the US hasn’t seen in three years.  We recently purchased www.BeijingHotels.com,www.BangkokHotels.com, www.KualaLumpurHotels.com, and another 75 sites in Asia. This allows us to serve Asian customers and hotel companies better than ever, and we’re excited about the opportunities there.”

She said that TravelShark’s mission is to connect “global travellers to hyper-local travel solutions and memorable trips”.

“We are reaching this vision primarily by ensuring that our sites, which are by nature hyper-local, are serving unique content and trip-planning tools to online travellers.”

On the content side, the company recently purchased Rather Guides, a group of 30 hyper-local travel guides previously focused on the US and Europe.

“All the content from these guides (40 very insider-local stores and restaurants with wonderful photographs) now appears on our TravelShark sites (see Seattle Hotels and click on ‘RatherLocal’ for example) free to users.

“We are expanding the reach of Rather to Asia, and we will be launching Rather Singapore, Rather Hong Kong, and Rather Bangkok at a minimum in Spring 2012.”

It also recently launched the Sharky Awards (pictured left) to recognise “truly unique and unexpected discoveries in the travel industry”.

“One of our first recipients was the Quincy Hotel in Singapore for ‘Sharkiest Perquisites (perks)’. As this programme grows, it will further enhance the tools and content on our market sites.

“We are also adding 300-400 locally created and curated articles and videos on travel ideas in-market to each hone of these sites apart from the Rather content.”

Apart from content, TravelShark will launch over the next six to 12 months a number of new trip planning tools on its thousands of sites, including sites in Asia.

“We are enthusiastic about the manner in which these tools will improve quality, usability and visibility of our sites – and therefore revenues for our hospitality clients and for TravelShark.”

The company started life as Swiftfrank and ditched it in favour of TravelShark earlier this year.

Asked if she’s had any negative response to the name TravelShark given that sharks aren’t exactly considered friendly creatures in Asia or anywhere else, she said, “Yes. Funny. We know that sharks are not beloved everywhere. They are memorable everywhere, and we felt that the idea of trolling the globe for the best travel inspirations was a nice metaphor.

“We spent a great deal of time outlining our rationale for the name change.  In sort, no one could spell “Swiftrank” or understand how the name connected to what we did. For good reason. You can see some videos that explain this problem in a tongue-in-cheek way.

She added, “Over the next 6-12 months, TravelShark is going to become a fitting umbrella name for our thousands of b2c websites. We will migrate our corporate brand from being strictly B2B to about 90% B2C.

“Exciting transformation, and we weren’t going to be able to do it with a name like ‘Swiftrank’. And seriously, have you seen the man-sized shark? He’s soft, furry, and very amusing!  We hope to bring him to the next WIT conference to take on the TripAdvisor Owl.  We know who wins that fight. Owl may be smarter. Shark is stronger.”

As for what new ideas she wants to bring to Asia, Heilbronner, who’s been in the digital marketing arena in travel for the last eight years, said she’s seen lots of changes in terms of how online marketing and revenue management connect to reshape the thinking of hotel performance.

“I’ve seen the ups and the downs from the Online Travel Agents, and I’ve been involved directly in helping thousands of hoteliers embrace the direct online marketing channel to consumers on a global scale. I think some of that learning is still in front of the industry in Singapore, and, as I have been in the US, I look forward to witnessing and to being a bit of a catalyst to that change here.

“Our company is not only a great resource to consumers, but a great resource to suppliers. It will be fun to more broadly share that story.”