Those were some of the key insights shared by the panel of chief executives during Web In Travel. They comprised:

• Robert Bailey, President & CEO, Abacus International
• Richard Wiegmann, President, Trust International
• Patrick Andres, Vice President Asia Pacific, Sabre Hospitality Solutions
• Ric Leutwyler, Chief Operating Officer Pegasus Solutions and President, Utell
• Sascha Hausmann, Chief Executive Officer, eRevMax
• Jason Nash, Senior Executive Global Commerce Solutions, Travelport

The discussion started on a paranoid note. Disease and terrorism were cited as two factors a couple of the CEOs were paranoid about but the most common one (within their control) was staying ahead and remaining relevant with all the changes happening.

Said Hausmann, “This industry is getting too complex, new ideas are coming in everyday, it’s hard to stay on top and deal with it as a company and service provider and you have to deal with them first before they get to the customer.”

Nash worried that with all the consolidation going on, it might be hard to keep creativity and innovation going “when so much is disappearing”.

Which brought them round to the subject of innovation – most of them agreed that innovation equals taking something difficult, “even unthinkable” and making it “easy and approachable”, in the words of Bailey. 

For Hausmann, it could be about something as simple as helping hotels deal with travel websites. It’s doing something not necessarily new but in a better way that services the customer, he said.

Nash used Apple as a benchmark and said, “Without doubt, they simplify. The simplification provcess of innovation is very important. You need to tap into the problems that customers are facing and deliver solutions that make it easier for them.”

As such, the one thing they will focus on in 2011 is a combination of simplicity and innovation. Andres cited “staying up with technology” as a big focus for Sabre Hospitality Solutions.

Nash (pictured seated left) said Travelport was putting its big bet on the Universal Desktop, its new selling platform for travel agents, which it showcased at ITB Asia while Abacus’ Bailey cited innovation, optimizing partnerships and driving transformation in the region where it operates.

For Pegasus Solutions, Leutwyler (pictured seated right) said it will be about customizing approaches to different regions. The need for localization is becoming more and more apparent, he said.

“The biggest thing for us is the need to have people who are making important decisions be more in tune with local markets,” he said.

Wiegmann (pictured below, right) said often organizations did not make it easy for their customers. A lot of organizations have centralized approaches and think that’s going to work everywhere which is not the case. “We should listen to the market.”

So if the market of the future is going to come from Asia, could their headquarters be based in Asia then one day?

Hausmann said eRevMax’s headquarters was already in India where the majority of its staff was based. Bailey (below) noted that Abacus’ ability to blend local (through its national marketing companies in 25 markets in Asia) with regional aggregation (through its headquarters in Singapore) and a tie to a global technology company (Sabre) was the right formula for the right time. 

Andres however said he saw a time “with no headquarters”.

Saying Sabre Hospitality Solutions had set up regionally from the beginning, he said, “I’d love to see a company with many different organizations welded together. In the future, it doesn’t matter where your head office is, we will need them as a source of support and set a few guiding principles and let the different organizations do what they want.”

Nash agreed that the “social organization” brought in by companies such as Facebook and Sales Force was starting to move into the corporate world and “we won’t need so much of the corporate headquarters”. However strategic investments that are then customised for the local markets will be important, he said.

Hausmann was concerned that no HQ would mean less communication and no “face time” between employees but Andres said the style of communication, hub to spoke, was changing. “Communication will happen in a different way, possibly healthier,” he said.

For Leutwyler, while he doesn’t see Pegasus being based in Asia, there will be an attitude change. Instead of saying, what should we do in the region, it will be, that part of the world is driving change within our organization.

As for the next revolution, most of them are putting their bet on the mobile web although Wiegmann (pictured below, seated right) said the big change was the integration of solutions and networking systems to make the whole business process easier for hoteliers.

Said Andres (pictured, seated left next to Wiegmann), “There are too many pockets of data in the organization – bringing all of that together, focusing on the guest and reaching the crescendo of one on one selling – and shifting from mass market niche market. When you are in the niche, you need to understand who your customer is and market to the right consumer.”  

Balancing privacy issues with one-on-one marketing though will be critical and the executives agreed that it would all come down to trust. Said Leutwyler, “Build the trust up front – ease them into sharing the information, then you have to be incredibly careful in how you use it. As long as you deliver something of value, the trust will continue to build.”

The concern is too many people saying where’s the quick buck in all these data and Nash said it was important to give customers opt-out rather than opt-in.

Andres said there was a younger generation of consumers who did not care too much about privacy and was sharing everything. Everyone wants to be a Paris Hilton and he called it a “promiscuous space”.

It is thus fair for companies to use that information in a generic way, he said.

Is a trust index then needed and how do you measure trust? Nash said transactions can be one of the elements used in the measurement while Wiegmann said conversion of offline to online business was another key to measuring how much trust the customer had in a brand.

While most of them chose browsers over apps as the future, they envisioned a super-duper-meta app developing to solve the complexity of too many apps and agreed that travel apps favoured intermediaries.

And while they didn’t see anything else emerging to challenge Google, they all chose “something else” to TripAdvisor.

Whether that’s wishful thinking, we don’t know, but even CEOs are allowed to dream.