I am exhausted but elated. Two days of Web In Travel are over and this morning, we continue with WIT Ideas Lab at ITB Asia.

The last two days have seen personalities shine and points of views emerge – this is the intent behind WIT. Our programming is crafted to allow people to shine and points of views to emerge, that will set the agenda and purpose for the travel space in the year ahead.

And they did. You can see that in all the content that’s been generated by our hardworking team of bloggers and Twitterers – they’ve kept the conversation alive off stage and in the virtual world.

But the reason I am most elated is last night, we raised S$15,000 for children in Myanmar at an auction we held at the Circos Brand Karma party.

I want to thank everyone who made this happen – from Martin Symes of Wego who did such a sterling job in getting the bidding going and raising the bar to Morris Sim and his team at Circos Brand Karma for matching the winning bid, from Kent Zhu of Shangri-La who kept the bids climbing with free stays at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts; and WORLDHOTELS, Indigo Pearl and Small Luxury Hotels of the World who also donated prizes for the bidders.

I also want to thank Don Birch, Lucas Peng, Timothy O’ Neil Dunne and Ric Leutwyler of Pegasus Solutions who contributed towards the bid amount.

In the end, the two paintings created by our artist Alpana Ahuja, which captured the theme of “Love of Travel and The Child In Me”, were bought by Giovanni Angelini of Angelini Hospitality.

O’Neil Dunne of T2 Impact then went round and collected more donations from guests at the party – so by the time I left the party, I had lost count of the collection.

It was an appropriate note to end WIT on. For the last two days, we talked about how the industry was changing and what we needed to do to ride the latest wave of changing customer behaviour.

• Create content that is rich, contextual, timely and relevant. Audio visual is the new grammar and literacy will be redefined in the new world.

• Great content is king – it builds trust and that’s the key to unlocking the new customers

• Creativity is everything – and we need to hire creative people at all fronts, from marketing to customer service. Expectations have been raised through social media – customers know before they arrive.

• Internet is like the toilet; hotels should no longer charge for wifi – a new generation requires new thinking. Likewise with conference venues.

• Smart phones have changed everything – it’s allowing delivery of contextual, personal and timely information; it’s enabling augmented reality to change user experience of destinations; it’s allowing customers to book at the last minute (within 24 days). And the magic number to watch – AirAsia, the leader in ecommerce in Asia, expects 20% of bookings to come from mobile in the next 18 months.

• The Web and the Internet favour the small and the independents – it’s about fast vs slow, not big vs small

• Japan – forget the men, go for the women. Mobile’s big in Japan – 20% of domestic flights are booked on mobile and 20% of search on travel.jp is through mobile. Challenge is getting the young Japanese to travel – 30% said they have not travelled in last 12 months; they prefer video gaming.

• GDS distribution for airlines will become a significantly lower percentage of sales as new technology enables customers to search better and directly for air fares

But even as the travel landscape changes in Asia, one constant remains. Asia may be becoming more developed, and producing more and more millionaires, but there is a whole swathe of children in our region who do not have access to education for social and economic reasons.

NAG is a registered NGO in Myanmar and part of its mission is to help needy children in the country by building schools and libraries. Hopefully, the $15,000 we raised last night will help spread the learning we did at WIT to the children of Myanmar. 

From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank everyone for their generosity in enabling this to happen.

Featured image credit (White daisies on summer day): Ockra/iStock