It’s the day after the PhoCusWright Conference in Fort Lauderdale. After the heavy rains of last night – thought I was back in Singapore with palm trees being lashed by heavy rainfall – there’s more bluster than breeze in the air and the waves are strong and choppy.

It’s been a rather dramatic week here – on Sunday, the day before the conference started, a man fell through the 23^rd floor balcony of the Westin Diplomat, the hotel venue, and smashed through the glass ceiling. A blue patch covered the area where he crashed through. On Tuesday, a Learjet crashed into the coast off Fort Lauderdale – the apartment I am in has a direct view of that ocean.

Thankfully, conference proceedings were not as dramatic.

Yesterday, I moderated the panel on “Asia Beyond China” featuring Timothy Hughes, Agoda, Ross Veitch, Wego, Kei Shibata, travel.jp and Rajesh Magow, MakeMyTrip.

It was nice to share Centerstage with friends from home and to see the room was fairly packed – I was told in previous years whenever there’s a panel on anywhere outside the US, most people would leave the room.

It’s definitely an indication of the growing interest in Asia Pacific and it is clear from the discussions that the big brands are looking to what the Americans still call “the emerging markets” to deliver growth.

The talk at the conference was about Priceline (PCLN) joining the $1,000 stock price club. According to this analyst report, the group’s past five-year growth is an impressive 48% and the next five years’ growth estimate is 20.45%.

During an investors panel, the question was asked whether such a growth is sustainable and the answer was that new markets as well as alternative accommodation would deliver the goods.

“Companies with the expertise to reach new markets should continue to grow and mobile is also creating a new growth engine for OTAs,” said one investor. “Alternative accommodation and new transportation modes also represent substantial opportunities for established players.”

During the session featuring Jeff Boyd, chairman of PCLN and newly-promoted group CEO Darren Huston (left), my ears pricked up when Huston spoke about China and how the group’s goal with is to be “relevant to domestic Chinese travellers”.

That’s really the key to unlocking the treasures of the middle kingdom – and of course the hardest key to unlock.

Said Huston, “We do want to be successful with domestic business in China, we have 10 offices there and it’s a question of taking small steps. China is beginning to open up.”

It was also nice to hear him mention Myanmar as a destination to watch when he spoke about how he sees the world as one big destination.

Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi also spoke about investing heavily in China through eLong to compete against “the incumbent”. His most interesting observation was about how Expedia’s roots in a mono-culture market could have put it at a disadvantage against booking.com’s multi-cultural European roots when it came to global expansion.

The challenge of scaling across diverse markets is not unique to the US of course. India’s MakeMyTrip is expanding business outside India using the hoteltravel.com brand and Magow said the product and technology integration was now in place for the Phuket-based brand to scale.

Japanese Internet brands too have struggled to expand outside their home country but Shibata said things are changing and mobile is paving the way for scaling, citing Recruit as an example of a brand that was seeing traction outside Japan.

So how is the conversation different in the US versus Asia, I asked my panellists? Agoda’s Hughes said one difference is how social media is a business in markets like China while in the US, it’s still about customer engagement.

Shibata cited mobile, saying that while US brands were just waking up to mobile, Japanese companies had been playing in that space for a while.

Up to 45% of travel.jp’s traffic comes from mobile. The figure for Wego is 30%, according to Veitch, and mobile traffic was seeing higher click throughs. For MakeMyTrip, 20% of traffic is via mobile and 13% of hotel bookings are coming through mobile with 48% of that for same-day bookings.

Hughes said the year had been robust for Agoda with every market in the region performing well. Magow said the India story was back on track with the best yet to come as more foreign airlines enter the market.

Shibata said Japan was on the ascent and he quoted WTTC’s statistics that showed that while Japan is now the region’s largest travel market (US$127.56 billion in 2012), larger than South-east Asia combined (US$102.59 billion), the positions would be reversed by 2023 when a burgeoning middle class in ASEAN pushes travel & tourism contribution upwards to US$239.39 billion compared to Japan’s US$147.39 billion.

With low cost forming already 58% of air seats in South-east Asia, it is clear the Asia Beyond China story remains a robust one.

No wonder therefore that Huston said he’s “crazily optimistic” about the future although in the next breath, he described it as “optimistic paranoia”and the key is to strike a balance between the two. “So far so good. The reality though is it’s all about execution to achieve those high rates of growth,” he said.

That afternoon, after the conference ended, a rainbow appeared over the ocean – yes, the proverbial pot of gold awaits the one who executes best and fastest and is able to be both relevant globally while scaling. It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it.