This post is in response to the article by Timothy O’Neil-Dunne on “WIT turns 8” and his reflection on the evolution of travel in Asia.

Timothy, thanks for the article which charts well the evolution of Asia. The story of WIT is indeed the story of online travel in the region.

I cannot take all the credit though for being the sole founder of the WIT Conference.

WIT started life as Wired Travel Asia in 2005 as a partnership between Martin Kelly of Travel Trends Australia (left) and I – he approached me to ask if I would be interested and we both worked on the concept of the event over wine at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Singapore. The best ideas are often brewed best over wine, I believe. (Vera Lye, pictured centre, was an integral part of the trio that was at the start of WIT.)

We both saw an opportunity for an event that would focus on travel distribution, marketing and technology with the way the web was changing travel – and, as fellow journalists, we both wanted to capture that wave of change.

Martin and I ran Wired Travel Asia for two years until he decided to focus on Australia, his home market, and so I took on the event on my own and grew and shaped it to its current format, with a lot of help from friends, as you rightly observed.

WIT is a conference that reflects the times – it is social, collaborative and communal. The different derivatives of WIT – Japan, Indonesia, Australia, Thailand, youths, women, etc – would not be possible with partnerships, relationships and champions.

You are right in saying that Asia has come a long way. I remember Adrian Currie, chairman of Agoda, at an earlier event saying that one day, we wouldn’t be saying online vs offline travel because it will all be just travel – and he is right.

The Internet has become so much a part of everyday life now – as we found in our Unplugged 480 experiment – and so much a part of travel that it’s really part and parcel of the whole business now.

What it is is a different way of doing business and a different way of engaging with our customers. And travel in Asia is the richer for it because it really empowers travellers to discover our region on their own and not as determined by suppliers.

Asia has evolved differently, as you observed. Each market has developed its own unique characteristics which local players have understood and taken advantage of and they’ve made it difficult for global brands to take hold on their soil.

We saw it in China and India, in particular, and now we will see it playing out in Indonesia where local players have moved in quickly to try and consolidate their positions before the global brands get in.

This is the next market to watch in e-commerce and travel and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I am also watching the developments in Japan with interest. Here’s a highly traditional market that’s being changed by low cost carriers and new players leveraging on technology to cut through to changing customer behaviour, and the play-off will be interesting as it unfolds.

Global brands such as Priceline and Expedia however have learnt much from their earlier forays and today come armed with scale, precision in execution, and locally-grown teams that know the ins and outs of each market well. So I expect them to become ever more aggressive and skillful in how they expand in the region.

Priceline’s acquisition of Kayak for US$1.8 billion is interesting and let’s watch what the group does in Asia on this front. It’s set up an investment fund to look at opportunities in the region, as shared at WIT 2012.

Kayak needs to expand beyond the US and there are a couple of travel meta-searches sites in Asia which have been developing under their own steam – regional player, Wego, which has expanded to several local sites and local sites like travel.jp in Japan. Look at Baidu’s acquisition of Qunar and let’s not forget Skyscanner which is expanding well in Asia and who can forget Google in its bid to get into flight search – so this space is hot and about to get hotter.

Then of course there’s the Asia-based players who are also expanding – look at India’s MakeMyTrip buying hoteltravel.com – read post. It knows organic growth will not be good enough to compete against the likes of booking.com and Agoda that are both scoring huge successes in the region.

Then there’s Rakuten of Japan which is looking to expand on two fronts – in the travel vertical and beyond Japan. It has its own strategy which it shared at WIT 2012, a very different one from Priceline’s, which is what will make the OTA space a hot one to watch in 2013.

You also talked about how Asia is different in social and mobile and how right you are. There is a clear difference in customer behaviour between the region and the rest of the world and I’d have to write several posts on this alone.

I know though that people keep saying that Asia is not one market and that it’s diverse and fragmented and therefore each market has to be treated as its own entity.

Which is correct but I detect for the first time a growing sense of Asian consciousness in the region, one that’s forged by technology, the coming of age of a new generation with less historic baggage and Asia’s new position in the world.

This is what will make travel in Asia a great and interesting space to watch and report on in 2013 and so we look forward to putting together the ninth edition of WIT.