Travel entrepreneurs inspire young talents

Social media, specialization and personalization - those are the three big areas to invest in over the next few years if you want to be an entrepreneur in the travel industry.

This was the advice shared by three Singapore-based travel entrepreneurs who shared their stories at a travel event held for students and young talent in Singapore at the Fairmont Singapore recently.

Mr Morris Sim, CEO and co-founder, Circos Brand Karma, Martin Symes, CEO of Wego and Mr Loh Lik Peng, owner of Hotel 1929 and New Majestic were speaking during a panel on "Inspiration for Entrepreneurs" at WIT*e - Inspiration & Mentoring, a regular event organised by WIT-Web In Travel.

Need to use social media

When they were asked where the next big ideas were in travel, Mr Loh cited social media and how travel businesses like his could leverage on that.

Mr Symes said that with the basics in place for the online travel market in Asia - such as OTAs and search, it was time to exploit "tiny little bits of the supply chain" as entrepreneurs in the US were doing by specializing in and building niche products.

Mr Sim cited the ability to personalize the guest experience, not just technically but also in service and the way we interact with customers. Travellers are accessing longtail content and there is a need for that to be addressed, he said. Longtail content refers to niche, specialised products at the end of the supply chain.

At the end though, Mr Symes said people invested in people. And according to the audience at WIT*e that night, qualities needed to be an entrepreneur included courage, passion, drive, vision, adventure and a sense of humour.

Origins of top travel entrepreneurs

All three shared their stories of how they started.

For Mr Sim, it was the belief that he could make an impact in a faster manner than inside a big company like Microsoft where he worked for several years. Using his experience at Microsoft, he started up Circos Brand Karma, a social media analytics company, almost six years ago with two close friends - "and we are still friends".

Mr Symes, who worked with airlines and later joined the online travel agency, ZUJI, when it was starting up, said it was a lot of fun in the early days of start-up. Then it got taken over by a single shareholder and it wasn't so fun anymore. He considered a couple of consulting jobs and decided to get involved with Wego, a travel search portal, nine months after it was founded.

"I like doing things that change the world in my own space a little bit."

He admitted he was a little nervous at the beginning. He had just had a child, his wife had stopped working. "But I thought even if it goes horribly wrong, I would have had fun and learn a lot."

Mr Loh did not plan to be a hotelier fulltime. He bought the site which would become the Hotel 1929 in 2002 and thought he'd spend time between his legal career and investment. But when the hotel opened, he had so much fun and better things came along. "Being a lawyer was not so much fun anyway," he said.

In careers like law and medicine, he said, the amount you earn is restricted by the hours you can work. As an entrepreneur, your earnings are limited by your drive and ability to innovate. "The sky is the limit."

Trust your inner voice

It's not all fun though. For Mr Loh, the hardest thing about being an entrepreneur is the loneliness and you have to learn to trust your inner voice. When you start up and have to explain yourself, people will tell you it will never work, he said, especially his lawyer friends who are, by nature, risk-averse.

"You have to switch on that inner voice and let it run your life."

For Mr Symes, it's money. As a start-up, the outgoings is always more than the incomings and there are times when you can't sleep and you ask yourself, how are you going to pay the wages? "It's not like that anymore, thank God," he laughed.

Another difficulty is if you're running a business in which you're only a shareholder, and not the owner, your title as CEO means very little internally.

If you're working for a big organization, you have a corner office and nice job title, and that carries positional power. It's easier to get things done in a big organization as opposed to working with a bunch of friends who are passionate about what they do and know more than you. "A title means nothing," said Mr Symes.

For Mr Sim, it's staying focused. When you start a business, you have a vision that's different from what's out there. The road to implementation is also always longer than you think. Customers look at you very funny like you're speaking a different language. Others will try and re-shape your vision and it's easy to get pulled one way or another.

"You have to have the conviction that it's the right thing to do, that it's a market-changing thing and stick to it."

The three also noted that Singapore was probably one of the easiest places to be an entrepreneur since it has a good business infrastructure and strong support from government departments. (Both Circos Brand Karma and Wego are recipients of Singapore government grants.)

Be an entrepreneur when you're young

Mr Sim told the students that if they had a good idea and believed in it, they should go for it. "Follow your heart. At the age you are at, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain - you can always get a job somewhere. If you really have an idea and you can make it happen, go try it - what do you have to lose?"

He said it was much harder to do a start-up later in life when you have a family than when you are young and single.

Mr Symes said that he had always admired people who knew early on what they wanted to do. On his part, he said that his early experience working in corporations gave him good grounding in running his own business.

Working with corporations can give you exposure to different functions and different countries so you can "work out the things you don't want to do".

Mr Loh said, "Go work for other people first." He said it was rare to find someone with strong management skills and vision when you are young and just starting up. Examples like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook are the exception rather than the rule.

"My background gave me a lot of skills I needed badly - it gives you credibility with people you work with and who you have to manage, to do your numbers, talk with the banks. Learn what you're good at and bad at, at someone else's expense."

On the other hand though, Mr Symes said that once you start climbing the corporate ladder, it can be difficult to give up the comfort and trappings. "So if you've an idea, then do it - especially if you have mum and dad who can finance it."