ITB China 2018 unveils Conference line-up, launches Business Travel Day

ITB China has unveiled its conference programme for this year, which will spotlight topics such as customised travel and travel tech, and will launch its inaugural Business Travel Day.

The ITB China Conference will kick off on May 16 with opening keynotes by James Jianzhang Liang, co-founder and executive chairman of the board at Ctrip, who in addition to other speakers like Eduardo Santander, executive director of European Travel Commission, and Yiyi Jiang, head of international tourism research, China Tourism Academy, will make up the morning session.

A speaker at the ITB China Conference last year

The afternoon sessions on May 16 will cover the topics of destinations and customised travel. For the destination segment, Phocuswright founder Philip Wolf will moderate panel discussion on the ECTY, looking at how to make Europe more attractive to Chinese tourists; Joseph Wang, chief commercial officer, TravelDaily China, will moderate a panel discussion on Connecting Destinations with Chinese Millennials; Iris Cai, co-founder, UniqueWay, will speak on The Implementation of AI and Big Data in Customised Travel, while executives from Abercrombie Kent as well as Lushu will present keynote speeches on how to design customised travel products.

The conference sessions on the second day of ITB China will focus on Travel Tech, which will see presentations by Chinese industry experts such as Mafengwo.com vice president Bin Du and Fliggy vice president Fisk Yu, as well as a panel discussion looking at hotel distribution.

Meanwhile, the Business Travel Day will kick off with a panel on “How Technological Innovations Are Transforming Business Travel”, moderated by Jonathan Kao, BCD Travel’s managing director from Greater China, followed by discussions with key players in the Chinese corporate travel scene.

Alicia Yao Hong, regional vice president, PCMA ICESAP will set the scene for the MICE session with a keynote speech and a case study on the “Belt and Road Initiative – How Does It Affect the Business Events Industry in China?”. A further discussion led by Philip Pang, PCMA ICESAP’s marketing and membership manager, will follow.

This year’s edition of ITB China takes place in Shanghai from May 16 to 18.

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