More than 15 leaders in the online travel industry gathered at a villa on a private island in Miami to brainstorm ideas on how to 'navigate the perfect storm'.

The half-day Online Travel Executive Retreat, organized jointly by Amadeus and WiT, was held in conjunction with The Phocuswright Conference 2019, which provided a perfect backdrop for the discussion with its own theme of “Are We There Yet?”

“Our event theme was how to navigate the perfect storm,” said Mieke De Schepper, Executive Vice President, Online Travel and Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Amadeus. “All the activities that are happening in the industry are creating a perfect storm and in 3-5 years, the world we operate in will be totally different.”

As De Schepper she sees it, four forces are converging to create challenges for online travel agencies who are at the centre of the storm – Consumer Channel Change, Competition Consolidation, Content Chaos and Connectivity Combat and all of this is amplified by tech disruption with AI, 5G, Blockchain and Machine Learning.

The group first took a leisurely cruise down the Miami Intracoastal waterway to the private island, and met the owner of the villa, which provided the setting for the retreat. “His was an interesting story, how he bought it five years ago and turned it into the house of his dreams.”

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