Mark Inkster, who started a travel social networking site in China, is working at Microsoft as the Managing Director for South East Asia's Online Services, based in Singapore. His goal is to build a strong and engaged audience in South-east Asia. He shares with Yeoh Siew Hoon his view of the future.

Mark Inkster was on a river rafting trip in Idaho when he first heard the call of China. "We were students then and the conversation somehow turned to China and its role in our future and since I had to pick a foreign language, I thought, why not Chinese," the managing director-South-east Asia for Microsoft Online Services, based in Singapore, recalled.

That decision was to serve him well in later years. He went for further studies in Beijing and after that, spent the better part of his career in Asia including serving as chief  product officer at eBay China and working with Yahoo! for five years, including as vice president of search, Asia-Pacific; general manager, Canada; and director of international operations. 

After his stint with eBay ended, he decided to stay on in Shanghai and in 2006, started up China Cascade Interactive, Inc and during this time, he built China's leading user-generated-content travel planning site, www.yiqilai.com.cn

In March this year, he joined Microsoft where he is responsible for the overall Online Services Group portfolio, leading the Windows Live, MSN and Microsoft Advertising teams across six markets – Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.

Inkster, who will be speaking at WIT-Web In Travel, sees his role as similar to a publisher – to grow and build a strong and engaged audience and to monetise it. "My goal is to grow market share and build a solid business in South-east Asia."

He calls it a "fascinating" time to be in the Internet space in the region.
"South east Asia has a unique variety of culture and the technological development curve varies from market to market. It is not homogenous like US or China. Thus, I believe that we have to go local in order to grow and gain the brand preference from our customers here." 

For him, technology is fundamentally about improving the efficiencies of the right process and finding the right solution and then enabling the right service to find the right customer. "The key success story on the web is that of the long tail effect – connecting a customer to a service that would not otherwise be connected."

In the travel industry, technology is helping to drive efficiencies in distribution. "You could argue that the OTAs are more efficient than the traditional travel agencies. In China, they are trying to build a hotel GDS which would enable small hotels that never had a chance to have a channel."

"In the category of search advertising, too, we see a lot of travel play and that's driving efficiencies in advertising for suppliers."

He agreed however that SEM (Search Engine Marketing) was getting more expensive "which is why people want to see an alternative".

Inkster, who said his experience with Yiqilai.com.cn in China was the best learning anyone could have, sees convergence happening in how a user plans his trip. "They'll use the Web, they'll ask a friend, they'll do a search and they'll go to a trusted site."

When we met, Inkster had planned a last minute getaway to Langkawi and was himself searching on the web, asking people about the island and going to sites that he knew had information on Langkawi.

He wasn't that sure about mobile as a tool for travel planning. "While you're traveling on the road, it may be more useful. It depends if you are traveling solo or with a family, that affects how you plan and buy travel."

He sees an exciting five to 10 years ahead for technological innovation in devices, operating systems and applications.

Microsoft's vision is "software plus services". "There's a movement towards software and it doesn't matter whether it's happening in computing or the cloud. Sometimes you're at your PC and there is no hot spot, so a lot of the time, you are not connected and a lot of stuff is still happening on your PC.

"So some things will happen on the PC and some will happen in the cloud, you have to combine the two."

Inkster sees a future that's a lot more connected. "Devices will remain distinct but interact more with each other."

As for social networks and whether they will splinter into more vertical groups, he said, "There is still room for a lot of innovation – we will see development of B2B platforms, we will see integration of the social networks. Windows Live allows you to pull all your status updates and makes it easy for people to see what different friends are doing on different sites."

Yeoh Siew Hoon, one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, writes a regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry for 4Hoteliers.com.

Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her other writings can be found at www.thetransitcafe.com

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