Going Dutch to your next conference

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

Have you often had to eat your words or found that words you had written (and appeared in the public domain) or said (in the presence of those who will not let you forget) often come back to bite you?

Well, I have. Two years ago, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece titled, “Want an airline upgrade? Use crutches”, which talked about how a friend managed to get herself into first class just because she was on walking sticks.

Well, that sure came back and bit me in the right leg.

Then a few weeks ago, I wrote about Radiohead – you know, the indie, underground, sneaky-clever group that put its songs on the Internet and allowed its customers to pay what they wanted – and I said more of us should do it in the travel industry.

Well, I suppose I now have to live up to my words too.

Last week, I was approached by an Internet start-up, Conference Bay, run by two Dutch guys – I only mention nationality for factual purposes and for no other reason – to list my event, WIT-Web In Travel, on their auction site.

With a week to go, plus the fact that I am a sucker when it comes to trying anything new, I agreed – I mean, what do I have to lose, right?

First though a little bit about the boys from Holland. Arnout Mostert used to be in the oil industry and when he was living in London in the late 90s, he went to a lot of conferences.

It was probably during a particularly boring event that he started thinking, “hey, a lot of these people are giving tickets away for free as their event nears, I wonder if I can apply this model to the travel industry”.

After all, he reasoned, if hotels can practice revenue management, why can’t event organisers? Could the Priceline model work for events, he wondered.

It’s a very simple business model – in Arnout’s words, “we give the organisers the key to the engine, let them update the event, use the system and we make money when they accept bids and take bookings”.

His partner is Frank Bowers, an investment banker, and they’ve got a nice little set-up with a handful of staff – the office is in one of those old shophouses along Mohd Sultan, Singapore’s Street of Swing, above a bar called Martini. I mention that also for factual purposes and for no other reason.

The site now has 175 events listed and they want to focus on events from Dubai to Australia so that they can get critical mass on content.

As with all Internet businesses, their challenge is to get buyers to the site.

Arnout believes the discount mentality in Asia works in his favour. “People love bargaining here and bidding will ultimately make life easier for organisers and delegates. I think there is a mis-match between pricing of events and the ability of delegates to pay.”

So we’ll see how it goes. WIT-Web In Travel, taking place November 29-30, is now listed at http://www.conferencebay.com/
ConferenceDetailsPage.aspx?topicid=161&
subtopicid=345&cid=559

I am dead curious to see what kind of bids I will get – hey, this could be fun. I feel like the T-shirt seller in Patong already.

“Sir, want buy? Cheap, cheap. How much you pay?”

“$50.”

“Who do you think I am? Radiohead?”

Catch more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Cafe

PS: You’ll have to be quick to bid for Web in Travel, the conference closes tomorrow.