Category: Mekong Faces

I grew up and studied in West-Berlin, Germany, with first visits to Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong already in the 1970s. As a publisher, bookseller, tour operator, organiser of events, exhibitions and fairs and in the new millennium as Professor for International Tourism Management and Founder of the COTRI China Outbound Tourism Research Institute East and Southeast Asia have been the center of my economic and scientific life. I retired from university and I am happy that after the pandemic all my energy can go into helping to achieve a sustainable development of tourism in the region.

For the last dozen years, I have lived and devoted myself to sustainable hospitality and tourism in Vietnam and the Mekong region. I have been an international hotel and gaming consultant, a restaurant owner and operator, and lectured widely at top US universities and culinary schools.

I established and ran STREETS International, an ambitious social enterprise providing vocational hospitality and culinary training to poor, marginalized, orphaned, and trafficked youth from Vietnam and Cambodia. The STREETS residential program included two authentic Vietnamese eateries based in Hoi An, Vietnam. Pre-pandemic, we served approximately 15,000 guests per year. We have over 350 graduates at the best hotels and resorts throughout the region.

I have been a speaker and award recipient from Destination Mekong a number of times. I know its importance and also the potential.

As the Mekong and other parts of the world taught me the power of travel, the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan made this tangible even more. People flew in across borders to combine efforts, where I saw that the more diverse people collaborate, the more solutions for a sustainable region. Since then, with sustainable development and humanity as a purpose, I have been dedicated to facilitating this through consulting, designing travel to capacity-building for people across cultures and sectors. I founded Journey for Change Co., Ltd. in 2019 to offer consultation and human resource development around sustainable travel and education, integrating approaches of sustainable tourism, social innovation, and change. With a vision to further behavioral to the systematic transformation towards a positive balance of society, environment, and economy, works include supporting destinations and businesses such as world heritage sites, Japan’s national airline and stakeholders, and academia including a partnership with a graduate school bridging multidisciplinary science.

I have more than 20 years of experience representing National Tourism organizations of diverse countries, especially island nations. Prioritizing promoting sustainable tourism, I have helped destinations connect to the Korean market.
As an avid traveler, I believe in minimizing the economic leakage destinations experience by staying at local-owned hotels, eating at local restaurants, and finding local tour operators. I have worked closely with local-owned facilities to connect them to the Korean market.

Bringing positive change in the lives of the most vulnerable and discovering new cultures have been the two key drivers of my career. I have been working on various capacity building projects targeting the social and economic inclusion of disadvantaged populations, most of them focused on tourism training. Most notably, I supported the launch and implementation of the Lao National Institute of Tourism and Hospitality’s skills training programs. I also have coordinated the Association of Southeast Asian Social Enterprises for Training in Hospitality & Catering, a network that brings together vocational training centers that provide underprivileged youth with a path to employment in the tourism and hospitality industry across Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. These experiences convinced me of the difference that tourism can make for people if destinations are able to harness its benefits while mitigating its negative effects.

I worked in the travel industry for almost three decades, initially as a travel trade journalist, specializing in sustainable tourism, and later in executive positions, doing business development for global players such as Microsoft, Expedia, and Accor Asia Pacific, with career stations in Germany, Hong Kong, and Singapore. My wife is from Myanmar and together we decided to move to Myanmar and build “Loikaw Lodge by the Lake”, a small, upscale Boutique Hotel in remote Kayah State. That was back in 2015. Shortly after opening our Lodge, The CultureTrip.com recommended the Lodge as one of the ten “Best Hotels to stay at in Myanmar”. The Lodge is also featured in the “Experience Mekong Collection” that showcases “innovative, responsible travel experiences and businesses in the Greater Mekong Subregion, based on unique best practices and successful implementation and execution of innovations in responsible tourism development”. In my spare time I love to explore, mingle with local people and take portraits of the different ethnics that make Myanmar and the Mekong region so diverse and unique as a destination.

My entrepreneurial edge was sharpened, while studying medicine and working in a psychiatric hospital in Germany, when starting a unique food catering business, after buying a crepe maker in France, and offering crepes to parties in hospitals and street fairs, before crepes became popular in Germany. I went on to study hotel management in Switzerland, graduating with an MBA from Cornell University, and currently completing my doctorate thesis from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

When I was 24 years old, I was a General Manager of an 80-room golf resort in Germany, and I went on to work for luxury hotel companies from Kempinski Hotels & Resorts, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, and Dusit Hotels & Resorts, before moving into tourism. My first step into government was working for the Canadian Tourism Commission (now Destination Canada) as head of Marketing Strategy. Digital & CRM, after being  appointed as Executive Director of the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office by the six member countries.

Always having  been fascinated by Asia, I move to Beijing for 5 years and co-founded pioneering marketing and travel technology firm Dragon Trail in 2008, as well published the China Travel Trends books and online magazine, while being Chair for PATA China (Pacific Asia Travel Association). After almost 8 years heading the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office, I have recently left Bangkok for the Caribbean, having been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Tourism Board of the Republic of Barbados. I am humbled to have been recognized as, Top 100 Rising Stars in Travel (2003),  Top 25 Extraordinary Minds in Travel and Tourism (204), Top 20 Brilliant Minds in European Hospitality (2014), and Global Tourism Hero (2021). 

I have been working in tourism since I was a student of civil engineering in Weimar, Germany. During that time, I took my first hotel service job and got excited about the services and hospitality industries. I later worked for the World Exhibition and the Autostadt, which is a theme park by Volkswagen, before I decided to change my studies to international marketing and tourism. This brought me to Asia, where I studied at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore before joining the Singapore Tourism Board. Afterwards, I started my first own businesses, supplying hotels with teas and consulting companies on marketing and branding. Year later, I was asked to help Dusit Hotels & Resorts with their branding and loyalty programs, which brought me from Singapore to Bangkok, where I joined Chameleon Strategies, which is the lead partner in Destination Mekong. Overall, I have worked in this sector for close to 20 years and had the privilege to work on a number of exciting international projects in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East and I hope to use this knowledge to support the industry in the region.