Speakers:
Charlie Osmond
Chief Growth Officer
Triptease
Passionate about improving online travel, Charlie launched Triptease to help hotels deliver a better digital experience and increase direct bookings.
Charlie built his first business straight after graduating from Oxford with a degree in Engineering. He was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year by Esquire Magazine and one of HSMAI’s ‘Extraordinary Minds’. He won The Sunday Times £5M London Entrepreneur Challenge, is a Companion of CMI and a Fellow of the British American Project.
In his spare time, Charlie is a keen sailor and runner. His marathon exploits have taken him to Kazakhstan, North Korea, and Death Valley. In 2021, he set a World Record at the London Marathon dressed as Planet Earth.
Sanjay Vakil
Co-Founder
DirectBooker
Sanjay Vakil is a seasoned product and engineering leader with a strong track record of driving innovation in travel, hospitality, and digital experiences. He spent the 90's at MIT training as an aerospace engineer culminating in a PhD – he's actually a rocket scientist.
Over the past two decades, he has played a pivotal role in shaping and shipping key products at industry giants like Google, Tripadvisor, and Time Out Group, with a focus on enhancing direct booking capabilities, optimizing digital advertising, and leveraging AI for personalization. During his tenure at Google, Sanjay led teams across Hotels, Flights, Things to Do, and Vacation Packages. For Hotels, he led projects like Free Booking Links, Official Site badging, AI-powered price retrieval, and building Extranet tools to improve supplier visibility and direct revenue.
With expertise spanning AI, metasearch, advertising technology, travel tech, and digital commerce, Sanjay continues to push the boundaries of how businesses engage with customers in an evolving digital world.
Sanjay is the Co-founder of DirectBooker, designing for the future of AI-driven distribution since its inception. They are taking their knowledge of planet-scale computing from Google and applying it to understanding how to capitalize on how AI is shifting the hotels ecosystem.
Ira Vouk
Author of “Hospitality 2.0”
Hospitality tech and AI consultant
Ira Vouk is the acclaimed author of top industry publications "Revenue Management Made Easy", “Hotel Tech 101” and “Hospitality 2.0” and the originator of the first in the industry online learning courses on hospitality technology and AI search optimization, currently offered to large organizations all over the world. Recently recognized as "top 17 technology professionals inspiring innovation in the US hotel industry" and added to AHLA/HTNG T100 – a group of 100 top global technology leaders transforming the future of hospitality.
Ira is a hospitality consultant and tech innovator who brings two decades of practical industry experience, predominantly championing the role of revenue management and the use of data and technology to provide hospitality companies with insight to lead their business strategy better.
She is also a public speaker and educator on revenue and profit optimization, distribution and hospitality tech and currently teaches Hospitality Technology at Payne School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at SDSU.
Ira is also a contributing writer for various hospitality publications and platforms and a guest lecturer at various universities worldwide.
