Judges

Johan works at Google where he specializes in helping hotels and airlines grow their online footprint and revenues through Google Advertising. Privately he's an avid traveler, photographer, and artist with a healthy restlessness and disregard for the unknown. Johan has lived in six countries and speaks five languages. He has also been a contributor to a Swedish National Radio travel show, where he delivered travel reportages from China, Istanbul, Copenhagen, and Serbia, among several other places.

Paul Pruangkarn is the Director – Communications & External Affairs at the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand.

He oversees day-to-day operations of all communications and serves as the senior spokesperson for the Association. Paul works to enhance PATA’s public image through various media outlets and maintains the Association’s media partnerships with such organizations as BBC World News, National Geographic Traveller (UK), Skift, TTG Asia, Travel Weekly Group and the Professional Travel Bloggers Association (PTBA). He has also spoken regularly at conferences on behalf of PATA, as well as facilitated and emceed many events organized by the Association.

Paul hails from New York and has spent the past nine years living in Thailand. Prior to PATA, Paul worked at an Internet start-up in Bangkok as the Senior Business Development Manager, overseeing its daily operations and B2B hotels sales partnerships, and as the Sub-Editor at Radio Thailand English Language News, where he also worked as an on-air personality. Before moving to Thailand, he spent five years as the Newsroom Supervisor at Business Wire, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.

He has also worked for such companies as Reuters, British Petroleum, and Traditional Home Magazine. Paul received his Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Classics with a concentration in Mediterranean Art and Archaeology from the University of Buffalo in New York.

Dileep Mudadeniya possesses many years of experience in travel, tourism, communications and strategic planning and the founder of center for research and sustainability studies. He is the first Managing Director of Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau and also the Additional Director General for Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. He also served as the Regional Director for Sri Lanka Tourism based in Paris overlooking France, Benelux and Southern Europe. Currently he is the Head of Brand Marketing –Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts, CEO – Cinnamon Life Mall, Vice President- John KEELS Group and a member of Tourism National Task Force.

An alumnus of the University of Colombo, an Attorney-at-Law, and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Chartered Marketer Dileep, holds an MBA in Marketing. He is also the Winner of the ten outstanding young person award (TOYP) for public sector.

Representing Hotel Association of Sri Lanka, he will take us through key points in developing a robust tourism strategy.

Royston Ellis is a British novelist, travel writer and editor, author of 60 books, resident in Sri Lanka for 40 years. He is the author of the Bradt and Step by Step guides to Sri Lanka, of the classic India By Rail, and of guidebooks about Mauritius and the Maldives. He was editor for 20 years of Explore Sri Lanka and has contributed travel articles on Sri Lanka to airline magazines and the British press and has lectured on cruise liners and to the Royal Geographical Society about Sri Lanka. He contributes a weekly blog to the popular travel website, www.srilankaholidayguru.com. He lives in a former cinnamon plantation bungalow on Sri Lanka’s west coast overlooking the Indian Ocean, from where travels frequently throughout Sri Lanka. www.roystonellis.website.

Bharat leads the destination marketing business in South Asia where his key focus is to work and support the all tourism boards across the region. In this role, he works directly with National Tourism Organizations as well as regional and city level tourism boards across the region to educate their industry stakeholders as well as promote their destinations to the largest travel audience on the web.

He has over 12 years of experience as a marketing professional, with most of his time spent in online business in India and South Asia. Prior to his appointment as Destination marketing lead at TripAdvisor, Bharat worked for Expedia as Market Manager and worked towards growing their inventory size and market share for Indian Tertiary markets, Nepal and Bangladesh. He has also worked for MakeMyTrip.com where he worked in several roles across Sales and Business Development.

Bharat holds a Post Graduate diploma from Symbiosis and graduated from Commerce College Kota, Rajasthan. He also hold a IATA Foundation Level Diploma.

He hails from a small town of Rajasthan called 'Kota' and is passionate about cooking as well as the outdoors activities like bungee jumping, rafting etc.

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