Episode #10 - Kei Shibata Co-Founder & CEO Venture Republic

We chat with Kei Shibata Founder & CEO of Venture Republic Japan's largest travel metasearch business including Travel.jp, the "Kayak.com of Japan" about change and innovation in the travel-tech space Welcome to the Travel Massive podcast, an interview series with travel industry change-makers and pioneers, sharing their stories and insights. Your host is Holly Galbraith, tourism expert and also host of the Tourism Tweetup Podcast (www.gofuturemedia.com). Highlights: Kei talks about disruption in the travel and tech space including: - what does it mean to be a "disruptor?" - how The Venture Republic centres "users" around their business model - how sacrificing financial gain sometimes is needed to get ahead of the competition - finding new ways to innovate in the travel space, change the travel industry, and impact the way travellers travel and make decisions when they travel Recent successes of The Venture Republic: - syndicating 400+ travel brokers around the world - generating 8,000+ content on travel to increase traffic and see how users' behaviour is changing - found mobile readership increase by 80% in Japan so instant decisions on mobile will only grow Tips for a successful startup: - focus, passion and loyalty - having too niche of a market makes it hard to scale the business - dedicate your effort in a bigger, sizeable market Kei also reveals the next big emerging market to watch for new innovators and disruptors in travel and tech You can follow Kei on Travel Massive over at https://travelmassive.com/keishibata If you enjoyed this episode or you would like to submit feedback, please leave a comment or email [email protected]