The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) held its various committee meetings during the on-going PATA 60th anniversary celebrations and Annual Conference event in Beijing.

The Industry Council (IC) meeting welcomed new members to the committee, while still others were nominated on to the Board and as proxies to the Board. This meeting marked the end of Luzi Matzig’ tenure as chairman, and he received a warm round of applause from all the members.  Arjun Sharma now takes over as chairman, while Scott Supernaw was unanimously elected as vice chair of the IC.

This also marks the first time that the Hospitality Committee, which was formed out of hoteliers hitherto belonging to the Industry Council, formally held its own meeting later in the day, chaired by Kevin Murphy.

The IC discussions are always lively and filled with diverse points of view, considering that the members come from different sectors of the travel and tourism industry. Points of discussion included whether there should be a mandatory year’s break between the IC tenures; whether it could be allowed to have proxies represent absent members at an IC meeting, and the top five priorities that PATA should be focusing on in the immediate future. There were also presentations made by Nielsen China and Bert van Walbeek respectively.