IWTA speaks with Mary Li, Founder and CEO, Atlas
The journey trade has a singular capacity to interrupt down limitations, convey folks collectively, and create alternatives for progress and discovery. Touring shouldn’t be a privilege or luxurious, however one thing that everybody ought to have entry to. Atlas goals to make journey extra accessible and reasonably priced by connecting journey sellers with low-cost airways worldwide via superior expertise.
In dialog with the IWTA Committee, Mary Li, Founder and CEO, Atlas shares extra about her transformative journey via journey. Going forward from powerful Covid occasions to construct an inclusive journey expertise firm, that units trade benchmarks and paces up a proactive staff.
Q. How did you get began within the journey trade? And why the journey trade?
A. I didn’t have a traditional journey into the journey trade. It was a path I found later in life, however it has been extremely rewarding. After spending almost, a decade caring for my daughter, I re-entered the workforce in my mid-30s with a China-based journey company, Wingon Journey.
Regardless of having no prior expertise in journey, I noticed this as a possibility to study. I used to be intrigued by the journey trade due to its complexity and the numerous function it performs in connecting folks worldwide.
As I grew older, I spotted the transformative impression that journey can have. The journey trade has a singular capacity to interrupt down limitations, convey folks collectively, and create alternatives for progress and discovery. It opens minds, broadens views, and fosters empathy and understanding throughout cultures.
For me, the journey trade isn’t nearly enterprise, or my profession; it’s about goal and a technique to make a optimistic distinction on the planet. It’s about utilizing my abilities and experience to make journey extra accessible and inclusive for everybody.
“My mother sells aircraft tickets.” From elementary faculty to highschool, my daughter would proudly introduce me to her pals like this. In her eyes, I used to be doing probably the most invaluable job, one which helped many individuals see the world. Whether or not it was in an previous home serving as an workplace area, a cubicle in a industrial constructing, or the high-tech Alibaba campus in Hangzhou, it didn’t matter.
So, why the journey trade? As a result of I imagine in its energy to alter lives, and I’m dedicated to being part of that change.
Q. Are you able to share a big second out of your private journey that impressed your ardour for journey?
A. As a baby rising up in China within the Seventies, the concept of journey was a overseas idea to me. Nonetheless, books like Jane Eyre and The Thorn Birds opened my eyes to the world outdoors of my hometown. I used to be fascinated by the huge and thrilling world that lay past my attain and longed for the chance to discover it for myself. My first experiences of journey have been on group bus excursions that took me to numerous purchasing facilities throughout Hong Kong, Thailand, and Macau. Though this may occasionally not look like probably the most thrilling technique to journey, to me, every little thing was new, unique, and thrilling and I loved each second.
Years have handed since these early travels, and I’ve visited numerous locations and met many individuals alongside the best way. But, I’m nonetheless in love with journey and its magical energy to alter folks’s lives.
My eldest sister, Ying, retired a number of years in the past after her husband handed away. Throughout certainly one of my visits house, she informed me that she had set a aim to journey to 100 international locations in her lifetime. Regardless of having a retirement wage of solely $700 per thirty days and never realizing any English, she has managed to go to over 40 international locations to this point. I’m all the time moved by her smile and her pleasure for her subsequent journey each time I’m going house. She plans her finances fastidiously and goes on a gaggle tour each 2-3 months to tick extra international locations off her checklist. Her newest journey took her to Europe, the place she visited six international locations in a single go.
Her instance jogs my memory that touring shouldn’t be a privilege or luxurious, however one thing that everybody ought to have entry to. It offers me the motivation to go to work each single day.
Q. Are you able to share a difficult challenge you undertook in your journey profession and the way you overcame it?
A. Essentially the most difficult challenge is all the time the one I’m engaged on proper now. At this time, it’s to construct a world, inclusive journey expertise firm that solves trade puzzles and makes folks really feel enthusiastic about coming to work every single day.
Transferring to Singapore to launch Atlas was a daring choice, on reflection. I stepped removed from my consolation zone and started from scratch, slowly constructing my staff and clarifying our imaginative and prescient for the corporate. We launched Atlas in September 2019, just some months earlier than the worldwide journey trade got here to a halt and airplanes have been grounded on account of Covid 19. However every hurdle has pushed us to develop and adapt in distinctive methods. For instance, the pandemic gave us time to concentrate on constructing a stable, scalable expertise platform that turned the muse of what we provide now.
One of many largest challenges to this point was to pursue our imaginative and prescient of connecting the world in a real, real manner. We all know that to construct a very international enterprise that brings worth to everybody on the planet, we should always begin from the within out – with our staff.
Our staff is made up of individuals from totally different international locations with various backgrounds and languages. We intention to create a ‘ONE TEAM tradition’ the place everybody can thrive and be themselves with out being pressured to adapt to any explicit manner of doing issues.
Constructing a very multicultural staff and merging totally different cultures isn’t straightforward. It takes dedication, endurance and respect to use this method to apply. Doing this nicely requires deep perception into the cultures, traditions and mindsets of various folks and locations. Like each group that ever tried it, we face challenges – distant working limitations, cultural misunderstandings and assumptions, and language limitations.
And it’s mutual belief that paves the best way for understanding and openness. We attempt to create an setting the place everybody has a voice and feels comfortable talking up. In any case, innovation solely thrives in a tradition of variety and inclusion, and we will’t remedy some large trade issues with out each certainly one of us having a voice.
Q. How has working in journey or a profession in journey broadened your understanding of various cultures and traditions?
A. In twenty years within the journey trade, I’ve despatched myself world wide numerous occasions. Throughout these journeys, I skilled many great and touching moments that made me perceive and respect the similarities and variations all of us share.
My most particular expertise of touring was after I went on a two-year solo journey journey, after leaving a high-profile function at Alibaba Group.
This expertise opened my eyes to the wonder and variety of our world. It taught me to understand totally different cultures, traditions, and views. I explored locations like Tibet, Japan, Israel, Kenya, and varied components of the US and Europe, however it was within the soul of India’s bustling chaos that I discovered one thing actually particular.
Regardless of the stark contrasts of wealth and poverty in India, there’s an amazing sense of freedom and pleasure. Throughout my time in India, I immersed myself in its various cultures, traditions, and religions. I met unimaginable folks from totally different walks of life, every with their very own distinctive tales. What struck me probably the most was the energy and resilience of the Indian folks, and the boundless love and acceptance they shared with me.
I then spent two years working in India. I used to be a co-CEO of Mystifly, a journey expertise firm with an important staff. They confirmed me much more colours and smells of India. When folks ask me how I survived in India, I all the time encourage folks to go there and expertise it firsthand. I not solely survived, however I additionally liked India.
It’s exceptional how journey serves as a bridge, connecting folks and fostering cross-cultural understanding. It was in India that I spotted I may flip my strengths and abilities right into a purpose-led enterprise. I may use it to assist open journey to extra folks the world over.
Q. Are you able to share the story behind beginning your personal travel-related enterprise or challenge?
A. With two profitable companies underneath my belt, Atlas is my third journey start-up. Each time, I used to be pushed by a powerful perception that I may discover options to systemic inefficiencies I noticed round me.
My first expertise in journey was with Wingon Journey, a conventional offline journey company. Throughout my time there, I witnessed firsthand all the problems with reserving flights for our clients. It required a very sophisticated and principally guide course of, and I noticed the potential to make use of expertise to handle these challenges. It impressed me to launch Aslan, a data-processing firm, that shortly turned the biggest B2B air ticketing platform in China. In 2014, Aslan was acquired by Alitrip, now Fliggy, the place I stayed for 2 years as Head of Air Tickets.
Later, in 2019, I launched Atlas, one other journey tech firm. I began it as a result of I needed to resolve points with distributing air content material from low-cost carriers. Whereas these airways have been taking increasingly share of the aviation market, journey brokers couldn’t entry their information in a cohesive, seamless method.
Atlas goals to make journey extra accessible and reasonably priced by connecting journey sellers with low-cost airways worldwide via superior expertise, and we selected this identify for a cause.
On the finish of June 2019, my daughter Xinyu and I visited the Nationwide Gallery in Singapore and explored the exhibition “Between Declarations and Desires”. One room displayed maps drawn to fulfill the wants of colonizers as Portugal and the Netherlands invaded and colonized Southeast Asia beginning within the sixteenth century. Attributable to totally different eras and mapmakers, the identical geographical location could possibly be depicted in a different way on varied maps. These differentiated maps have been compiled into atlases. Earlier than this expertise, I hadn’t thought deeply about it. It appeared that the outcomes from Google or different serps have been the one solutions, presenting an oblong aircraft or a 3D scene earlier than me.
Staring on the yellowed rolls of maps behind the glass cupboard and evaluating the variations in the identical location on totally different maps was fascinating. Maybe if I have been to attract them right this moment, the outcome can be totally different. Even when confronted with the identical surroundings, the reminiscences left in every individual’s thoughts can be totally different. Touring permits us to create our distinctive atlases.
Q. If you happen to could possibly be something on the planet or do any function, what wouldn’t it be?
A. I’m already doing what I imagine is the perfect job on the planet. I’ve by no means loved my life greater than I do now, even with the stress and challenges that include constructing an organization.
My mission is to assist convey extra acceptance and inclusion on the planet via the facility of journey, and with Atlas, we’re making journey extra accessible and reasonably priced. Every thing we do is aligned with our values, and I reside every single day realizing that I do one thing significant and impactful. Constructing a purpose-led enterprise isn’t straightforward, however when you find yourself clear about your targets and imaginative and prescient, it makes it easy and rather more fulfilling!
