IWTA speaks with Mary Li, Founder and CEO, Atlas

The journey trade has a novel potential to interrupt down limitations, carry 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 inexpensive by connecting journey sellers with low-cost airways worldwide by way of superior know-how.

In dialog with the IWTA Committee, Mary Li, Founder and CEO, Atlas shares extra about her transformative journey by way of journey. Going forward from powerful Covid instances to construct an inclusive journey know-how 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 standard journey into the journey trade. It was a path I found later in life, but it surely has been extremely rewarding. After spending practically, 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 novel potential to interrupt down limitations, carry 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 strategy to make a constructive distinction on this 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 college to highschool, my daughter would proudly introduce me to her mates like this. In her eyes, I used to be doing essentially the most worthwhile job, one which helped many individuals see the world. Whether or not it was in an outdated home serving as an workplace house, a cubicle in a business constructing, or the high-tech Alibaba campus in Hangzhou, it didn’t matter.

So, why the journey trade? As a result of I consider in its energy to vary lives, and I’m dedicated to being part of that change.

Q. Are you able to share a major second out of your private journey that impressed your ardour for journey?

A. As a toddler rising up in China within the Seventies, the concept of journey was a international idea to me. Nevertheless, 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 had been on group bus excursions that took me to numerous buying facilities throughout Hong Kong, Thailand, and Macau. Though this will likely not seem to be essentially the most thrilling strategy to journey, to me, all the pieces 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 way in which. But, I’m nonetheless in love with journey and its magical energy to vary folks’s lives.

My eldest sister, Ying, retired a number of years in the past after her husband handed away. Throughout one among my visits house, she instructed me that she had set a objective to journey to 100 international locations in her lifetime. Regardless of having a retirement wage of solely $700 per 30 days and never realizing any English, she has managed to go to over 40 international locations up to now. I’m at all times moved by her smile and her pleasure for her subsequent journey each time I’m going house. She plans her funds fastidiously and goes on a gaggle tour each 2-3 months to tick extra international locations off her record. 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. Probably the most difficult challenge is at all times the one I’m engaged on proper now. In the present day, it’s to construct a worldwide, inclusive journey know-how firm that solves trade puzzles and makes folks really feel enthusiastic about coming to work on daily basis.

Shifting to Singapore to launch Atlas was a daring choice, looking back. I stepped removed from my consolation zone and commenced 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 had been grounded as a consequence of Covid 19. However every hurdle has pushed us to develop and adapt in distinctive methods. For instance, the pandemic gave us time to give attention to constructing a stable, scalable know-how platform that grew to become the muse of what we provide now.

One of many largest challenges up to now was to pursue our imaginative and prescient of connecting the world in a real, real manner. We all know that to construct a very world enterprise that brings worth to everybody on this planet, we should always begin from the within out – with our staff.

Our staff is made up of individuals from completely different international locations with various backgrounds and languages. We goal to create a ‘ONE TEAM tradition’ the place everybody can thrive and be themselves with out being pressured to evolve to any specific manner of doing issues.

Constructing a very multicultural staff and merging completely different cultures isn’t simple. It takes dedication, endurance and respect to use this method to follow. Doing this effectively 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 way in which for understanding and openness. We try to create an atmosphere 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 massive trade issues with out each one among 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 around the globe numerous instances. Throughout these journeys, I skilled many fantastic 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 sweetness and variety of our world. It taught me to understand completely different cultures, traditions, and views. I explored locations like Tibet, Japan, Israel, Kenya, and numerous elements of the US and Europe, but it surely 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 may be an awesome 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 completely different walks of life, every with their very own distinctive tales. What struck me essentially the most was the power 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 know-how firm with a terrific staff. They confirmed me much more colours and smells of India. When folks ask me how I survived in India, I at all times 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 internationally.

Q. Are you able to share the story behind beginning your personal travel-related enterprise or challenge?

A. With two profitable companies beneath 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 prospects. It required a very difficult and largely guide course of, and I noticed the potential to make use of know-how to deal with these challenges. It impressed me to launch Aslan, a data-processing firm, that shortly grew to become 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 unravel points with distributing air content material from low-cost carriers. Whereas these airways had been taking an increasing number of share of the aviation market, journey brokers couldn’t entry their knowledge in a cohesive, seamless method.
Atlas goals to make journey extra accessible and inexpensive by connecting journey sellers with low-cost airways worldwide by way of superior know-how, 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 satisfy the wants of colonizers as Portugal and the Netherlands invaded and colonized Southeast Asia beginning within the sixteenth century. On account of completely different eras and mapmakers, the identical geographical location could possibly be depicted in another way on numerous maps. These differentiated maps had been compiled into atlases. Earlier than this expertise, I hadn’t thought deeply about it. It appeared that the outcomes from Google or different search engines like google and yahoo had 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 completely different maps was fascinating. Maybe if I had been to attract them right this moment, the end result can be completely different. Even when confronted with the identical surroundings, the recollections left in every particular person’s thoughts can be completely different. Touring permits us to create our distinctive atlases.

Q. In case you could possibly be something on this planet or do any function, what would it not be?

A. I’m already doing what I consider is the most effective job on this 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 carry extra acceptance and inclusion on this planet by way of the facility of journey, and with Atlas, we’re making journey extra accessible and inexpensive. Every thing we do is aligned with our values, and I dwell on daily basis realizing that I do one thing significant and impactful. Constructing a purpose-led enterprise is just not simple, however when you find yourself clear about your objectives and imaginative and prescient, it makes it easy and way more pleasant!