An Australian perspective with Kathy Turner

This week we welcome Goway General Manager, Kathy Turner.  

Kathy has enjoyed a long and varied career in tourism in New Zealand and overseas, having started in the campervan industry at Auckland Airport back in the mid 1990s. From there, she hopped the ditch for the first time to work for Britz, before entering the world of selling travel online in 1998, at a time when online travel was not really even “a thing”! After a stint in the UK, Kathy returned home to Auckland to spend over 9 years at the helm of AOT New Zealand, also serving on the Board of TECNZ for 4 years. This was followed by a period in digital marketing and tourism software, satisfying the “geek” in her, with roles at Tomahawk and Tourwriter before crossing into true OTA with a role as Country Manager of Agoda.com, one of the Booking Holdings group of companies. This led to a move back to Sydney to a senior Agoda role, before finding her way back to her true home in Inbound, as General Manager of Goway Inbound. Kathy is a Board member of Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC).

We discuss what the Australian Tourism Industry has done in terms of alignment and lobbying through Covid, how Goway were able to respond to the border closures, the aviation landscape and outlook, and what the Australian market is thinking about NZ's border announcements. 

We end with a chat about resilience and wellbeing after such a long lockdown in Sydney and Kathy imparts some advice for the rest of the tourism industry. 

Thanks for tuning in. 

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