Simon Westcott, CEO and owner of the LUXE City Guides

08/31/20 • 29 min

Going stir crazy on an island, the future of travel-related content and how the pandemic has impacted our quality of life are just a few of the topics on the mind of Simon Westcott, CEO and owner of the LUXE City Guides.

While he—and many others in the travel world—are ‘hibernating for the winter’, Simon says he’s made the most of a slower pace of life, enjoying more time for walking and hiking. He even packed a bag recently and took a staycation up the road from his home, just to feel the thrill of travel in a small way. He believes humans have always both nested and explored, and thus is optimistic about the future, believing the yearning to travel won’t keep us away for long.

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Jan Tissera, President International, TravelClick

How do we support the people who work in our hotels? The individuals who have families to provide for and communities to protect? That’s the big question on the mind of Jan Tissera, President International, TravelClick.

In a reflective and personal conversation with David, Jan says that while the industry is global, the reality is very local. Hotels are about people and these people’s whole livelihoods are at stake. He says he’s working on small projects with individual communities—such as one in his home country of Sri Lanka—but that a much wider, larger-scaled initiative is needed.

Next Episode

Anchalika Kijkanakorn, Managing Director and Founder, Akaryn Hotel Group

Anchalika Kijkanakorn, Managing Director and Founder of Akaryn Hotel Group, says COVID has given her the opportunity to sit down and really think about what she’s doing, where the world is going and how we can come out of this differently. She says she has appreciated having the time to work on new strategies and guest experience ideas for her portfolio of six hotels.
In order to stay focussed during lockdown, she started baking sourdough (thinking she was unique) until she discovered the whole world was doing the same! While she has been too busy to miss her regular summer holiday overseas, she’s holding onto the hope she can take her two young boys skiing at Christmas—a family tradition for nearly a decade.