Life has thrown many challenges at Matthew Chow, a Hong Kong based entrepreneur who has spent the last decade of his life caring for his autistic son. Last month we had talked about his wireless charging wallet. Since then, GOQI’s wireless charging travel wallet has been fully funded on Indiegogo, with the company managing to raise funds in excess of $31,000.

Excerpts from our recent conversation with Matthew:

On manufacturing trends

From his learning in the past couple of years, he believes four main issues face Hong Kong manufacturers, wholesalers & retailers. A strong USD relative to the RMB which leads tourist away from HK to Europe, Japan & Korea. The anti-corruption drive from Beijing, leading to fewer investments in the region. The anti-mainland Chinese tourist sentiment, which with modern social media has created an anti-HongKong sentiment with Chinese travellers. The general weakness in retail demand in main world markets, such as USA, Europe & Japan. With these recent issues, Matthew believes in the future of fashion tech for traditional businesses leading into the future, and with the IOT(internet of things) and big data boom soon to hit us, there is no better time and place to engage in this sector.

On GOQI

GOQI was established in 2015 to keep travellers charged and organised at all times, wirelessly. A cable free life is not a dream, but now a reality. He believes that in 5 to 10 years time most wires will be removed from our lives. GOQI wallets enable travellers to be organised and charged at all times, wirelessly. With the explosion of tech gadgets on the market, GOQI will be the source of their power when their batteries run out. All new tech is useless when their batteries die.

On success with Indiegogo

IGG experience was nerve wrecking but a good learning experience. He did not go through an agency and did not know that he should have started to market the idea at least a month before the launch to ensure he had enough buyers the first day to pretty much hit his target.

On funding goals

He has been self funded to date but looking to get investment to help scale up the production of the wallets quickly. He has learnt from RISE 2016 that since GOQI is more hardware tech solution, he would be best served to find strategic partners who can can help him scale up production and marketing, as opposed to a software startup which VC companies can flip for a profit in a couple of years. GOQI is solving a few serious issues with the travel and fashion market so we need the right support of cash and experience.

On personal challenges

For my self the past 10 years has been a major personal challenge, with the realisation that his son is autistic and will most likely require continuous care for the rest of his life. The realisation that a beautiful young boy will be challenged the rest of his life with the internal struggles of this condition. The family struggles to ensure his life is as happy as possible.

On the road ahead

As a young startup GOQI is seeking fair and suitable partners to help with future funding & experience for the production, distribution, marketing, sales and after sales service of the collection around the world.

Matthew Chow at the RISE Conference 2016 in Hong Kong

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The travel and tourism industry plays an important role in the economy of Hong Kong. In 2014, 60 million tourists visited this country. However, based on official numbers, there was 2.5% drop in the number of registered arrivals last year. The same trend might continue in this year as well.

According to the report, during the Lunar New Year holiday, the amount of mainland Chinese visitors dropped by 11.7% year-on-year while the neighbouring region Macao reported a 4.7% rise, compared to the holiday last year. One of the main contributory factors that can be attributed to the decline in the number of travellers are the intense riots that had adversely affected this region during the Lunar New Year period. Due to this turmoil, there was a reduction in the number of Chinese inbound tourists.

The government will allocate more than $200 million towards HKTB to uplift its marketing efforts. This will be a significant boost from lat year’s $80 million.

Innumerable medium and long-term initiatives will be implemented to further boost Hong Kong’s tourism industry. This includes waiving license fees for several of the industry’s key players and hosting important and exciting international events. Also, the government aims to open new markets, concentrate heavily on overseas promotions and encourage inbound activity by showcasing unique tourism attractions such as MICE tourism and fly cruise tours etc.

As per the long-term plans, infrastructure will be updated in Disneyland – one of Hong Kong’s key attractions. Disneyland might face cut-throat competition from Disney’s first resort in mainland China. This resort is expected to be bigger, more modern and, most importantly, much cheaper.

The huge investment from Hong Kong’s government will be useful for the travel and tourism industry as it aims to attract international tourists from across the globe.

Also Read: Visit Smart City, Hong Kong: Traveller’s ultimate destination for futuristic world

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Hong Kong is a major tourism destination and potentially the next big hub for travel startups. With the travel & tourism industry gaining momentum fast in the region, businesses are increasingly shifting their focus on specific industry segments and defining their niche. Events like ITE and MICE offer the travel brands an opportunity to connect with the right audience and open up the possibilities for new business associations. We spoke with Mr. K.S.Tong, Managing Director, TKS Exhibition Services, the organizer of ITE & MICE to learn more about the event. Here is an excerpt from the conversation:

What changes have you observed in the nature of exhibitors over the previous events?

Majority of our exhibitors co-exhibiting in official pavilion, and they include travel agents, hotels and resorts etc. It seems change is less in profile than in the purposes and strategies!

Mr. K.S.Tong, Managing Director, TKS

More are exhibiting independently, especially among those who also conduct direct sale to FIT and mass promotions in public days of ITE in addition to channel sale and trade promotions in trade days. FIT is getting more popular especially among the well off, and FIT contributing an increasingly larger share of business to the travel trade. Of course, there remain significant numbers of exhibitor focusing only on trade days but the growth of interest on FIT has been gathering speed.

Growing popularity of traveling in FIT shall not be considered as all loss for travel agents, as interestingly our survey found 39 of public visitors have booked FIT products with travel agents, though much smaller than the 71% online.

Also, more exhibitors promote theme travels, which are popular with both trade and public visitors. Our latest survey found 65% of the public visitors interested in two or more travel themes, and the table below summarizes the findings.

* Question not included in trade visitor survey

What industry segment brings the most participation to the event?

The three largest groups of trade visitors, who total 11874 with 25% from abroad, are respectively Agents / Operators at 52%, MICE and Corporations at 21% and Media at 8%. The three largest exhibiting segments are Travel Agents and Operators, Tourism Boards and Organizations, and Hotel & Accommodation.

What opportunities do you think the event holds for the participants?

ITE & MICE offers participants opportunities just like other established trade fairs and public fairs, but more. There are separate days for trade and public visitors, and admission in trade days requires registration with business cards, so ITE & MICE is really two fairs in one venue.

Instead of covering every opportunity possible, let us focus on one case which demonstrates FIT business commensurate well or even stimulate channel sales. Promoting mainly aurora tour, this independent exhibitor comes from way north and east of Hong Kong. Judging from the number of attendees in its public seminars and ads by travel agents locally in different years, we can say this exhibitor got good responses with FIT in early years but lately getting good channel sales too. It still exhibits in ITE & MICE, and conducts its own public seminars, which draw well over 200 audiences in one session.

We heard one explanation. When the early FIT returning from their aurora trips, they posed photo on web, facebook and they talk. Yes, the word of mouth activities, then sooner or later may generates enquiry at travel agents and stimulate their interest to stage such tours.

For your info, public visitors who total 78000 are well educated (45% university & 24% post-secondary) and traveled frequently (65% traveled two to four times & 15% five times or more in past 12 months). They are likely opinion leaders on travel among friends and relatives.

The region is emerging as a favourable destination for tech startups. What do you think is the prime driving factor?

For tech startups, in my view, the prime driving factor is the market or the adoption of tech products by the public which can be greatly facilitated by education. It is common among Hong Kong senior citizens like our public visitors who are educated to use WhatsApp and Facebook etc in their mobiles. Also, Hong Kong is a wealthy society so many citizens can afford new tech products.

With so many promising travel tech startups coming up, how do you plan to attract more young entrepreneurs to be a part of the future events?

We are already seeing more travel tech exhibitors, and we have also been working with related organizations to promote theme travels, through special displays, demos & seminars etc, some of which can be well served by new tech products. For example, portal on sport tourism and apps on hiking in Hong Kong, etc!

TKS will be hosting the ITE and MICE 2016 in June this year. The event will be open for trade visitors on June 16 and 17, 2016 while it will be open for public on June 18 and 19, 2016. You can find more details here.

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While cities in India are struggling to provide seamless WiFi in public areas, Hong Kong has already taken leaps in this technological advancement. Hong Kong’s government and many other private and public organisations of the city have worked together to offer the best WiFi services to its residents and travellers. Currently, the city has 17,000 hotspots that are available under the Wi-Fi.HK brand, including the WiFi hotspots provided by the Hong Kong Government.

Map of Hong Kong with Technology Icons

Hong Kong’s WiFi service in public areas:

The Hong Kong government’s free WiFi service, GovWiFi, is widely available in the city. It is available at all major tourist spots like museums, public libraries, public parks, sports venues and cultural centres. A few tourist locations with hotspots include: Peak Road Garden, The Peak, Kowloon Park and Repulse Bay Beach. This facility is not available for private and commercial buildings. The Hong Kong’s government scheme was launched in 2008. In the initial days, their WiFi service operated at only 35 locations. Today, there are 3000 Free-WiFi hotspots available at 570 locations for the international travellers coming to the city. This WiFi service provides better signal coverage, enables faster data transfer and reduces signal interference and support for the latest Internet communication protocol (IPv6) for accessing websites and Internet services delivered through IPv6. There is 120-minute connection time limit and 15-minute idle time limit. Users can reconnect to continue the service after reaching these limits. The secretary for Commerce & Economic Development, Gregory So, recently said that the Government has increased the average connection speed for each GovWiFi user up to 3Mbps for general Internet use in the past three years.

GovWiFi Locator managed by the Government of Hong Kong

Hong Kong International Airport has free wireless Internet at most of the seating and public areas in the passenger terminals. No registration is required to access the internet in these locations. The metro stations in Hong Kong run ‘MTR Free WiFi Hotspot’ network for free connectivity of up to 15 minutes per session, with a maximum of five sessions for each device per day. Focusing on tourist spots, shopping malls and restaurants, WiFi services like Hong Kong Broadband Network and Y5ZONE networks are easily accessible.

To make it easier for residents and travellers to stay connected through the internet, an initiative under ‘2014 Digital 21 Strategy’ was undertaken to promote the common popular WiFi brand, “Wi-Fi.HK”, where services by several public and private sectors are offered free of cost for a certain time period. The residents and travellers can use the Wi-Fi.HK mobile app and the positioning function of their mobile phones to detect free public WiFi hotspots in their vicinity. For a broader search, they can use the app to find out hotspots by districts, venue-type or keywords.

With the wide availability of WiFi services, Hong Kong is a truly connected destination for the international travellers. The travellers can stay in touch with family and friends and share their travel experiences through texts, photos and videos without any hindrance.

Also Read: Hello Startups! STARTMEUPHK Festival is happening in Hong Kong in January 2016

Harsh reality of Government’s WiFi Projects and what India can learn from Hong Kong

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Hong Kong’s rise & rise on the world startup map has been quite astounding. The country’s developed infrastructure is a great platform for passionate entrepreneurs to setup their teams from the region. Klook.com and the relatively newer ones such as Sam the Local are few Travel Startups from Hong Kong that are doing quite well.

The much awaited StartmeupHK Festival 2016 will be hosted by Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK) as part of the department’s ongoing initiative to promote the city as one of the fastest growing start-up hubs in the world.

InvestHK’s StartmeupHK Festival will be organised between January 23 and 30 2016

The festival which is being organised from January 23 and 30, 2016 will witness leading accelerators, corporates and associations hold a series of thematic conferences and pitching events covering areas such as the Internet of things (IoT), financial technology (fintech), health technology and data analytics, in which Hong Kong has a distinct competitive advantage.

This festival will attract thousands of international and local start-ups, investors and business leaders to converge in Hong Kong.

The Director-General of Investment Promotion, Dr Simon Galpin, said that InvestHK’s StartmeupHK Festival aims at showcasing the dynamism and growth of Hong Kong’s start-up ecosystem to both international and domestic audiences.

According to a latest survey by InvestHK,the number of co-working spaces and incubators in Hong Kong has topped 40 and the number of start-ups operating within these affordable premises has increased by 46 per cent in comparison to the last year.

In addition to the core events, the week will feature social mixers, roundtable discussions and investor group meet-ups in venues across Hong Kong.

More details about the StartmeupHK Festival 2016 are available on InvestHK’s dedicated start-up website www.startmeup.hk, with hyperlinks for further details of the core events. The StartmeupHK site also offers a one-stop portal to the start-up community in the city, listing the latest start-up events and signposting visitors to resources such as government funding schemes and incubation programmes.

About InvestHK

InvestHK is the Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government established in July 2000 to attract foreign direct investment and support overseas and Mainland businesses to set up or expand in Hong Kong. It provides free advice and customised services to help businesses succeed in Hong Kong’s vibrant economy. As at June 2015, InvestHK had assisted over 3,700 companies which have created more than 40,200 new jobs in the first year of operation or expansion and over HK$99 billion of investment. For more information, please visit www.investhk.gov.hk.

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The last minute hotel booking segment has picked up recently in India with the emergence of Bangalore based mobile startup app, RoomsTonite. They have been in the news with the appointment of former AirBnB India, MD Mohit Srivastava as Chief of Revenues and Partnerships. Also, there is a probable Dubai launch in the pipeline later this year. Globally, the industry has been dominated by HotelTonight and Hong Kong based, HotelQuickly. HotelQuickly which started of simultaneously across six asian countries has made rapid strides in the APAC region and now boasts of presence in over 15 countries. Started by a team which includes, two ex-Rocket Internet executives — HotelQuickly had raised $4.5 million in funding last year.

We had the opportunity to chat with Niklas Olsson, the Marketing Director at HotelQuickly who spoke at length about the app’s journey till now and the road ahead.

The concept of last minute hotel booking has been tried out by a few. There are some who have actually shut-shop as well! What is the key driver for HotelQuickly’s rapid growth.

It’s easy to copy an app, but what you cannot see is how much is going on under the hood. The backend, the integration with hotels, the extranet, the localization with payment gateways, legal compliance in multiple countries, etc. is highly complex and takes a lot of time and expertise in order to master. The app takes about 5-10% of our dev work, the rest goes into what is not visible by the end-user’s eye. Travel is a highly competitive industry. You need to be really good at what you’re doing to be able to stand out and succeed. The ones that have folded didn’t master their niche.

HotelQuickly is quite often termed as a clone of HotelTonight. How does it feel to be referred that way?

Equally often Hotel Tonight is referred to as HotelQuickly concept in the US. It’s a matter of perspective.

It seems that you started with Thailand, which isn’t traditionally perceived as a launchpad for an emerging startup. Did you face any challenges in particular with your launch?

We’ve launched in six countries simultaneously, each one of them exhibiting its own challenges. The launch countries were Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Six countries, six languages, six different currencies. The challenges were countless, but luckily we had an experienced founding team and support in each of these countries to be aware of pitfalls and to succeed in a localized manner.

The co-founders in your team are spread across different cities. How do you communicate and overcome challenges across geographies.

We’re using the latest tools to communicate and track progress. The whole company is working on slack for written team communication. In addition, we use confluence, asana, jira, zoho, skype, dropbox, google drive, line, xero, and some other department-specific tools that mostly operate in the cloud and work location independent. We have 9 offices across the region. Whether we work remotely with one team or another doesn’t make a difference to our processes and to the company result. As a company policy, anyone can work from any office across APAC. Travel costs need to be covered personally, but we encourage the cross-country collaboration and personal interaction by means of travelling. We are a travel company after all!

Your growth in Asia has been a revelation of sorts. What do you think are the reasons for this trend?

Right time, right place, right concept. A lot comes from observing the trends and then act upon it. Don’t rest, iterate quickly, learn from mistakes and grow continuously. We’ve made countless mistakes along the way, but it was necessary to learn what works and what doesn’t.

We talked about it this one when we met at RISE You are not there in “India” yet which happens to be one of the biggest markets in Asia. Are you planning to enter sometime soon in 2015?

Since the beginning we’ve tried to be focused on a few things and do them really really well. It’s no different when it comes to geographies. While India might look like an attractive market for HotelQuickly, there are numerous challenges that need to be addressed prior to a market entry, in order to be able to succeed in such a large and diverse domestic market.

What’s your understanding of the online hotel booking space in India and the rest of SEA markets?

The markets are very diverse, professional yield management is not yet firmly established in many of these countries, especially with smaller hotel chains. This is something we’re actively helping hotels to master, as HotelQuickly is the perfect tool to optimize revenues per available room. The more mature markets are quicker in adopting HotelQuickly as the benefits are apparent, while in younger markets it takes a bit more time and education from our side. The infrastructure challenges are tremendous but the region is catching up with Western economies fairly quickly.

There have been talks and concerns about hotel loyalty being potentially eroded due to disruption in pricing with last minute bookings. Your take?

We don’t see this as a valid concern. Only if discounts are offered on public websites (like OTAs) the average daily rates could plummet and customers are educated to wait for the last minute to make a booking. As we’re curating our hotels and randomize the offers, we maintain brand loyalty and build our business upon illoyal, infrequent travellers who appreciate quality hotels with discounts, but are not looking for a particular hotel to stay at.

What sort of numbers are you raking in at the moment?

We’ll reach 1,500,000 downloads in about 1 month from now, we have almost 9,000 partner hotels in 250 destinations on the app at the moment. Growth has been very steady over the past 24 months.

One last thing which you’d like to say to TravHQ’s readers…

Download and try our app, redeem code CMISC1 for $30 AUD credit!

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Last week, we had shared our list of travel tech startups who are coming to the RISE Conference. In addition to a fantastic bunch of global startups from across verticals, RISE also has a line-up of exciting speaker sessions where you will get to hear some stories on their initial days of struggle, challenges and growth.

Here is our pick of some sessions, that you certainly can cannot afford to miss.

Opening remarks by Paddy Cosgrave & Casey Lu

We are big fans of Paddy & rest of the team behind RISE and Web Summit. While RISE is being organised in Hong Kong, the Web Summit happens in Dublin and we’ve just got the word that there is an India edition called SURGE planned for next year in Bengaluru. These initial “5” minutes would set the tone for your 2 days at RISE. Be there and hear the guys behind the world’s biggest tech summit on the concept of RISE.

From West to East: Outside Making an Impact

Recent trends indicate the emergence of many startups in Singapore & Hong Kong whose entrepreneurs are from international markets such as Russia, France, UK and even US. Starting up in a different country has its own challenges in-terms of understanding the culture, the geography and the demands of the consumers. This panel session featuring Nathan Huey from SoftLayer, Sam Halse from Adyen, Allan Grant from Hired and James Griffiths from South China Morning Post will focus on How to make an impact in Asia when you are not from the region.

Line them up: Replicating Success Across Borders

This one should be a classical talk for all travel startups looking to expand beyond the geographies of their origin country. We have been meeting many startups specially in the travel planning segment who are providing offbeat experiences to their consumers. Hear LINE’s new CEO Takeshi Idezawa on how they travelled beyond Japan to countries such as Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, and the US and reach 560+ million registered users.

Searching for the Best User Experience

Travel startups which are in the space of destination marketing should focus on optimising their websites. Once users do land on their website or mobile app, the real challenge is to delight their users with visual experience. If you have a new mobile app or a website, you will learn how to improve user’s experience in this session by Shay Banon from Elastic & Jeremy Ben Sadoun from Algolia.

The key to millennial engagement

Travel or no travel, ultimately all of us are looking to reach out to our consumers. So how do you tap the digitally savvy millennial generation? Learnt it all from the cracking line-up of speakers which features Ray Chan from 9GAG, Michael Wolf from Activate & James Griffiths from South China Morning Post.

Does the best product win?

This session featuring Dave McClure from 500 Startups, Brian Koo from Formation 8, Hugo Burge from Momondo Group and Pamela Ambler from Thomson Reuters will give an overall insight from investor perspective to the attendees.

Oh wait! If you thought these are only sessions of interest, check out the entire schedule of both Days. Day 2 of the summit has some amazing tracks on 3D-control technology , wearable technology, robotic control and on branding aspects.

We can’t wait to get to RISE. If you are interested, rush to the registration page for any last minute spots

You can find more updates from RISE here.

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