IWTA speaks with Mary Li, Founder and CEO, Atlas

The journey trade has a novel capability to interrupt down limitations, deliver folks collectively, and create alternatives for development and discovery. Traveling 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 via superior know-how.

In dialog with the IWTA Committee, Mary Li, Founder and CEO, Atlas shares extra about her transformative journey via journey. Going forward from robust Covid occasions to construct an inclusive journey know-how firm, that units trade benchmarks and paces up a proactive crew.

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 practically, a decade caring for my daughter, I re-entered the workforce in my mid-30s with a China-based journey company, Wingon Travel.

Despite having no prior expertise in journey, I noticed this as a chance 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 noticed the transformative influence that journey can have. The journey trade has a novel capability to interrupt down limitations, deliver folks collectively, and create alternatives for development 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 objective and a strategy to make a constructive distinction on the planet. It’s about utilizing my expertise and experience to make journey extra accessible and inclusive for everybody.

“My mom sells plane tickets.” From elementary faculty to highschool, my daughter would proudly introduce me to her buddies like this. In her eyes, I used to be doing probably the most invaluable job, one which helped many individuals see the world. Whether it was in an previous home serving as an workplace house, a cubicle in a industrial constructing, or the high-tech Alibaba campus in Hangzhou, it didn’t matter.

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

Q. Can you 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. However, books like Jane Eyre and The Thorn Birds opened my eyes to the world exterior 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 purchasing facilities throughout Hong Kong, Thailand, and Macau. Although this will not appear to be probably the most thrilling strategy to journey, to me, the whole lot 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. Yet, 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. During considered one of my visits dwelling, she instructed me that she had set a objective to journey to 100 international locations in her lifetime. Despite having a retirement wage of solely $700 monthly and not understanding any English, she has managed to go to over 40 international locations thus far. I’m all the time moved by her smile and her pleasure for her subsequent journey each time I’m going dwelling. She plans her finances rigorously and goes on a bunch tour each 2-3 months to tick extra international locations off her listing. 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 provides me the motivation to go to work each single day.

Q. Can you share a difficult challenge you undertook in your journey profession and the way you overcame it?

A. The most difficult challenge is all the time the one I’m engaged on proper now. Today, it’s to construct a world, inclusive journey know-how firm that solves trade puzzles and makes folks really feel enthusiastic about coming to work on daily basis.

Moving to Singapore to launch Atlas was a daring resolution, looking back. I stepped removed from my consolation zone and started from scratch, slowly constructing my crew and clarifying our imaginative and prescient for the corporate. We launched Atlas in September 2019, only a few months earlier than the worldwide journey trade got here to a halt and airplanes had been grounded on account of Covid 19. But every hurdle has pushed us to develop and adapt in distinctive methods. For instance, the pandemic gave us time to concentrate on constructing a strong, scalable know-how platform that turned the inspiration of what we provide now.

One of the most important challenges thus far was to pursue our imaginative and prescient of connecting the world in a real, real method. We 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 crew.

Our crew is made up of individuals from totally different international locations with numerous backgrounds and languages. We purpose to create a ‘ONE TEAM culture’ the place everybody can thrive and be themselves with out being compelled to adapt to any specific method of doing issues.

Building a very multicultural crew and merging totally different cultures isn’t straightforward. It takes dedication, endurance and respect to use this strategy to observe. 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 way in which for understanding and openness. We try to create an atmosphere the place everybody has a voice and feels comfortable talking up. After all, innovation solely thrives in a tradition of range and inclusion, and we will’t clear up some large trade issues with out each considered 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 around the globe numerous occasions. During 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 once 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 range of our world. It taught me to understand totally different cultures, traditions, and views. I explored locations like Tibet, Japan, Israel, Kenya, and numerous components of the US and Europe, however it was within the soul of India’s bustling chaos that I discovered one thing actually particular.

Despite the stark contrasts of wealth and poverty in India, there may be an awesome sense of freedom and pleasure. During my time in India, I immersed myself in its numerous 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 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 an excellent crew. They confirmed me much more colours and scents 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 beloved India.

It’s outstanding how journey serves as a bridge, connecting folks and fostering cross-cultural understanding. It was in India that I noticed I may flip my strengths and expertise right into a purpose-led enterprise. I may use it to assist open journey to extra folks the world over.

Q. Can you share the story behind beginning your individual travel-related enterprise or challenge?

A. With two profitable companies below my belt, Atlas is my third journey start-up. Every 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 Travel, a conventional offline journey company. During my time there, I witnessed firsthand all the problems with reserving flights for our clients. It required an excessively sophisticated and principally 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 rapidly turned the most important 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. While these airways had been taking extra and extra 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 inexpensive by connecting journey sellers with low-cost airways worldwide via superior know-how, and we selected this title for a purpose.

At the top of June 2019, my daughter Xinyu and I visited the National Gallery in Singapore and explored the exhibition “Between Declarations and Dreams”. 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. Due to totally different eras and mapmakers, the identical geographical location might be depicted in another way on numerous maps. These differentiated maps had been compiled into atlases. Before this expertise, I hadn’t thought deeply about it. It appeared that the outcomes from Google or different search engines like google 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 totally different maps was fascinating. Perhaps if I had been to attract them right now, the consequence could be totally different. Even when confronted with the identical surroundings, the recollections left in every particular person’s thoughts could be totally different. Traveling permits us to create our distinctive atlases.

Q. If you would be something on the planet or do any function, what wouldn’t it be?

A. I’m already doing what I imagine is one of the best job on the planet. I’ve by no means loved my life greater than I do now, even with the stress and challenges that come with constructing an organization.

My mission is to assist deliver extra acceptance and inclusion on the planet via the facility of journey, and with Atlas, we’re making journey extra accessible and inexpensive. Everything we do is aligned with our values, and I stay on daily basis understanding that I do one thing significant and impactful. Building a purpose-led enterprise isn’t straightforward, however if you find yourself clear about your objectives and imaginative and prescient, it makes it easy and rather more pleasant!