PHo

Speech by Ms Pansy Ho (Shun Tak Holdings Limited)

Good afternoon, everyone. I am honored to be here today and share with you my experience in maneuvering the tidal wave of information technology.

A Changing Business Environment

The fast changing mode of business environment leads to the evolution of numerous market opportunities. As business leaders, we must not only be able to adapt to the fast changing environment, but to make it an instinct to act promptly or even be pro-active and ride on the opportunities create by the new technologies.

Seizing of Business Opportunity

I would like to cite an example from my own experience. A couple of years ago, we implemented to have Shun Tak Group to focus on the travel and tourism business in the Mainland China. In the course of implementation, we noticed that there was a gap between the air-ticketing and hotel reservation systems in the Mainland. The two systems, which are incompatible to each other, were being developed and controlled separately by the Central Government and individual hotel groups.

In the Mainland, air-ticket issue is being centralized in one single system. Only licensed agents are permitted to issue air-tickets. If a customer required booking a hotel from the same air-ticketing agent, the reservation had to be made via a different channel such as calling up the hotel.

Seizing the opportunity of the IT revolution in travel business, Shun Tak Group has created an all-win situation for the travelers, air-ticketing agents, hotels and ourselves. In closing the gap, Shun Tak Group has introduced an online hotel booking platform to link the highly controlled air-ticketing system with the hotels. The online hotel booking platform allows the licensed air-ticketing agents to process hotel reservation requests for customers at the time of ticket issue and to receive real time confirmation from the hotels. The platform provides an extended channel for hotels to reach their customers. By bridging the two suppliers in the travel and tourism industry, we have facilitated the overall process of travel booking for customers.

The introduction of this online B-to-B platform allows Shun Tak Group to participate in the tourism and travel industry, and access to an extensive customer base in the Mainland, which is beneficial to the future development of the Group. The development of this online business has also saved us from meeting the requirement for acquiring an air-ticketing license, which is still restricted to Mainland operators.

Information technology can be an impetus to strategic alliance and potential merger activities. A series of business ventures can be spiraled from one single venture. The online hotel booking platform is not the only opportunity that information technology has provided for Shun Tak Group. The introduction of our online platform has caused a series of joint ventures between our Group and different players in the travel and tourism industry as well as online system providers.

IT Complementary to Business Strategies

Information technology could magnify the effect of an effective strategy; yet it would also make an ineffective strategy more ineffective. What really matters remains how we formulate and implement our strategies.

As in my example, it was our strategy that guided us to focus on the travel and tourism business, which led us to this opportunity of building a B-to-B online booking platform. Information technology contributed to accelerate the development of the platform and enhance the effectiveness of our strategy.

In addition, we should not be bound by the limitation of information technology. When we first introduced the online platform, we have encountered a number of difficulties, such as incompatible software, lack of incentive and support for business use of the platform, and skills in every level to utilize the platform. Information technology might not be of use in solving all these difficulties. It still relied highly on our own management capabilities and skills to entangle the problems we encountered.

Thank you!

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