IWTA speaks with Mary Li, Founder and CEO, Atlas

The journey business has a singular means to interrupt down limitations, carry individuals collectively, and create alternatives for progress and discovery. Touring 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 reasonably priced by connecting journey sellers with low-cost airways worldwide via superior expertise.

In dialog with the IWTA Committee, Mary Li, Founder and CEO, Atlas shares extra about her transformative journey via journey. Going forward from powerful Covid instances to construct an inclusive journey expertise firm, that units business benchmarks and paces up a proactive workforce.

Q. How did you get began within the journey business? And why the journey business?

A. I didn’t have a standard journey into the journey business. It was a path I found later in life, but it surely has been extremely rewarding. After spending almost, a decade caring for my daughter, I re-entered the workforce in my mid-30s with a China-based journey company, Wingon Journey.

Regardless of having no prior expertise in journey, I noticed this as a chance to study. I used to be intrigued by the journey business due to its complexity and the numerous position it performs in connecting individuals worldwide.

As I grew older, I spotted the transformative affect that journey can have. The journey business has a singular means to interrupt down limitations, carry individuals collectively, and create alternatives for progress and discovery. It opens minds, broadens views, and fosters empathy and understanding throughout cultures.

For me, the journey business isn’t nearly enterprise, or my profession; it’s about function and a technique to make a constructive distinction on this planet. It’s about utilizing my expertise and experience to make journey extra accessible and inclusive for everybody.

“My mother sells airplane tickets.” From elementary faculty to highschool, my daughter would proudly introduce me to her associates like this. In her eyes, I used to be doing probably the most priceless job, one which helped many individuals see the world. Whether or not it was in an outdated home serving as an workplace house, a cubicle in a industrial constructing, or the high-tech Alibaba campus in Hangzhou, it didn’t matter.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 business? As a result of I consider in its energy to alter lives, and I’m dedicated to being part of that change.

Q. Are you able to share a major second out of your private journey that impressed your ardour for journey?

A. As a toddler rising up in China within the Seventies, the thought of journey was a international idea to me. Nevertheless, 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 have been on group bus excursions that took me to varied procuring facilities throughout Hong Kong, Thailand, and Macau. Though this will likely not seem to be probably the most thrilling technique to journey, to me, all the pieces 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. But, I’m nonetheless in love with journey and its magical energy to alter individuals’s lives.

My eldest sister, Ying, retired a number of years in the past after her husband handed away. Throughout one among my visits residence, she informed me that she had set a aim to journey to 100 international locations in her lifetime. Regardless of having a retirement wage of solely $700 per 30 days and never figuring out any English, she has managed to go to over 40 international locations up to now. I’m at all times moved by her smile and her pleasure for her subsequent journey each time I’m going residence. She plans her finances fastidiously 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. Are you able to share a difficult undertaking you undertook in your journey profession and the way you overcame it?

A. Essentially the most difficult undertaking is at all times the one I’m engaged on proper now. Immediately, it’s to construct a world, inclusive journey expertise firm that solves business puzzles and makes individuals really feel enthusiastic about coming to work each day.

Transferring to Singapore to launch Atlas was a daring determination, looking back. I stepped removed from my consolation zone and commenced from scratch, slowly constructing my workforce and clarifying our imaginative and prescient for the corporate. We launched Atlas in September 2019, just some months earlier than the worldwide journey business got here to a halt and airplanes have been grounded because of Covid 19. However every hurdle has pushed us to develop and adapt in distinctive methods. For instance, the pandemic gave us time to deal with constructing a stable, scalable expertise platform that turned the inspiration of what we provide now.

One of many largest challenges up to now was to pursue our imaginative and prescient of connecting the world in a real, real method. We all know that to construct a really world enterprise that brings worth to everybody on this planet, we must always begin from the within out – with our workforce.

Our workforce is made up of individuals from totally different international locations with various backgrounds and languages. We intention to create a ‘ONE TEAM tradition’ the place everybody can thrive and be themselves with out being pressured to adapt to any explicit method of doing issues.

Constructing a really multicultural workforce and merging totally different cultures isn’t simple. It takes dedication, endurance and respect to use this method to follow. Doing this effectively requires deep perception into the cultures, traditions and mindsets of various individuals 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 attempt to create an setting the place everybody has a voice and feels relaxed talking up. In any case, innovation solely thrives in a tradition of range and inclusion, and we are able to’t resolve some massive business issues with out each one among 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 business, I’ve despatched myself all over the world numerous instances. Throughout these journeys, I skilled many fantastic 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 position at Alibaba Group.

This expertise opened my eyes to the sweetness and variety of our world. It taught me to understand totally different cultures, traditions, and views. I explored locations like Tibet, Japan, Israel, Kenya, and varied components of the US and Europe, but it surely was within the soul of India’s bustling chaos that I discovered one thing actually particular.

Regardless of the stark contrasts of wealth and poverty in India, there may be an amazing sense of freedom and pleasure. Throughout my time in India, I immersed myself in its various cultures, traditions, and religions. I met unimaginable individuals from totally different walks of life, every with their very own distinctive tales. What struck me probably the most was the energy and resilience of the Indian individuals, 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 expertise firm with an ideal workforce. They confirmed me much more colours and smells of India. When individuals ask me how I survived in India, I at all times encourage individuals to go there and expertise it firsthand. I not solely survived, however I additionally liked India.

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

Q. Are you able to share the story behind beginning your personal travel-related enterprise or undertaking?

A. With two profitable companies below my belt, Atlas is my third journey start-up. Each time, I used to be pushed by a powerful perception that I might discover options to systemic inefficiencies I noticed round me.

My first expertise in journey was with Wingon Journey, a conventional offline journey company. Throughout my time there, I witnessed firsthand all the problems with reserving flights for our prospects. It required an excessively difficult and principally guide course of, and I noticed the potential to make use of expertise to handle 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 wished to resolve points with distributing air content material from low-cost carriers. Whereas these airways have been taking increasingly more 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 reasonably priced by connecting journey sellers with low-cost airways worldwide via superior expertise, and we selected this title for a cause.

On the finish of June 2019, my daughter Xinyu and I visited the Nationwide Gallery in Singapore and explored the exhibition “Between Declarations and Desires”. 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. As a result of totally different eras and mapmakers, the identical geographical location might be depicted in a different way on varied maps. These differentiated maps have been compiled into atlases. Earlier than this expertise, I hadn’t thought deeply about it. It appeared that the outcomes from Google or different serps have been the one solutions, presenting an oblong airplane 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. Maybe if I have been to attract them in the present day, the end result can be totally different. Even when confronted with the identical surroundings, the reminiscences left in every particular person’s thoughts can be totally different. Touring permits us to create our distinctive atlases.

Q. For those who might be something on this planet or do any position, what wouldn’t it be?

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

My mission is to assist carry extra acceptance and inclusion on this planet via the facility of journey, and with Atlas, we’re making journey extra accessible and reasonably priced. All the pieces we do is aligned with our values, and I reside each day figuring out that I do one thing significant and impactful. Constructing a purpose-led enterprise is just not simple, however when you’re clear about your objectives and imaginative and prescient, it makes it easy and way more gratifying!