Game Changer Individual Award Winner – Spotnana

What does winning the Game Changer Individual Award mean to you personally and professionally?

Winning the Game Changer Award is a deeply moving milestone — for me, it’s both a moment of personal pride and a reminder of how far we’ve come together. Personally, it reaffirms that daring to challenge the status quo matters, that every late night and every tough decision was worth it. Professionally, it signals that the travel industry is ready to embrace the next generation of infrastructure.

Most of all, this award belongs to every member of the Spotnana family — our team, our early adopters, and our partners — who shared in the vision of reimagining travel from the ground up. It’s proof that when a passionate team rallies around a bold idea, we can change an entire industry.

You’ve been recognised for disrupting legacy systems and delivering tech-led change — what sparked your passion for transformation in this space?

After more than twenty years in travel, I grew frustrated watching brilliant ideas stall because they ran on thirty-year-old plumbing. I believe the future belongs to builders, to those who refuse to accept “that’s how it’s always been done.” I saw an opportunity to roll up my sleeves and rebuild travel’s foundation — an open, flexible platform that doesn’t lock anyone out.

That spark — to tear down closed silos and put the freedom to innovate back in people’s hands — is what ignited Spotnana’s journey.

One of the standout points was your ability to improve the customer experience through innovation. What’s been your proudest tech advancement to date?

Nothing excites me more than seeing our Travel-as-a-Service platform in action: it’s the first of its kind, a set of open APIs and core services that let companies of any size craft flawless, personalised trips.

But beyond the technology itself, my proudest moment was opening up Spotnana as a true open platform — letting partners plug in, build on, and iterate faster than ever before. Today, we’ve cultivated an ecosystem of customers and innovators who are already shipping solutions we never dreamed of. That kind of collective creativity is the real breakthrough.

How do you balance bold innovation with practical implementation, especially in a highly complex travel environment?
Innovation without execution is just an idea; execution without innovation is just maintenance. From day one, Spotnana has married big-picture thinking with relentless operational discipline.

We break every new feature into small, customer-focused milestones, ship early, gather real-world feedback, and then iterate rapidly. That cycle — vision, build, learn — keeps us grounded and nimble, even as we tackle the industry’s most intricate challenges. The result? A platform that’s powerful enough to redefine travel’s core, yet reliable enough for Fortune 10-level deployment today.

If you could take a trip anywhere in the world – with no limits on budget or agenda – where would you go and why?

I’d journey through Japan, from the neon heart of Tokyo to the serene temples of Kyoto and the hidden ryokans of the Japanese Alps.

Japan’s fusion of time-honoured tradition and relentless technological progress never fails to inspire me. It’s a living example of how innovation and heritage can coexist — just as we’re building at Spotnana, where cutting-edge infrastructure and human-centred experiences come together.

I’d return with fresh ideas for how to honour travel’s past while propelling its future — and share every insight with my team so we can keep pushing boundaries together.
 

Discover all of our winners and browse the event images.