Tourism Matters

Hannah Pearson: Travel, Startups and Building a Business Through Crisis and Consistency

• Carmen Bold • Episode 21

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In this episode of Tourism Matters, I’m joined by Hannah Pearson, founder of Pear Anderson and co-host of the Southeast Asia Travel Show.

Hannah’s career has taken her from studying languages at Oxford to teaching in France and China, corporate London, Kuala Lumpur, travel startups, market representation and founding Pear Anderson, a tourism sales, marketing and market intelligence business focused on Southeast Asia.

We talk about winding tourism careers, unexpected opportunities, building a business in travel, and how Hannah’s weekly Southeast Asia travel report became a trusted industry resource during COVID.

We also discuss workforce challenges, including the disconnect between education and industry, the need for better training, and why passion matters but cannot replace fair pay, support and development.

What you will takeaway...

  •  Tourism careers rarely follow a straight line 
  •  Sales in tourism is really about relationships and market fit 
  •  Consistency can build serious credibility over time 
  •  Education, industry and young professionals are often disconnected 
  •  Passion matters, but it cannot be used as an excuse for burnout 

About Hannah Pearson

Hannah Pearson is the founder of Pear Anderson, a tourism sales, marketing and market intelligence company focused on Southeast Asia.

Originally from the UK, Hannah studied French and Classics at Oxford before working across China, Malaysia, outbound travel, B2B sales, travel tech, market representation and tourism research.

She is also co-host of the Southeast Asia Travel Show.

Organisations Referenced

Episode Chapters

 00:00 – Introduction to Hannah Pearson
 02:57 – Hannah’s early life, travel and love of languages
 05:48 – Studying at Oxford and spending a year in France
 08:42 – Teaching in China and travelling home via the Trans-Siberian Railway
 11:24 – Returning to the UK and starting corporate life
 14:14 – Moving to Malaysia and entering the travel industry
 16:58 – Building an outbound travel team in Kuala Lumpur
 19:51 – Sales, representation and building networks across Southeast Asia
 22:33 – Cultural awareness and market differences in Southeast Asian travel
 24:01 – Navigating language, culture and practical challenges on the road
 26:15 – Moving into the travel startup world
 28:01 – Learning travel tech, dynamic packaging and airline partnerships
 29:17 – The reality of entrepreneurship in tourism
 31:19 – Launching Pear Anderson and choosing independence
 34:00 – How COVID reshaped the business
 36:31 – Creating a weekly Southeast Asia travel intelligence resource
 38:04 – Growing Pear Anderson and building industry influence
 40:31 – Workforce challenges, education and industry disconnects
 46:21 – Passion, wages and retaining people in tourism
 50:24 – Hannah’s final reflections

SPEAKER_00

Welcome friends to the Tourism Matters Podcast, where I, Carmen Bold, explore the people, careers, and ideas shaping the tourism industry today. In this week's episode, I sit down with Hannah Pearson. Hannah is the founder of Pear Anderson, a tourism sales, marketing, and market intelligence company based in Kuala Lumpa. We have a wonderful conversation about Hannah's career journey from studying languages in Oxford to teaching English in China and her move to Southeast Asia, basing herself in Kuala Lumpur. We explore the roller coaster of entrepreneurship and also some of the research that she undertakes through her firm Pear Anderson. So please enjoy the conversation and I'll be back at the end to give my two bobs and my key takeaways. Hannah Pearson, welcome. Welcome to the Tourism Matters Podcast. Thanks for being here with me today.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. All the way from Kuala Lumpur, which is uh one of my favorite cities. So um I'm looking forward actually, because you've been in Guadalump for a long time, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, 14 years. So quite quite.

SPEAKER_00

I'm looking forward to backtracking through your career and and seeing what um how how uncovering how you got here. It's this is not as many people I speak to on this podcast, you know, do a gap year or a couple of gap years or something, and then they inevitably wind up um going home.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

I'm interested to hear. So um we'll get into that in a moment. But just so me and my listeners can get to know you a little bit better. A couple of questions for you to get think kick things off. So, Hannah, when you're traveling on the aeroplane, are you aisle seat, middle seat, or window seat? What's your go-to?

SPEAKER_03

It's an aisle, aisle seat. And if it's a 3-3-3, I'm an aisle in the middle seat because I need I need to get out. I don't like feeling trapped in, you know? I need freedom.

SPEAKER_00

And have you always been aisle seat?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, not really a window seat girl, no. Don't don't don't need my freedom.

SPEAKER_00

Don't you know? Exactly. No, just all right, cool. Just get in it. Um tell me now, you've probably got a good answer to this, maybe. We'll see. When you are on holiday and you're at the hotel buffet breakfast, what's going on your plate, Hannah, or in your bowl? Where are you headed to?

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah, uh the the pastries. I am a sweet tooth person, right? So I'm straight in there. Like croissant. I always love to have a croissant just to see, you know, you you eat and I mean, and I travel quite a lot for work, so you can see the quality, right? The different ones. Look at the jam. For me, that's super important. Like, what's the is the jam just a generic jam? Is it like homemade jam? I think you can tell a lot. And the tea as well, because I'm not a coffee girl, I'm a tea tea girl. So it's what what's the tea bag situation? These are the things that I'm interested in.

SPEAKER_00

And then are you sort of scoping out the jam and deciding whether you're gonna go for it?

SPEAKER_03

Or it's just making a jump regardless. Yeah, it's just it's just like a judgment call over overall quality of the hotel. I feel like you can tell a lot from from the jam and from the teabags. My husband's like, no, it's the size of the TV, but for me, it's it's the jam and the teabags, right? That's how I know it's a good hotel or not.

SPEAKER_00

Anonymous trip advisor reviews about the generic jam quality at the hotel. It's got your name written all over it. 100%. Okay, well, I'm not sure if I feel like I know you any better after that, but thank you. That's very actually well then it's very British, isn't it? Um I want to go back to um young Hannah, please. Yes, okay. So where did you grow up?

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so I grew up in the UK. I grew up in a small town called Twitch Spa, which again sounds very English, um, but it's in Worcestershire. So Worcestershire of the Worcestershire sauce fame. So there is like a Worcestershire sauce factory there. Okay. Yeah, really small there is, there is, yeah. Liam Perrin's yeah, it's where it's from. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it's small, small town, small town. Uh and uh occasionally make my way to Birmingham, which was like the largest city nearby, occasionally, right? Every couple of Saturdays or so. And did you when you were growing up, did you travel much as a kid? Yeah, I mean, my parents used to take us traveling quite a lot. Um, lots of camping trips. So maybe every other year we would go over to France, because of course super easy to just drive over there, right? So get the ferry there, and then later the Euro tunnel once that had opened up. Um, and just around the UK as well. So I think that that really gave me a love. I mean, I loved learning languages. I was really a geeky language learning kid. So I I loved that. And yeah, I'm I'm sure that that contributed longer to, you know, that passion for travel, right? And wanting to go and see new places.

SPEAKER_00

That's interesting. You're not the first guest that's been a passionate geek, language geek, not a passionate geek. Passionate language geek. Sure. I'll take it. Quite a few of my guests have been really into learning languages when they were either growing up or then at tertiary education. So that's interesting. Nice. And so when you finished school, Hannah, did you go on to tertiary education? What what did that look like for you?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so I went on to uh university um and I studied languages. So there we go. Um I I studied French, so I'm sure that that was a direct correlation, right, to all of these holidays in France. Yeah. But also classics. Um, so that's like Latin and ancient Greek archaeology and all of these incredibly useful things that I use every day, of course. Yeah, yeah. In my everyday life now. But it was something that I was I was passionate about. I loved.

SPEAKER_00

So hang on, what were you what were you thinking? What was your career aspiration at that time? Why did you study this? Right. No idea.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, no, no idea. Just like, I'll do it. Yeah. I don't think I really had like a set career in mind. It just this is what my thought, okay, this is what I want to do.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna go study this and then so it really was you really just studied it because it was of interest to you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then so what did happen? So you you did a undergrad degree?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so I did an undergrad degree. I was at Oxford. That was pretty amazing place to go and study. Yeah. Just like just the history of it. When when I look back now, I'm like, wow, you know, the the dining room that I studied in was built by Henry VIII. So this year or last year it it celebrated its 500th year of finding, right? And it's it was the Harry Potter, well, it's Christchurch, but it's it's a lot of what the Harry Potter Hogwarts dining hall is kind of based on visually. That's amazing. So when you look back now, you're like, oh my god, I just had like breakfast there every day. That's crazy. Um, lunch every day. I think generic, I think. Oh, what's that?

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna say they had a good gem.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So that that that was yeah, so that was great. And of course, when you study languages, you also um have to do a year abroad as well. That's kind of mandatory part of the course. So then I ended up spending my third year um of the course in France, in Lille. Um, and I was a language assistant there. So I was teaching English, teaching, let's say very loosely. Yeah. English to French school kids. So that was that was fun because it was really, you know, that of course you've been to university, so you've got that taste of independence, and now this is like really independent, you're going off to a whole other country and figuring out how life works.

SPEAKER_00

Wow, okay. So when you graduated, what did you do? What would what happened?

SPEAKER_03

Well, I mean, in line with what I was representing, I I didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I was like, okay, I'm going to go do a year abroad. And I'd already done this language, just this, you know, language assistance scheme with the British Council in France, but I knew that they had one in China too. So I applied for the China one and this China Language Assistance Program and the British Council every year. I think they sent out I don't know, maybe 50 of us or so. All sent out to all of these different schools, or you know, and kind of the the school year, so you go out in September. And so I spent a year in Guangzhou in the south by Hong Kong. I mean, and so this was uh 2007 to 2008, which was a super interesting time to go because it was just before the Beijing Olympics. Although Guangzhou, I think, is something like the third or fourth fourth largest city in China, it was still as as a foreigner, you were still definitely unique and novel. So um I was like pros and cons. So, you know, on a on a on a fun day, it's great. People are coming up to you, they want to take photos with you. You're like, this is fun. On a not so great day, you're kind of sat there on the metro and you just want to be ignored, but you're very obviously not Chinese, and people are coming up to you, and it's a little bit more intense. But it was it was super fun. Why did you decide to go to China? Um, I think I just wanted something completely different. And I'd also applied, I mean, Japan does this, they call it a jet program. Um, and they they have some some kind of similar scheme where you can go and you you teach English and things. And I was actually accepted to both. But one of my university friends had applied for the China scheme as well. And I th I just weighed them up and said, okay, let's, you know, let's let's go to China together. And at least I knew I had somebody familiar face going there with me. And we ended up actually in the same city too. Oh wow. But yeah, so I I reflect sometimes like, would my life have been completely different if I gone to Japan instead of China?

SPEAKER_00

I love making it covering, you know, like uh yeah, um a massive part of you know why I have these conversations is to sort of you know highlight that these decisions that we make in our careers, you know, they're so layered on top of, you know, you literally made that decision because you um just like fun.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, exactly. All right, let's go to China, let's do it. Just one year.

SPEAKER_00

How tough can it be? Yeah. Wow. Okay. Oh, that's amazing. That's a long way from home.

SPEAKER_03

It was.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So a year in China, and then uh what happened after that? Did you go home? I did go home.

SPEAKER_03

So whilst I was in China, I met who's now my husband. So um picked up picked up him along the way. Good. Yep. And so he was British as well. And um we decided along with a friend that we weren't just gonna fly back to the UK. Oh, that's boring. We're gonna take the train. So we took the train all the way from Guangzhou, up into Russia, across with the Trans-Siberian, through Mongolia, through Russia, then down through all of the little European countries, all the way to taking the Eurostar back from France to London. So we did it over, I think five or six weeks. Super fun time. Yeah. Probably not something that I would ever repeat again, right? And definitely on a shoestring suite was not like glamour. We I remember we were like taking sugar packets from McDonald's some extra energy in Russia because it was so expensive and we'd not realize how expensive it would be. But it was great, right?

SPEAKER_00

It was formed another very it was. Oh wow, so five or six weeks. So that's uh ticked that off the list and don't need to do that again type of exactly. Yeah, okay. Done. Done. And so you land back in the UK malnourished?

SPEAKER_03

Malnourished, probably. Yeah. Happy to be back in civilization. Yeah. Um and then it was like, okay, no, I I guess I better find a real job. You know, I've I've had my four-year degree, then I had an extra year, you know, a bit higher. And then it's like, right.

SPEAKER_00

Can I just double click on that? Is that what you were thinking? Like, did were you sort of thinking that you were just having this kind of life experience and fun time, and there you then you sort of had to work out what you were really going to do?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think so. I think it was like, okay, well, I've had this time. China was great, but you know, I knew I'm I'm not cut out to be a teacher. That's not something I'm interested in. Long day it was a means to an end, right? To be able to be abroad. And I was like, okay, what do I want to do? And I still didn't have really a set career path in mind, right? It was still like, okay, let's figure out what I'm gonna do. So I think I applied for lots of different things, like the civil service, MI5, and all sorts of different, different things. But where I ended up was was somewhat that's completely removed from tourism, is I ended up as the executive assistant for the EMIA, so the Europe, Middle East, and Africa's vice president of a locks company. So like door locks. Um, and this this is like a company called Asa Ablo. And it is a Swedish blue chip company. So it's actually a massive company. It owns brands like Yale, like HID, like all those access cards you get for the hotels or your condos, all of that. Like it owns all of that. So no one's ever heard of the parent company. No. But everyone, everyone would know one of their brands because it's couple of brands. Wow. So I ended up being his executive assistant um for a couple of years. And of course, it was completely removed from travel. I mean, there was an international aspect in that everybody from the office. I mean, hardly anyone was from the UK. It was in London. And so I moved to London, but hardly anyone was actually from the UK in the office. They were from Sweden or Israel or all of these other wonderful countries. So you he kind of had that international aspect. Um, and it was fun in a way, you know, this guy was responsible for over a billion euros every year in sales. So it was it's really seeing business done at like this massive, really high level. They've got all these factories, they've got 32,000 employees, and you're seeing these really high-level decisions being made about okay, do we acquire another company? Do we do we downsize this one? What do we do? What's our strategy? Digital door locks. That was the thing back then. I remember doing so many slides. Digital door locks, and now it's like just a normal thing. Everyone's got like it's in the house. All of this stuff. Uh but of course, like my heart was not really in the door locking world. I was there for a couple of years. It it was amazing. It was this formative experience, a really understanding business. And the people there were great. They were so switched on, they were, you know, really top class. But I was like, okay, I need I need to do something else with my life, right? I want to go, I want travel. I want to do something with travel. Yeah. So I applied for different tour operators in the UK, a few different ones, but didn't really get very far with my application. So I was like orderly travel. That was, I mean, it's massive now. At the time, it was a little bit smaller.

SPEAKER_00

What sort of jobs were you applying for with them? What did you think of it?

SPEAKER_03

Well, it was more like kind of like the sales consultant type, putting together the itineraries, I was focusing on Asia. It's like, oh, I've been to Asia, I've been to China, these other places. So, you know, I think that that would be cool. I get to travel, I get to help people build these itineraries. And but because I didn't have the much experience in that, and I guess it was probably hard to to join the dots. Like, okay, she's like a door company now and door locks, and now she wants to go into travel. I don't quite get it. So I didn't have much luck. But the um I guess the turning point was my boyfriend, so his family originally from Malaysia, and his uncle owns a travel agency in Kuala Lumpa. So he asked my husband, I think back in I don't know, the early 2010s, um, to come and develop websites for him because my husband's a tech guy. So he went over and we were doing like this long distance thing right between London, Kuala Lumpa, it's quite tiring. And eventually he was like, look, just come, come move to Malaysia, come here, my uncle will find you a job at the travel agency. And so it waited, we had to wait a little while to get visas and everything all in place. But eventually it was all in place, and I said, Okay, handed him my my resignation letter to my door locking company and got on a plane to KL. Okay. Yeah. So at that time we didn't know it would, I mean, you know, be 14 years later. We said, okay, it's a couple of years, we'll see how it works out. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00

That's how I got into travel and to Malaysia in the same time. Right, right, right. So you went to KL and started working for the first travel agency. Yeah. What were you doing?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So I was leading the kind of outbound, they were mainly focused on independent travelers, so FIT. So I was trying to develop that almost into a kind of, I had this kind of idea of orderly this luxury bespo customized travel models that I'd seen in the UK, right? And trying to implement that f ⁇ ing KL. And it got actually it it went to a certain point, and we were kind of starting Sedunia was the name of the company, and it started to be seen as this place to go where you wanted kind of customized, independent travel, you could go there. So that was fun. There for a couple of years and really learned a huge amount about the travel industry just from that, right? And the how the supply chain works and how do you put together a quotation and and how do you build a team? Because then we started to build up a team. So then you know, then you become a manager, which I'd never been. So he then started getting all of those other responsibilities or how do you manage them? How do you try and guide them through the sales process? And they're learning, and I'm all learning at the same time, and the department is is growing at the same time too. So it was really fun. And we were given quite a lot of quite a lot of rope, quite a lot of leniency from management to kind of shape it how we wanted to shape it, which was nice.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Do you think in some way was there learnings from your door locking experience?

SPEAKER_03

And I don't know whether. I mean, probably just in terms of like the maybe just the professionalism that was there and trying to carry that across, right? But because also that was such a huge, huge, huge corporate company, this the Swedish one, and then you'd you you're bringing it down to this. This agency was still one of the biggest ones in KL. Yeah, right. But our department itself, you know, it started off, it was just pretty much me and my husband. My husband was on the tech side, and we had one or two people and then kind of grew. So I think by the time we'd left, there were maybe about ten of us, and the marketing had also ended up falling under us and all of these things. So we it was it was super fun to do that. Yeah. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That's very cognizant of the travel and tourism industry, isn't it? That you often you have multiple hats. Um I personally love. I love, you know, not having to sit in my cubicle and just focus on my one task. But just given the the nature of our industry and the size of most of the organizations that operate in our industry, you know, we are required to wear many hats and learn many skills. Yeah. Yes. Yes. All right. So you spent a couple of years there. Yes. And then um you obviously decided to move on at some point. So Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So then I decided, you know, this it was coming from, I think, a Swedish company, and Sweden is, of course, super, super liberal, a super flat organization. The CEO could call me up and I could be like, hey Johan, how are you doing? to a travel agency, like a Malaysian Chinese travel agency. That's very hierarchical. So yes, we had freedom, but you know, you have to call the bosses, Mr. Lok, Madam, but whatever. And it just felt a little, you know, I missed, I guess, the freedom that I had of that in Europe. So I said, okay, and got attracted by a shiny digital marketing agency that was opening up. And I was like, all right, great, I'll be your content marketer. But that I lasted all of about three months at that. They were a really new, really, really new business. And they they it was too all over the place, really not structured. And I, you know, I am someone who doesn't everything doesn't have to be, but to to this extent it was like, wow. Because they were new and they were figuring it all out. And you know, it was a small team, but but I realized pretty quickly that that kind of digital marketing agency setup was not for me. So I was like, okay, I need to to uh to end it here. I realised early that this is not for me. Yeah. So I left. And then I was like, what am I gonna do?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So I went home back to the UK just for a couple of weeks to hang out with my parents. And whilst I was there, I had an email from a UK uh tour operator that I'd met and I used to be in contact with at the travel agency. And he was like, We're looking for a rep in Southeast Asia. Do you know anyone who might be interested? I'm like, Me, me, I would be interested too. Yes, please. And so I I got on a train, I think, the next couple of days and went over to their office, and we were like, Yeah, okay, let's do this. So for the next few years, I repped for them, um, covering the whole of Southeast Asia. And that was again really interesting because it was pretty much me in Southeast Asia. They they had been a few times, so they had a base, they had some travel agents that they knew, and this is more like a lot of B2B sales. But for me, it was to really grow that network and of course grow the sales for them. So that to be honest, was probably what has uh the base of the rest of my career is probably been off that because it was really going out, growing that network, just throwing myself into cities like, okay, right, Chicata. Calling up these agents. Hi, I'm in town. I want to meet you. I want to introduce this company, cold calling, turning up lots and lots of cold meetings to build those relationships.

SPEAKER_00

Do you think, Hannah, that because sales or business development is often a sort of gateway into, I guess, a more sort of formal tourism career. Like you see a lot of like tour guides that will move maybe from away from tour guiding and into sales or bidium, which I think they're often perfectly suited for. But do you think, did you naturally have that sort of ability to cold call and put yourself out there and no?

SPEAKER_03

Not really. No, I don't think. I mean, like when I used to be at this this Swedish company, I remember if I had to make a difficult phone call, I would even have to, I would like write it out what I was gonna say, right? So I it it definitely pushed my boundaries to do that. And then you find that, oh, actually it's it's just people. And I think when you get over the oh, it's sales, oh, and to more like this is the real this is just about a relationship with people and building that relationship. And if you get on with one another and you're there for them, of course you give them good product, good price, and everything else. You know, guess what? They're gonna want to buy from you. So it was kind of probably flipping that that script and that yeah, okay, you know, that that message insight, like, oh, oh, I'm not really, oh, I've got to be pushy, blah, blah, blah, and just right, this is helping them. This is giving them something good.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a an important sort of reframe, isn't it? I guess, and it's more sort of relationship building and and and networking and yeah, providing a obviously a product that is fit for market and also I guess that you believe in and are more passionate about maybe than door locks. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And how did you find that? Um, I'll move on from this role in a second, but how did you find that, I guess, culturally in different Southeast Asian countries, you know, did you sort of have to yeah, talk to me about that?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I mean, for sh yeah, I mean, of course it it it is really different. Um, and so it was it was interest because I was almost kind of the bridge, right, between like this this UK and Europe tour operator and these these Southeast Asians and even just stuff particularly for the Malaysian market, right? Um if you're thinking about the Muslim market, which is of course a massive sector, um, all those sensitivities around food, does it have to be halal? Do you need halal certificates? In Indonesia, you might not need that. Maybe pork-free is enough, and there's all of these little variations, and it's trying to kind of be the br I guess the sponge to try and soak that up, and then try to communicate that over to the operator so that they understand what that is. And a lot of trial and error, of course. Trying to understand what they really mean by these things and yeah. I mean, and some markets are definitely more challenging than others, like Thailand was always really challenging, just with language and uh and Vietnam as well. Whereas obviously Philippines, especially Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, I guess, kind of culturally quite similar to Malaysia, so feel at home. But markets like Thailand, like Vietnam, they are for me the the most challenging ones. Language-wise. Yes, yeah, yeah, really language-wise. You mean just even to the level of like practicalities, then getting around. And this was I mean, you you'd started to get more kind of the Uber style things in Southeast Asia, but a lot of the time you weren't. So it's even just navigating to get to these sales meetings.

SPEAKER_00

Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_03

Would sometimes be super challenging and to like write out the things on a piece of paper or get like the concierge desk to write it out in Thai script or whatever. So I could just like show the taxi job. This is where I'm going. Because otherwise it completely lasts all stranded in the middle of forever.

SPEAKER_00

But kids are the adventure.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's super easy. Google Translate, here we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So hang on, can we put a timestamp on this? What what sort of year is this, henna?

SPEAKER_03

This is about 2014. Around 2014. Yeah. For a couple of years.

SPEAKER_00

All right. Um, yeah. And so you're toddling around Southeast Asia for toddling around Southeast Asia. A few years, did you say?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, a few years. And then um my husband said he's tech guy. We decided we'd start a travel startup together. So I kind of left the the uh B2B sales repping side um to the side and and hopped into this um whole travel startup world. Um trying to build out it was like an itinerary builder. And uh it was fun. It was fun, definitely challenging, something completely different, right? Because I really didn't know much about the startup world back then at all, sort of just learning, okay, what's VC funding and what's this and what's that? And the customer lifetime value and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We went through some accelerator program, which was really interesting in Malaysia as well. So it was fun because it kind of gave me a whole other side to like the online side. So I've kind of at that point had done the consumer side, then I've gone to do the B2B side. And now it was like, okay, this is the online side. And eventually it's we kind of got acquired by another travel tech company that we were quite close to. And they did a lot of um what they call dynamic packaging. So they provided a lot of the booking engines for airlines. And then when you see like these kind of flight plus hotel packages that they sell, uh, this company was providing the booking system, the back-end booking system, to the airlines to do that. So I kind of hopped into again a kind of BD sales market, a very hybrid role with this other company um to look after all of these different airlines that they had, which again so there was completely different. So you're then you're learning about airlines. And even within the airlines, it was so different. So one of their clients was Philippine Airlines, one of them was Cebu Pacific. So you're walking into one as like really legacy airline, really old, and the other one is super new and online and everything. Right. So yeah, it was like another little insight into a different part and all of these. We talked a lot about APIs and connections and how'd you get the hotel supply in and all of this stuff.

SPEAKER_00

Wow. That sounds like a staple learning curve.

SPEAKER_03

It was.

SPEAKER_00

It was.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, yeah, luckily the the company again, I mean, they were very flexible. It was, it was fairly, how many were there, maybe 20 to 30. By the time I left, that the Coco, that company was, I think at over 80, it really expanded during that time. Oh wow. But it was it was definitely an interesting time to learn about all of this. Yeah, the online connections and Google Analytics and all of these things that it probably has helped me to become like a person with many, even more hats than I had, right? Even more of that kind of broad-based knowledge, general generalist. Definitely generalist. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, this is something that I always harp on about. You know, it's like our our way every opportunity that we say yes or no to frames in somehow uh in some way our um our lens and our unique eyeballs that we, you know, look at the world with and the unique knowledge that we have. Um and it's just, you know, every time you take a new opportunity, whether it's in a new job or a just a new opportunity within your current job to try something different, you know, it just all like layers on top of each other to create who you are. Can I just ask quickly, what made the two of you decide you wanted to start your own business?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, I think we'd always talked about, we'd always had lots of ideas. And so he just happened to to meet the right person who was kind of supporting us with some of the technology, which later on would be the company that Aqua hired us. Um and it it just all it just all came together, I think, at at the right time. And we were like, okay, let's let's let's do this. Um I mean and I guess we're still young. So we're like, okay, it's it's you know, why not? We'll try it out. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's very, I'm very, very myself passionate about entrepreneurship in the tourism industry. And I think that it's often not taken as seriously as it should be, uh at least here in Australia and New Zealand. So I always love to sort of hear, you know, what what motivated you to do so. And then have you got anything to say about I guess as a on a personal level or as a human being? Yeah. The sometimes I don't want to say awful, but intense and interesting toll that entrepreneurship can take on you. The roller coaster ride.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I mean a hundred percent. I remember as kind of coming to the end where we were, you know, kind of thinking, we you know, we we're talking about being aquired and we were like, do we do we want to do that? Do we want to carry on our own way? And just feeling, you know, you just feel like, have I failed? I mean, of course it had a happy end, but you feel like is is that it? Um, you know, and and then in my current, you know, company now, I guess we'll come to that later. Um, yeah, it's it's 100%. It's up and down and it's it's relentless. It's really non-stop.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Relentless. Relentless is relentless. Appropriate word. It just doesn't stop, right? It's like whether you've got kids or your own company, they're both relentless. Life. I mean, and of course you enjoy it. It's not like being tortured every day, but it it just doesn't stop.

SPEAKER_00

It doesn't stop, but it's very rewarding at the same time, isn't it? Yeah, it is at times. All right. What was the name of that organization?

SPEAKER_02

The go quote. G-O-Q-U.

SPEAKER_03

Go quote. Alright. Yes. Um Right, so you left there. Yeah, so eventually yeah, so and and then I mean, and so the reason why I left there was that I had my first son. Right. And so that was back in 2018. And I he in Malaysia you have incredibly short uh maternity leave. So I had two months paid and I asked for two months unpaid, and then that was it. Back back to it. Um, but I I'd had this feeling that I'd wanted my own freedom and I wanted my own independence for a while. So I had asked back to this uh UK operator that I used to work with. I'd found a couple of other clients, and when I kind of got enough um saying yes, we're ready to go, I was like, okay, right, here's my notice. Go and start my own company, and that's Pear Anderson. And so that was back in 2018. So that's eight years old this year. What were they saying yes to? What were you? Yeah, it was the same proposition. So it was repping, essentially, repping them across Southeast Asia.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

So one, the UK operated, they kind of wanted to come back in anyway, they wanted someone here, and then the other one was it was a shopping outlet in London that I had been to and just thought I think this would be a really good product for Southeast Asians to visit. Because it was not um upmarket, it was kind of high street brands like Marks and Spencer's and all of these ones. And I was like, this is really, and when you've got the the discounts, it's even cheaper, so really cheap stuff. And I'm like, I think Malaysia Market would like this, right? So I kind of bugged them, like, hey, have you thought about Malaysia as a market? Hey, I could do Malaysia as a market. And eventually they were like, all right, yes, let's go. UK operator, let's go. Here we go. Notice handed in, incorporated the company. Squeaky wheel. Yeah, yeah, you do. Yeah. So yeah, so it was just me for a couple of years. So I had them. I was doing um some market intelligence. I was doing some research for on and off. I'd been working with Visit Britain, the UK Tourism Board, um, because they at that time didn't, I mean they they still don't, their closest office to Malaysia was Dubai. Um, so they really wanted to know what was going on in Malaysia and needed someone there. So we would just write little reports for them, okay. This is what's happening in Malaysia, and then worked together with uh Catalunya, the the Catalonia Tourism Board, um, on some research as well for them. So they had that kind of side pottering along and then the repping side, but it was I was a one-woman show, right? Um January 2020, everything's looking amazing. Mm-hmm. Got another client signed on. This is gonna be my year, guys, and bang, of course, right? Um, COVID hit. Um, and of course, like it's a complete, yeah, like devastating on some sides. A lot of the sales rep were like, well, no one's gonna move, so we don't want to pay you to rep, which I understood that completely made sense. I had one client, a Swiss client, who still stuck by me through it, scaled down the hours, but believed, I guess, that it was gonna come back. Um, and I kind of had to go back to the drawing board again. So I think what probably made the business was I I lent really deep into the market intelligence, the research side of it. So very early on, I'd started pulling together all of these different updates about what was happening in the Southeast Asian travel industry from the news. So at that time, this is February 2020, it was a lot around border closures, right? Because that was what was happening. But the information was really disparate. It was really hard to get an idea, like what's going on, who's open, who's closed. People lock down, have they not? So I was just kind of pulling together this information into one place. And I was reached out by the, and I was just doing that on LinkedIn. And I was reached out to by the LA Tourism Board, and he was like, hey, um, are you charging for this? Like, can we commission a report from you? And it was like again one of these like sliding door moments where I was like, either I can charge this guy for it and okay, yeah, I can make some money, or I can choose to make this like a free resource for the industry and consider this like my my long-term marketing tool. Um and I said, Okay, right, I'm gonna make it free. So I said, No, you know, it's not paid, but from next week there's gonna be this newsletter. So here you go, here's the link to sign up. And that was kind of the impetus for it. And after that, you know, it's something that I have done, I'm still doing every Sunday evening, sending out this report across these nine markets in Southeast Asia. But what it did, I think that consistency every week meant that people were reading it, they were looking out for me on LinkedIn, I was getting interviews in the media because people wanted to know what was going on, and it became like this this resource where people I think really when borders when things were open and shut and lockdown was on and it wasn't. And in Southeast Asia, it was so strict here. I think similar to Australia in terms of the borders, that things really didn't open for a long time, and people, both outside and inside, wanted to know what was going on and to have like this one place to get that info. Um, and I when my company kind of became that. So it really, I would say at the time, of course, 2020 hit, it was not a fun feeling to your roller coaster idea. Like it really, really sucked. I had it was gonna be such a great year. But now when I look back on it, I'm like, okay, well, if that hadn't happened, I would never have created this report. And therefore, I just wouldn't be well, you probably wouldn't be talking to me now, right? Because you probably wouldn't have, I think you've probably found me on LinkedIn. You wouldn't have found me. And um, you know, when I go to a lot of conferences now in the region anyway, sometimes people come up to me and say, Oh, yeah, I've seen you on LinkedIn. Oh, I get your report every Sunday. Thank you. It's super helpful. Um, and and the clients who are coming to us generally have come to us either because they've seen us on LinkedIn or because they're on the mailing list and have been getting these reports. So it really has become like this long-term marketing tool that I hoped it would back then. But even back then you don't know how big it's gonna be. You're just like, okay, maybe I'll get a few hundred and that's good enough.

SPEAKER_00

Hannah, that's really well, I am very clever. And yeah, it almost plays into that sort of sliding doors, you know, like if if COVID hadn't happened and you hadn't yeah. Yeah. I think that's yeah, that's yeah. Very, very clever on your behalf. And I think you touched on something there in the consistency. Um and just, you know, it can be really hard as an entrepreneur um in any industry, but just to be consistent, especially if you feel like you're if you're in taking newsletter, for example, you feel like you're writing to no one. Yeah. Or you know, writing a report every week for no one. But you just yeah. Keep plugging away. Exactly. Exactly. Wow. So so this was obviously 2020. Yep. Okay, so I feel like that sort of really changed then the trajec trajectory of the business. All right, so talk to me about Pear Anderson now. What do you what do you do now?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, good question. So now there are six of us. So again, that changed. So pre-pandemic, it was just me. And probably what changed that trajectory was baby number two, and realizing, huh, how do I run a sales wrapping business that relies on me, but I can't go physically do it because I've just had this baby. So yeah, I got somebody in to help me with that. Um, and then I was like, ah, this this works. Okay, I I can do this, I can have somebody supporting me going out doing the sales wrapping side, and I can help manage that side and manage with the clients. So gradually that side grew.

SPEAKER_02

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_03

We um signed uh a Spanish luxury shopping gallery in 2023, I think. Galleria Canalejas. Um, and again, that kind of changed the trajectory that enabled us to grow the team bigger. So we've got people in KL, we've got in Bangkok and in Jakarta as well. Um that's grown, and we, you know, I'd say now, you know, a lot of the focus, yes, is still on the sales representation side, the marketing representation side. But the marketing intelligence is is a key part of what we do too. And I I think it's a kind of nice blend because on the one hand, yes, we can research everything that's going on, and then on the other, we can actually go and speak to the agents on the ground and be like, is this really happening or is all this affecting you? And feel that they kind of feed into one another, which is super nice.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that seems very um sort of two-pronged. Is there anything at the moment particularly, and I know that you did the report on workforce, and that's obviously very much in my sphere of interest and this of the podcast. Is there anything that maybe you can comment on from that report or anything in that sphere? Because yeah, most of the listeners are either other industry operators that um, you know, need to recruit or they're early or early career professionals that, you know, trying to get into the industry or look at what their next career move is. So I'd be really keen to hear what you've got to say about that, if anything.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I mean, I from digging it out from my memory from last year. Yeah. Um but no, so it was about human capital development. It was with PATA, Pacific Asia Travel Association. And I think the key, the key, key takeaway, like the the really TLDR version of it, is that everybody is so disconnected that there's disconnects between all areas of the industry, right? So between private sector and and government, right, and public sector, in how to develop human capital, how to retain staff, you know. Particularly during the pandemic, you would see the public sector enact lots of different policies, but not necessarily in coordination with the private sector, right? They would just announce things. Okay, now we're gonna do, we're going to raise the minimum salary requirement tomorrow. And private sector's like, what? How do we, how do we do this? So you kind of got that. You've then got a disconnect between private sector and higher education. Um, so we we we sent out a survey both to young people and to private sector, and we're kind of asking them the same question, and I can't remember the exact stats, but the question was like, how well prepared do you think um your course has, you know, or how how well how well prepared has your course prepared you for real life? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was phrased better than that. Um and promise. And, you know, it it was something along the lines of you know, the majority of the private sector say, no, the course did not prepare these students for real-world applications in the tourism industry. And the tourism, young tourism professionals are like, yeah, I feel completely prepared. I'm ready for work. And just in that, there's this huge disconnect, right? And of course, there has to be some middle ground, right? It can't be the private sector can expect that, you know, higher education is this perfect training ground for jobs. I mean, like I studied French and Latin, right? That's hardly relevant to my everyday life, right? So that there is that. But at the same time, then there's perhaps this he could see like this perception from young people. Yes, I'm completely prepared. Well, that's not really the case at all, right? So it's how how do you find the middle ground between those those two to educate young people? Yep, this is the course, but actually there's a lot more, a lot more that you need to learn. You don't know everything yet. And then the private sector to have the patience, like, okay. Or for the private sector to have a lot more engagement with higher education and saying this, this is particularly for the more vocational courses, right? Um, these are the areas that need to be addressed. This is what we need to look at. Um Yeah. So there were all of these all of these different disconnects are super interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I think that's um definitely a global issue, the disconnect between education and and what's actually required in industry. And I think that's I mean, everything's just changing at light speed. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think

SPEAKER_03

Particularly now with like tech or even around sustainability, um, right, and those those skills that everybody needs around sustainability that it that people just don't have. And if the industry really wants to particular keeper sustainability, if they want to be a sustainable industry, you have to invest in that time to educate everybody, right? And I think often the private sector, and this is more for I guess people who are in the jobs already rather than going into the industry. It's hard sometimes for the private sector to justify that training. They because they say, you know, oh well, these people are gonna move. Why am I gonna invest in my resources? I need these people on the ground. There's already a manpower crunch. How can I so they've got all of these excuses, but then the public sector needs to step in and make it easy, right, with financial incentives or however it is to incentivize the industry as a whole to up the level of their sustainable education.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it is that is a real yeah, that is very much a challenge. And I don't know what the stats would be like in Southeast Asia, but I assume it would be similar to Australia and New Zealand. I think like, you know, in Australia it's like 95% of all tourism businesses are like micro, less than 20 employees. It's like they just don't have the time or capacity to take their stuff away for training or whatever it is. So yeah, that is a real issue. And that's so interesting. I had I've been very exposed to the operators' side of that and that they uh feel like students come out of tertiary education ill prepared for the job, but I hadn't heard the student side thinking that they are prepared for the job. Yeah, that's that's really yeah, very interesting. Yeah, really the majority were like, yeah, I'm I'm ready.

SPEAKER_03

Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and and other things too, like um around so we'd asked um both the private sector and younger people what they would prioritize from a job, um, or what kind of benefits they would prioritize. And the private sector were like, yeah, flexible working. And the young people were like, no, flexible working is pretty low down. I just want a decent wage, right? I want a livable wage. Like so livable wage was like, I think, number one. And on the private sector, number five, number six, something like that. So it is just again that disconnect between even just paying people what they're worth to be able to get them into the industry is missing. Like, do that and then add all of the the nice thrills of work from home and flexible and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, you know, all right. It's very interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm gonna stop there because I could talk about this for a long time. That report in particular is focused on Southeast Asia, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

It's actually it's focused on Asia Pacific. So we do it's some stuff in that.

SPEAKER_00

It doesn't sound any different to any issues um here across Australia and New Zealand. So pretty much it's global. Yeah. So I'll definitely link to that report in the show notes because um operators that are listening, I think, or um RTOs, tourism organizations that are listening could really even if it's just to look at the key takeaways. Yeah, it's really insightful. All right. Well, I might wind things up here, Hannah. Have you got anything you'd like to say before we sign off, whether that be a bit of a plug for yourself or um any words of advice for people considering the tourism industry as a career or none of the above?

SPEAKER_03

Okay, I'll I'll do both and I'll I'll give a plug and I'll give some advice. I don't know how well I am to give advice, but anyhow, in in the plug, just that I for the plug that I I have uh a podcast, the Southeast Asia Travel Show, so focused on very much travel industry issues rather than where should I go on holiday to Southeast Asia. Um so you can find that the Southeast Asia Travel Show across podcast platforms. And then advice. I mean, more advice, observation. Again, going back to this report from Pater, I think the one thing that stood out. Um we asked people why are you in the travel industry? Everyone chose passion, right? They're there for the love, they're there for the passion of of travel, the passion of hospitality. And that really stood out. So yeah, the sometimes the wages might suck, sometimes the conditions are are hard. But there is this overwhelming uniting passion for travel, and it's just particularly for private sector and public sector, how do you how can you harness that passion, I guess, with burning out your people? How how can you harness that without taking advantage of it at the same time? So that's maybe not advice at all, but yeah, no observations.

SPEAKER_00

But again, uh, that's global, you know. That's yeah, and and I mean that's a huge reason why this podcast even exists because I just love to talk to other people in the train industry. Exactly. And just yeah, hear the journeys that people have taken and hopefully inspire either young people or career changes that, you know, thinking about the tourism industry as a career choice and also as education for operators and industry bodies that you know, um I think we need to understand the motivations of young people or career changes and as to what motivates them to get into the industry, but also what will keep them in the industry and that's Yes. Yes. But I will definitely link to the podcast I've listened to some episodes myself because obviously Southeast Asia, what happens in Southeast Asia is incredibly relevant to the Australian and New Zealand tourism industry. So a very valuable resource for our um operators and and RTOs here in Australia to hear what you've got to say about that. So thank you. So thank you so much for your time today, Hannah. This has been a really lovely conversation, and I hope you get to go and enjoy some nice tropical weather out there in KL. And let's be sure to keep in touch.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, thank you so much, Carmen. It's been fun.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_03

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00

Huge thank you to Hannah Pearson for taking the time to chat with me this week. Um, what a journey. Uh literally a journey across the Trans Siberian. Um I love her frankness when it comes to, you know, the journey of entrepreneurship and you know, never quite being sure if you're making the right decision or not, or you know, all those challenges that um come along with building your own business. So thank you again, Hannah, for taking the time. Um, I have absolutely devoured that report um from Pear Anderson on the evolving tourism workforce. Um, there are some amazing insights in there, um, very relevant to the whole um Asia-Pacific region. So I'll be sure to put the link in the show notes for everybody to check out. But um, as you would have heard during the conversation, I just found it so surprising that the um the takeaway of or the perspective of um students once they finish their studies is that they're ready for the workforce, yet the perspective of potential employers is that they're not ready for the workforce. So um, yeah, that's an interest interesting insight and um you know yet another challenge for our industry to um look to solve. Uh so thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode. As always, um please share with colleagues or friends. Um tourism industry deserves to be seen as a reputable and a viable career choice, and my aim is to use the podcast to help the tourism industry be seen in that light. Um, connect with me on LinkedIn if you feel the desire, and please hit all of the buttons share, like, follow, subscribe. Um I will be eternally grateful to you. The more ears that are listening, the better. Uh so until next time, let's all remember that tourism matters, and I'll see you next week. Thanks for listening.