After a 40-year career in the travel and technology industry, Hyatt’s Global Head of Technology Services and President of Trisept Solutions, John Ische, is retiring. Ische’s career began at The Mark Travel Corporation, where he led the development of a groundbreaking booking system launched in 1986. Throughout his career, he led teams that pioneered several firsts, including the first vacation package sold through a GDS in 1992 and on the web in 1996. Alongside Bill La Macchia, he started VAX VacationAccess in 2000. It would take a novel to cover all the accomplishments Ische achieved and the impact he had on the industry, but prior to his departure, we caught up with him to look back on his success and hear his parting words of advice.
“When I look back over the last 40 years, I have a lot of pride in and a deep gratitude for the people who have worked alongside me,” said Ische. “This includes everyone at Trisept and also all of the travel advisors, supplier partners, technology providers – everyone who has been on this journey with us to be the leader in the space. We pioneered a lot of things in the travel technology world, and it was always about enabling travel advisor success. The fact that we’ve more than accomplished this is incredibly special.”
Proudest Moments
In addition to the development of the original booking platform and the launch of VAX VacationAccess, Ische is most proud of the team of people he’s worked with over the years.
“If you really talk about the most proud thing I have, it’s being able to build this team and have this team work together and have such a shared commitment to the travel technology and the quality and the work ethic. That's truly the proudest thing I have,” Ische said. “I also take a look at the impact that both of those initial projects had on the industry and on the marketplace, on travel advisors, on how travel was sold, and see the bar that we raised with both of those innovations. Those are probably the two biggest project-type milestones that I've had.”
Building Relationships
It’s not often someone stays in not only the same industry but at the same company for the entirety of their career. Ische said the secret to doing so is to always continue finding opportunities to learn.
“Never stop learning,” he said. “And learning comes in a lot of different forms, especially in travel technology, because it's not just how technology continues to evolve and how the travel industry is using that technology, but it's the whole ecosystem of that, which is something that you need to continue to learn. It's what's happening with airlines, what's happening with hotels, what's happening with travel advisors, what's happening with consumer engagement through any digital medium that's out there today.”
Ische went on to say that part of learning is being connected to a lot of different people. To stay engaged and innovate, people need to network, build relationships and collaborate.
“I go back to some of the great memories I have with some of the great people I've met through my travel experiences and how they probably really impacted my career as well. I was really fortunate in my career to be exposed to some people who were at a much higher level than I was in the industry,” Ische said, adding that meeting so many different people helped to broaden his perspective on how he thought about the travel business.
Understanding the Travel Industry
Early in his career, Ische said he didn’t fully grasp the extent of the travel industry and how people all around the world make their lives better through travel. As he thinks about how he had a seat at the table to enable this to happen throughout his career, it helps him not only understand but also appreciate the industry even more.
Whether you work as a travel advisor, at an airline, for a hospitality company or in technology, you touch some component of a traveler’s experience. We all work together to help people create these memories.
“I think it’s really cool if you take a look at how each one of us touches so much, such an important piece of the travel ecosystem, and how important that is to people's lives, and how that travel makes people's lives better,” he said. “I probably appreciate that a whole lot more today than I did earlier in my career. But I think that's what makes the travel industry special, that we make people's lives better through what we do. And it doesn't matter what part of the travel space you are.”
From reconnecting with family and learning about a new culture to experiencing new destinations, people learn so much during their trips, which then leads to understanding and empathy. “I think it also breaks down a lot of barriers culturally, where people have a lot more empathy for people once they understand how people in different parts of the world live. And people who travel can learn quickly about how their travel experiences kind of open their mind,” Ische said.
Advice for Travel Advisors
Ische has seen advisors grow and evolve over the past 40 years, and he said they still have an advantage now, even during the AI movement, but they’ll need to continue adapting to the moving marketplace.
“I think there's still a huge value in a personal connection, and I think that's still the key value for travel advisors, is that they have a real connection with their customer and a true understanding of who they are and what makes a vacation special to them. No one can understand that better than a person, and that's the advantage that travel advisors have,” Ische said.
VAX wasn’t created without a big dream. Ische chose to take big risks and set big goals throughout his career, and they paid off. We asked him why it’s so important to dream big even when something might feel out of reach, and he said the journey is just as important.
“Because even that journey of dreaming big is going to open doors. Even the failures that we've experienced over time created opportunities, and we've had several failures along the line. If you try and don't succeed, there's a whole lot of value that comes out of that. It's giving you a whole set of experiences that you'll continue to be able to build on,” Ische said.
“So don't be afraid to kind of get out of your comfort zone and try something that you think may be a little bit outside of what you normally would do, because there'll be other rewards out of it, even if that risk doesn't pay off. But the other side of it is that risk may also pay off. You very well could become that market mover, that market changer.”
About the Author
comments