2026 Speakers

Session speakers

Joshua Ryan-Saha, Director of Tourism, Travel and Festivals, Edinburgh Futures Institutes

Joshua Ryan-Saha is Director of Tourism, Travel and Festivals at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh. He established Traveltech for Scotland, supporting over £20m in inward investment to the sector. He advises industry leadership on data, AI, and technology transformation. Globally, he delivers AI and innovation workshops, advising over 100 destinations as part of the AI for Opener for Destinations programme, American Hotel and Lodging Association and traveltech investors. His prior experience includes leading data science initiatives and leading innovation programmes like the Longitude Prize at Nesta, which featured on BBC Horizon’s Anniversary episode

Peter Haxton, Senior Policy Analyst, OECD

Peter is a Senior Policy Analyst with the OECD, and has been with the organisation since 2010. He works in the Tourism Policy and Analysis Unit, supporting the work of the OECD Tourism Committee. He is currently leading the OECD’s work on Improving the Evidence-Base for Sustainable Tourism Development, Preparing Tourism for Adaptation to Extreme Weather-related Events, and a National Tourism Policy Review of the United Arab Emirates. Other areas of recent work includes managing over 20 projects in seven countries, as part of the EU’s Technical Support Instrument (TSI) Tourism Flagship project, which focused on supporting EU countries to move towards more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism sectors, and supporting the Italian Presidency of the G7 to develop G7/OECD Policy Papers on Artificial Intelligence and Tourism, and Creating Economic Prosperity through Sustainable and Inclusive Tourism (2024). Peter has authored or managed the development of OECD Tourism Papers on Promoting the digitalisation of the tourism ecosystem in Italy: A focus on SMEs (2025), Measuring the digital maturity of tourism businesses in Slovenia (2025), Preparing the Tourism Workforce for the Digital Future and Preparing tourism businesses for the digital future (2020). Peter has held Senior Policy Advisor roles with the London Development Agency, Tourism Queensland, and the Australian Department of Industry, Science and Resources. He holds a Bachelor of Administration (Hons Class 1) from James Cook University, Townsville, and a PhD from the UTS Business School at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Tarek Habib, Co-founder, Murmuration

Tarek comes from an aerospace engineering background. He cofounded Murmuration in 2019 to provide measurable environmental indicators for sustainability in the tourism industry. Building on the wealth of satellite data and state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, Murmuration delivers innovative tools to support destinations and private businesses to integrate the environment into their operational workflows. Murmuration has been recognized by leading institutions such as UNTourism which underlines its operational ability and value in supporting the transition of the tourism sector towards more sustainability. The team is based in Toulouse/France, Barcelona/Spain and Valetta/Malta and works with pioneering destinations and businesses across the globe.

Kiri Goulter, Managing Director, Kiri Goulter Consulting

Kiri Goulter is a tourism strategist and destination management specialist working across policy, practice and place in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her career spans regional tourism organisations, economic development agencies, local government, airports and central government, where she has played a leading role in shaping New Zealand’s destination management approach, including authoring the national Destination Management Guidelines.
Kiri works at the intersection of strategy, structure and systems, supporting destinations to navigate growth pressures, infrastructure constraints, climate risk and social licence. Her work focuses on building organisational and system capability, aligning decision-making across agencies, and translating long-term policy intent into practical, place-based action.
She is increasingly focused on what emerging technologies mean for the future of tourism and how they will shape how destinations are planned, managed and enabled to deliver enduring economic, environmental and community outcomes for New Zealand.

Sir Rod Drury KNZM, Founder, Xero

Sir Rod Drury KNZM founded global small business accounting platform Xero leading it to a top performing $AU20B+ ASX100 company employing over 5000 people in 25+ locations.
Rod is actively involved in several philanthropic initiatives in the Queenstown region as part of his wider influence for vision and strategy within New Zealand.
These initiatives include a broad renewable energy strategy that proposes among others, a new power cable into Queenstown increasing resilience and capacity of energy supply, electric R&D marine centre, public transport solutions, and policy. These all offer strategic support for the declared goal of Queenstown to become a net zero visitor economy by 2030.
Rod has also been heavily involved in mountain bike track building projects across the region, a vlogging space for international athletes, and putting Queenstown on the map as a world best mountain biking destination worthy of hosting global events. The new high performance sports facility ‘The Mill' opens this year.
In addition, Rod has donated generously towards local environmental initiatives such as Mana Tāhuna Lake Haye's restoration project, and the extension of the predator free trapping programme of Southern Lakes Sanctuary across Coronet Peak.

Professor Hemi Whaanga, Head of School, Te Putahi-a-Toi

Dr Whaanga (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mamoe, Waitaha) is a linguist who has more than 20 years’ experience as a Māori educator focused on linguistics, te reo Māori, mātauranga Māori, Māori astronomy, ICT and ethics. He has a particular interest in multi-method techniques, methodologies and processes that analyse, develop and protect our mātauranga and reo in a range of linguistic, cultural and digital contexts. He has worked as a project leader and researcher on a range of projects including curriculum development, AI and VR, ICT and digital repositories, ethics and digitisation, technology, taxonomy and naming, and Māori astronomy.

Professor Ali Knott, Victoria University of Wellington

Ali Knott is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Victoria University of Wellington. He has been an AI researcher for 30 years. He studied Philosophy and Psychology at Oxford University, then obtained MSc and PhD degrees in AI at the University of Edinburgh. He then moved to New Zealand, working first at Otago University and now at Victoria University of Wellington.
Ali's AI research has mostly been in models of language and the brain. But Ali is equally interested in the social impacts of AI, and on AI regulation. He co-founded Otago University's Centre for AI and Public Policy, where he worked on Government uses of AI, and on the impact of AI on jobs and work. At Vic, he runs a weekly AI and Society seminar, which attracts a broad audience from government, academia and industry. Ali co-leads the Global Partnership on AI’s project on Social Media Governance. Work on this project has had impacts on EU tech legislation, both in the AI Act and in the Digital Services Act. Most recently, the project founded an alliance of researchers to help organise the programme of work done by external researchers under the EU's DSA: the Social Data Science Alliance. Separately from these initiatives, Ali has also contributed to the Christchurch Call’s Algorithms Workstream, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, and the Forum for Information and Democracy.

Professor James Higham, Department of Tourism and Marketing, Griffith University

James Higham is a Professor in the Department of Tourism and Marketing, Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia) and Honorary Professor at the University of Otago (New Zealand). His current collaborative research investigates extended reality (XR) technologies and the design and delivery of immersive and regenerative tourism in Aotearoa New Zealand. ‘Checking In’ - his fortnightly sustainable tourism podcast - is available on his website at https://jameshigham.com/pod/ and on LinkedIn and Spotify.

Roger Sharp, Chair, Web Travel Group

Roger is an experienced Chair, investor and advisor across the travel and travel-tech ecosystem. He began his career by building and selling a software company before becoming a corporate financier, where he played leading roles including the privatisations of Air New Zealand and Qantas. Roger later held senior leadership roles at ABN AMRO Bank, as CEO of Asia Pacific Securities and Global Head of Technology. He went on to chair, build and sell travel.com.au (ASX: TVL), and has since held a range of governance roles including Deputy Chair of Tourism New Zealand and Chair of Lotto New Zealand, Iress Limited (ASX: IRE) and Stuff (advisory board).
Roger currently chairs Web Travel Group (ASX: WEB), which recently divested its Webjet OTA to focus on WebBeds, its global B2B travel business. He is the founder of North Ridge Partners, the Singapore-based technology investment bank, and is a frequent advisor on major travel tech transactions.
During COVID-19, Roger launched Technology Queenstown, a not-for-profit focused on diversifying the regional economy by building a robust technology sector, initially anchored by a travel-tech cluster.

Public Lecture Panel

Sarah Russell, CEO, Technology Queenstown

Sarah is the CEO of Technology Queenstown, a not-for-profit focused on diversifying the regional economy by building a robust technology sector, initially anchored by a travel-tech cluster.
Sarah has more than 25 years’ international experience in financial services and technology. In 2018 she co-founded an AI software company based in Australia. Prior to this, she had an international career in financial services where she held senior leadership roles in corporate strategy, technology, and operations at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Sarah holds a Master of Commerce degree in Economics from University of Canterbury.