In this episode, Allen Suss speaks with roomsXML Asia Pacific’s Director, Mark Luckey. They talk about what roomsXML does for travellers, and also places Mark loves to travel to personally.
About Mark Luckey, roomsXML Asia Pacific Director
Mark Luckey began his career as a biochemist, including a year at Surrey University in 1994 which led him to becoming the first undergraduate published author at Swinburne University in Melbourne. He became business manager of a Swinburne research centre at age 22 where he pioneered multimedia communication of commercially viable scientific concepts. .
He taught himself IT skills and created Storyboard at age 25 in 1999. He created online projects including the design and management of the largest digital R&D platform in the grains industry in 2003 in partnership with Deloittes.
Following incessant cold calling from Prakash Bang throughout 2002, he outsourced his first project to India. In 2004 he made his first of 19 (and counting) business visits to India. On this first visit was a family home lunch with the Bang family, a favourite travel memory. This personal engagement underpins a successful and valued international business relationship spanning 14 years.
Mark Luckey has delivered in excess of 5,000 offshore man days for Australia clients via 15 vendors across Hyderabad, Pune, Bangalore and Mumbai encompassing SAP, Microsoft , Joomla and iPhone and iPad technologies.
His love with travel began in 1980 when his grandparents took him to Fiji as captured in this YouTube video. 30 years later he took his two-year-old daughter whilst inspecting hotels for roomsXML.
In 2014 Mark’s mother bought a decrepit hotel in Siem Reap and Mark established legal, system setup, supplier integration, web development and marketing. At the end of 2016 he negotiated the sale of “Santa Clara” to a Sth African buyer based in Queensland, running parallel agreements between Cambodian and Australian legal and accounting. He probably won’t work with his mum again. He did learn end to end technology from hotel to agent.
As well as owning sole rights for roomsXML in Australia and New Zealand, Mark designed and managed the development of the roomsXML systems for customer service, reminders, accounts processing and BI and consulted to the Ukraine arm of roomsXML. He also creates most of the roomsXML videos.
Since 2008 he has supported numerous education charities in India which included “slum school” visits with his wife, daughter and father. He is currently a director of Project Karma, an anti child exploitation charity which in 2017 was responsible for changing federal immigration laws to confiscate passports from registered paedophiles and sex offenders.
In June 2017 Mark was awarded his 3rd Dan Black belt and title of Sensei. He has three bronze medals from national Karate championships whilst representing Victoria.
Mark Luckey is married to Sasha (roomsXML National BDM) and father to Jessica, age 9, turning 17
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