Aaron Hung - Senior Director of Partnerships, Asia Pacific TripAdvisor

Aaron is very good at getting hired for jobs he’s never done before.

Quite early on in his career, Aaron was offered the opportunity to head the Singapore Tourism Board in the UK, Singapore’s most important European travel market. Having never worked in the travel industry nor a native of Singapore, his naivety encouraged him to test unconventional strategies to position and market the destination. Within two years, Singapore’s image in the UK changed from boring and overpriced to hip and inspirational, and became the fastest growing Asian destination.

Returning to Singapore, Aaron became increasingly frustrated with marketing’s limitations, but fascinated by how design could better create engaging experiences. He first landed a role at Singapore’s new Design Council to connect and profile the Country’s profession to the international design community. And subsequently joined DesignWorksUSA’s Singapore team, to work with some of the world’s best designers. Helping internal and external clients create distinctive, engaging and premium product experiences, to confidently and credibly articulate their brands through projects including first class airline cabins, road bikes, headphones and of course luxury cars.

By now the immense gap in Aaron’s digital skills was a growing hindrance to every facet of life from travel to grocery shopping. So Aaron jumped at the chance to join TripAdvisor when their new APAC HQ opened in Singapore, and built the Asia Pacific Partnerships team with superior digital talent. Working with leading companies in the regional travel and digital ecosystems, to help improve their content, user experience, brand credibility and conversion. Since then Aaron and his team has multiplied TripAdvisor’s regional partner network, and catalysed its brand awareness, content and traffic growth in Asia Pacific.

While working in London Aaron also completed an MBA part time. But without the evening studies to cram through and a neglected social life, Aaron suddenly faced a numbing void in the evenings. Venturing into a dark basement Cuban bar by chance, with a hitherto inflexible body, he took his first Salsa class and became hooked to a decade long exploration in Latin American music and dance, met a beautiful lady who became his wife and established international friendships that lasted well past his dancing ability.