20 May 2025
Skift Asia’s two heart-warming moments of enlightenment
Bangkok – Every travel industry event has its inspiring, heart-warming takeaways.
The Skift Asia Forum on May 15 was action-packed with tips and trends on surviving the ongoing turmoil and tumult. But two moments of enlightenment rekindled what Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh had just a week earlier called a “reminder of the essential oneness of humankind.”
The first was Skift CEO and Founder Rafat Ali’s curtain-call interview with the celebrated hotel designer Bill Bensley.
The interview was supposed to be light-hearted and good-humoured. Between the lines, it was on a different level entirely.
After a casual opening question about his environmentally-friendly jacket, Ali probed Bensley about his wide-ranging work, both professional and philanthropic, his paintings, his daily work routine, how he taps ideas, how he decides which projects to pursue and which ones not. Bensley said he is deluged with proposals, to the tune of one a day, and accepts a fractional 5% of them.
Both Mr Ali and Mr Bensley are leaders in their respective areas.
Both are Americans.
One migrated from the West to the East. The other did the opposite.
Bill Bensley left the U.S. for Thailand. The richness of Asian culture, heritage and the arts provides him with an endless gusher of ideas to design superb hotels and resorts across Asia and Africa.
Ali, a Muslim born in India, has migrated to the U.S. The country’s entrepreneurial and competitive spirit has enabled him to curate one of the world’s most sought-after travel industry forums.
Both are immigrants in their adopted countries. Both embody the true spirit of Travel & Tourism. Both are living proof that human creativity is only as good as its enabling environment.
Today, the same country that bonds them is in a self-inflicted decline.
Ali asked Bensley if he would go back to the United States. He said “Never, I have no interest”. Ali asked him if he would do a project in the U.S. Bensley again said No. Asked why, he said, “Call me a bigot but my few experiences there have not been good. In Africa, when you draw something, that’s the way it is. In the U.S., there are too many cooks in the kitchen.”
Broaden the context, and the interview gains added depth and breadth.
The venue was the ballroom of the Avani, managed by Minor Hotels, the main sponsor of the Skift Asia Forum. Minor Hotels is a unit of the Minor International conglomerate chaired by Bill Heinecke, an American who relinquished his US citizenship to become a Thai national. A business genius, he has expanded from one solitary start-up resort in the Thai beach resort of Pattaya into one of the world’s most formidable hotel empires.
Both Mr Bensley and Mr Heinecke are based in Thailand, one of the world’s most formidable tourism destinations, a melting pot society which has welcomed entrepreneurs and traders from all over the world, and managed to keep both communism and colonialism at bay, while preserving its Buddhist roots.
The pursuit of Enlightenment is the core purpose of Buddhism.
Mr Bensley, Mr Heinecke and Mr Ali — three Americans, all successful “curators”. One builds and manages hotels, another designs them, the third develops forums which breed and nourish ideas to help those hotels succeed.
Their livelihoods are inextricably linked to the future of tourism.
I discovered that I, too, had some things in common. Mr Bensley and I share the same birthdate. Mr Ali and I share the same faith.
The Bensley-Ali interview was a perfect ending for an event which also had a perfect beginning, the second of the two instances I mentioned above.
In his opening remarks, Ali narrated a personal story of his visit to the Haroon mosque, one of Thailand’s many iconic Islamic heritage sites, where a complete stranger introduced him to some of the culinary foodstall delicacies and then paid for them all before walking away. Ali only later found out his name.
In addition to narrating this “oneness of humankind” experience to his audience, Ali posted it on his LinkedIn page.
One session in the Skift Forum was devoted to the growing demand for “authentic experiences”, another to the rise of the new demographic customer, the Muslim traveller.
Ali’s experience at the Haroon mosque was in line with both.
Overall, participants have widely applauded the Skift Asia Forum on social media.
Nearly all the posts I have seen focussed only its superficial takeaways — the tidbits which drive bottom-lines, careers, incomes.
Like Mr Bensley’s paintings and designs, a lot more “oneness of humankind” thinking is required.
Seek and Thy Shall Find.
P.S., A full collection of Bill Bensley’s work can be found here https://www.bensley.com/
The full Ali-Bensley interview is due to be posted on Skift’s YouTube channel in a day or two.