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During the past 30 years, Mr. Kao has served as chief executive officer of several travel related companies, including charter flight companies, retail travel agencies, meeting and convention planners, destination management companies, special interest groups, FIT operators, and air consolidators based in the U.S., Europe and the Orient.
Since 1989, Mr. Kao has served as managing director of Travelware. Travelware's focus is on the technology needs of tour companies, hotels, airlines, tourist boards, convention locations, visitor bureaus, car rental companies, travel management companies and Fortune 1000 companies' travel departments. Customers include Carlson WagonLit Travel, American Express Travel, Kuoni/Zurich, Grey Line Worldwide, Japan Travel Bureau International, Jet Vacations, Jetset Tours, Texas Instruments, Xerox, Allied Signal, and Accor Group/Paris.
Since 1995, Mr. Kao has been very active in travel related eCommerce in over 20 countries. Mr. Kao is the co-founder of Tiss.com (USA), with partners Deutsch Telecom and Lufthansa Group in the Omnis Online global tourism marketplace. Tiss.com offers online consolidator airfare in 20 countries in 9 languages and is responsible for launching Travelocity and One Travel's consolidator program in 1996.
Mr. Kao currently serves as group chairman and publisher of TravelMole.com and TravelMole.TV. TravelMole.com is an online media company which publishes 15 eNewsletters to over 450,000 travel and tourism industry professional subscribers and 70 million consumers in 132 countries. TravelMole.TV engages in Internet video production and broadcasting to a global audience of 150 million. Since 2003, Mr. Kao has served as president of OmniTravelSeach, Inc. OmniTravelSearch develops meta search solutions for travel/tourism enterprises and was awarded and owns the meta search patent in 1999. In addition, Mr. Kao has served as chairman of Omni Tourism, LLC since 2001. Omni Tourism owns and develops proprietary software for designations to manage, aggregate and distribute their content and manage their destinations.
Mr. Kao graduated from University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering. He has been or is currently a member of ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents), SITE (Society of Incentive Travel Executives), ACTE (Association of Corporate Travel Executives), NBTA (National Business Travel Association), Society of Travel & Tourism Educators, PATA (Pacific Area Travel Association) and CLIA (Cruise Line International Association). In addition, he is the founder of TTA (Travel Technology Association) and TOWARD (Tour Operators & Wholesalers Achieving Real-time Distribution).
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