Tobias Ragge

Tobias Ragge is CEO of the worldwide activities of the HRS Group. As travel industry pioneer, Tobias is a proven innovator who is reinventing how business STAY, WORK & PAY. He is regularly tapped as an industry expert for leading trade organizations such as GBTA as well as top publications that cover business travel and hospitality technology. He has been named 4 times in the last 7 years among the top 25 most influential people in business travel (Business Travel News). During his time with the company, HRS has grown from being a single brand company with 150 employees to a group of businesses consisting of more than 1,500 employees in more than 35 offices worldwide. HRS is now located in critical business hubs, including San Francisco, New York, Sao Paulo, London, Paris, Milan, Warsaw, Mumbai, Singapore, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, and Sydney. The HRS Group is amongst the top3 OTAs in Europe, the global leading Lodging-as-Service provider for enterprises and the market leader for B2B platform vacation rentals in the German speaking markets. Under Tobias’ leadership, HRS invested massively in the expansion of today's most innovative end-2-end solution in the corporate business segment. As the world's leading outsourcing provider for corporates, HRS simplifies the processes involved in hotel stays - from procurement and booking to payment solutions - and offers travel managers and travelers forward-looking solutions. HRS serves global corporations and individual business travelers through the company’s entire booking chain process and is a global distribution partner for individual and chain hotels worldwide.

I’m endlessly fascinated by how much data we have access to in this day and age, and especially passionate about thinking of ways to use that data to create customer experiences that would be impossible without it. I led HRS to focus on automating a seamless flow of relevant, detailed data on our customer’s travels across continents. Collecting and curating this data has helped us understand our corporate clients and offer totally customized solutions for their managed travel programs, all based on unique needs and behaviors we could make transparent for them. And we’re just getting started.

I firmly believe that only companies that strive to be technologically-savvy and innovative will be able to navigate the unknowns of the global economic and political climate moving forward. The only way we will tackle complex and existential issues such as climate change and its effects is if we have the bravery to embrace new ideas and technologies. Now more than ever, no business can afford not to change and evolve with the times.