The South Asian Digital Travel Conference is a digital conference organized by
the South Asian Travel Awards to discuss in-depth, to create awareness and to
voice the challenges that are being faced in the Travel Trade & Hospitality
Industry of the South Asian region.
The
conference has been purposefully designed as a series, spread across multiple
episodes of 45 minutes each, with special guests from the South Asian region’s
Travel Trade & Hospitality Industry. Each episode will highlight a specific
topic, and industry professionals will be sharing their voice with regional
factual data.
The
conference will be guided by a moderator who will ask questions based on the
topic of the day, and the guests will share their views, experiences, opinions
and hindrances. The show will be viewed live on Facebook (https://web.facebook.com/SATAawards) every Saturday at 1130 GMT and a rerun will be
telecasted on Raajje Television at 1830 GMT. Different episodes will be
presented with diverse industry stakeholders and moderators.
Episode three
will be moderated by the VP of South Asian Travel Awards (SATA) Mr Suraj Khan.
The topic of episode three is; The natural breathing space by Covid-19 to the underwater
world and opening the diving market.
Guests for Episode 02 are:
1- Nishan
Perera
Nishan is a
Sri Lankan marine biologist and co-founder of Blue Resources Trust, a marine
research and conservation organization in Sri Lanka. His current work focuses
on understanding the impacts of climate change and fisheries on coral reefs,
and supporting management of marine protected areas. He has dived extensively
around Sri Lanka exploring remote reefs and wrecks. As co-founder and owner of
Island Scuba he played a key role in popularizing wreck diving off Colombo.
Nishan is the author of Coral Reefs of Sri Lanka, and has contributed articles
and images to Sri Lankan and international travel magazines
2- Hussain
‘Sendi’ Rasheed
Regarded as
“the Godfather of the Maldivian diving industry”, Rasheed began diving in 1981
and became a PADI Divemaster in 1986, an Instructor in 1993, and Course
Director in 2000. He is the former Dean
of the Faculty of Marine Studies at Villa College. He is also affiliated as an
Executive Director of all Villa Dive Centres under his company Dive Oceanus. He
is also a founding member of the Divers Association of Maldives (DAM). Sendi
currently focuses on teaching PADI Professionals and has been a mentor to
thousands of new divers, including more than 1,600 divers he had trained in his
ongoing career. In 2019 he received the Scuba Diving
Hall of Fame Honorary award.
Robert
Scammell is the Regional Manager for India & Sri Lanka for PADI. Robert is
a PADI Course Director and Instructor Examiner. Since 1st March 2018, he has
held the position of Regional Training Consultant and during that time he has
developed strong relationships with PADI Members in the region. Prior to
joining PADI, Rob had more than 10 years of experience conducting PADI
Instructor Exams and Member events within Asia Pacific.
4- Anees
Adenwala
Anees
Adenwala is the Proprietor at Underwater Film Services and Partner at ORCA DIVE
CLUB. He has been associated with the sport of scuba diving for the last 24
years. An instructor affiliated with both – Confédération Mondiale des
Activités Subaquatiques (CMAS) and Professional Association of Diving Instructors
(PADI) federations. Having spent years diving in various dive sites around the
world, his knowledge and expertise help many members of the diving community to
have fun filled and safe dives. He has also extended his scuba diving expertise
to Bollywood and has helped actors explore their love for underwater sports.