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Travel has always been about people.

Aircraft, hotels, cruise ships, rail journeys, and resort openings may provide the hardware, but people give travel its pulse. They remember the view from the window seat, the hotel manager who fixed a problem before it became a complaint, the airport delay that became a dinner-table story, and the small act of kindness that rescued an otherwise dreadful day.

That same principle sits at the heart of Stephen’s EGT Media.

Behind the headlines is a remarkably varied collection of journalists, travel professionals, hoteliers, aviation veterans, marketers, administrators, photographers, former airline staff and lifelong wanderers. Some have spent decades in newsrooms. Others learned the business behind hotel desks, on airport floors, inside travel agencies or while selling destinations. A few simply packed a bag, went looking for the world, and discovered something worth writing down.

Together, they give EGT Media something no algorithm can manufacture: lived experience.

Stephen Morton: Nearly Five Decades of Travel Industry Instinct

At the centre is Stephen Morton, whose travel career stretches back almost 50 years.

From a family travel agency in 1976, Morton moved steadily towards the technologies and publishing models that would later reshape the industry. In the mid-1990s, he took Agents Support Systems online, when many businesses were still deeply attached to the fax machine.

In 2001, he launched e-Travel Blackboard, which developed into a major industry newsletter and expanded across New Zealand, Asia, the Americas and the MICE sector.

EGT Media followed in 2009, later supporting titles including DTN News, Global Cruise News, GTM Holidays and the forthcoming GTM Mall.

Founder, lecturer and persistent industry agitator, Morton’s instinct has generally been simple: if travel is changing, get there early.

Peter Needham: Old-School Journalism, Global Mileage

Managing Editor for Australasia, Peter Needham brings more than 35 years of travel journalism to the newsroom.

His career spans Reuters, The Guardian and AAP, along with freelance work published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, Reader’s Digest and Qantas in-flight magazines.

He edited Inside Tourism for seven years, wrote the long-running Travel Tales column for Vacations & Travel, and produced copy for Tourism Australia ahead of the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Needham’s travels have ranged from South American backpacking trails to a Saudi military hospital, and his approach remains reassuringly traditional: go there, look properly, ask questions and then write what happened.

In an age of recycled content, that is still rather refreshing.

A Newsroom Built From Real Travel Experience

EGT Media’s strength isn’t that every writer comes from the same mould.

Quite the opposite.

Susan Ng brings an international hotel professional’s understanding of hospitality, shaped by the quiet details guests remember long after checkout. Her writing combines polish with warmth, reflecting years spent seeing service from the inside.

Michelle Warner brings newsroom discipline and the perspective of a former flight attendant who worked with major international airlines. Her writing is observant, measured and alive to the rituals of travel often missed by those rushing for the boarding gate.

Christine Nguyen brings a very different journey. After arriving in Australia as a young refugee from Vietnam, she studied tourism at TAFE and worked in inbound travel before moving towards brochure design, blogging and storytelling. Her work is rooted in the belief that destinations are always more interesting beyond the postcard.

Supaporn Pholrach, meanwhile, understands commercial travel from the advertising and sales side. After 15 years with Bangkok Shuho, she now works as Sales Manager at Global Travel Media, bringing the decidedly unfashionable but highly effective habits of keeping promises, building trust and remembering that business is still conducted between people.

Sandra Jones contributes the hard-earned calm of a career in travel agencies, where missed connections, lost luggage and nervous travellers are not theoretical concepts. Her work draws on the practical truth that good travel advice is part logistics and part listening.

My Thanh Pham has worked across South-East Asian tourism and airline operations, including reservations and airport-floor roles. She writes with the perspective of someone who has seen travel at its most human: missed flights, reunions, frayed tempers and sudden relief.

Kanda Limw works largely behind the scenes, bringing the administrative discipline that keeps a media operation moving. Reliability rarely earns headlines, but every newsroom quickly discovers how valuable it is.

Bridget Gomez took a less predictable road. A former nurse who worked with veterans, she later swapped routine for a backpack, began recording her travels and eventually turned those notebooks into a writing life. Her work combines heart, humour and a useful dash of mischief.

Soo James brings a quieter observational style. Educated in Sydney and drawn through Arts and IT towards writing, she focuses on people, language and the details that sit just outside the obvious headline.

Charmaine Lu combines accounting discipline with a lifelong interest in the arts and storytelling. After moving from Shanghai to Sydney in the 1980s, she developed an instinct for helping businesses communicate before search engines made digital visibility everybody’s obsession.

Jason Smith grew up around tourism before studying and working across Bangkok, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. His later return to the United States during the border closures gave him another perspective on an industry suddenly forced to stop. His writing favours travel as it actually happens: imperfect, personal and far more interesting for it.

Prae Lee, a Chulalongkorn University graduate with further experience in Singapore and Australia, brings business training, cultural understanding and a modern instinct for social media and communication.

Yves Thomas combines tourism-industry experience with the curiosity of an independent traveller. After working with destination management businesses in Thailand, she began recording her own journeys and now writes from Hua Hin with a thoughtful, traveller-first perspective.

Alison Jenkins brings years of airline sales experience, trade shows, familiarisation trips, airport lounges and hotel lobbies.

At some point, the notebook won.

Today, she writes the journeys she once sold.

Karuna Johnson, Thai-born and internationally experienced, has worked across destination management, hotels, sales and administration. Multilingual and widely travelled, she contributes a grounded perspective on culture and the smaller details that give a journey meaning.

Jill Walsh brings communications, destination representation and media experience to the business end of travel. Now semi-retired, she writes about route maps, commercial decisions, tenders and the numbers that quietly shape where travellers go.

Octavia Koo blends graphic design, digital publishing and tourism-platform experience. Having worked in Sydney and Singapore, she understood the power of online storytelling well before SEO became a standard item on the marketing checklist.

May Marclay’s route through real estate, hospitality, the Maldives and the UAE gives her a broad commercial lens. Her multilingual background and experience with major hotel groups provide useful perspective on both the detail and machinery of hospitality.

Anne Keam brings a Queensland country upbringing, an Arts education and years of independent travel, particularly in South America. Her notebooks became a personal record of the world seen slowly, attentively and without unnecessary fuss.

Maysa Punchanit has worked across hospitality, sales, beauty therapy and social media. Her writing draws on practical experience and resilience, bringing a direct, grounded voice to DTN News and EGT Media.

Stephen Peters adds a rare combination of five-star hotel experience, technology-sector expertise and serious blue-water adventure.

After working in hospitality and later with major US technology companies, he built a yacht and sailed with his family from Florida through the United States, the Great Lakes and across the Pacific to Asia.

There are easier ways to acquire perspective, but probably fewer memorable ones.

Maria D’Souza combines communications training from RMIT University with travel-agency experience across Australia. A seasoned traveller and keen netball player, she brings teamwork, practical industry knowledge and a sharp eye for the sort of itinerary that develops a mind of its own.

Madhura Katti brings substantial authority across India and South Asia. Trained in hotel management in Bangalore, she moved into travel and food writing in the 1990s, later receiving a Best Travel Writer award.

Her documentary work also earned a National Award for Best Tourism Film. After roles with TTG Asia and Aviation International News, she now contributes seasoned editorial judgement to EGT Media’s regional coverage.

Contributors Who Bring Decades of Authority

The contributor bench is just as deep.

Veteran journalist and publisher Ian McIntosh, founder of Travelnews Australia, continues to bring a lifelong appetite for travel, value and small-ship cruising.

Retirement has apparently failed to restrain either his curiosity or his capacity to acquire stories, including one involving an enthusiastic Thai elephant and an unexpected pond.

Robert La Bua contributes the Global Travel Connoisseur column, drawing on more than 14 years with Destinations of the World News and a career spent assessing premium hotels, flights and experiences through a discerning international lens.

John Alwyn-Jones brings decades of leadership, communications and advisory experience across tourism, aviation and cruising. His work combines strategic perspective with the sort of professional polish that comes from having occupied both boardrooms and microphones.

Andrew J. Wood brings a lifetime in Asian hospitality. Based in Thailand since 1991, he has held senior roles with major hotel groups and extensive leadership positions within Skål International.

He now writes and lectures on tourism, sustainability and hospitality trends across the Asia-Pacific.

Mario Masciullo offers genuine aviation history.

His career began with British European Airways in 1960, continued through East African Airways and Singapore Airlines, and later moved fully into journalism. Based in Rome, he remains active as a member of Italy’s Foreign Press Club.

Roderick Eime contributes four decades of professional media experience alongside award-winning travel photography.

An early adopter of digital publishing, he was creating web pages in 1994, back when most people were still wondering what a web page was.

Punam Mohandas brings around 30 years of senior journalism experience spanning India, Dubai, Bangkok and Italy, along with editorial leadership across major travel, hospitality and business publications.

Her background also includes hospitality roles with Oberoi and Taj and communications leadership with PATA.

Mark Sheehan contributes commercial energy in business development, sales, marketing, funding and public relations, particularly in short, hard-driving campaigns where results matter more than ceremony.

Richard Coles, founder of Coles International Training & Consulting, adds more than 30 years of airline experience, including senior roles with KLM, Qantas and Emirates.

Having lived in 10 countries and trained people in 55, he brings a global perspective to leadership and customer service.

John Savage arrives with formidable media credentials across Australian newspapers, radio and television, followed by an award-winning career in travel, tourism and hospitality public relations.

He now returns to the craft that started it all: writing sharp, informed travel stories.

Barry Urquhart brings market research, strategic planning and customer-service expertise, along with a long record as an author, keynote speaker and business adviser across Australasia.

Different Journeys, One Newsroom

What links this group is not uniformity.

It is experience.

Some understand travel because they sold it. Some because they flew it, managed it, photographed it, promoted it, fixed it when it went wrong or spent years writing about it before “content” became an industry of its own.

That matters.

Travel journalism works best when the person behind the words knows the difference between a brochure and a boarding gate, between a hotel promise and a hotel stay, and between a destination campaign and what a traveller actually finds after landing.

Stephen’s EGT Media has built its team around precisely that distinction.

The result is a newsroom with long memories, international mileage, specialist knowledge and a healthy suspicion of anything that sounds too polished to be entirely true.

And in travel, that may be one of the most useful qualifications of all.