Kate Meldrum

Biography

Kate started as General Manager of Australian Operations in July 2017 having joined the thl executive team in November 2009 as General Manager Marketing & Customer Experience. Kate is passionate about welcoming customers to a great Australian responsible self-drive experience, whether they be overseas visitors hiring an RV, or locals buying an RV. In a role that spans 10 Australian locations, with more than 200 employees servicing around 80,000 travellers per year, she was directly responsible for steering Tourism Holdings Australia into the driver’s seat at The Australian Business Awards – with the company awarded Employer of Choice in 2018 and 2019.

She’s also led the way in developing sustainable business strategies throughout Australasia, future-proofing the business for stakeholders by incorporating new technologies.

Kate received the Women in Travel award in July 2019.

Abstract

Telematics and the Fully Connected RV to Create a Lower, Safer Footprint

• thl is a tourism business that isn’t shying away from using technology to create benefits for customers and society, leveraging it to prepare for a future centred on a connected RV.
• thl has had telematics devices in just about every vehicle in Australia and New Zealand for the last few years, and whilst the focus has firstly been on safety, the benefits extend to lowering emissions, longer use of products through less wear and tear and the potential to help with biosecurity threats by tracking where vehicles go.
• thl manufactures its own vehicles, which gives it the ability to look into the development of electric vehicles. The limitation currently is the distance that we can actually get the vehicles to go. but that’s just a matter of time. We expect to be able to fully integrate IOT within the campervans as well.
• Where technology innovation really kicks in is in the road trip experience itself with the idea of the connected RV, and the Internet of Things. The benefits are beyond pro-actively knowing about the repairs and maintenance and being able to proactively have all these things alerted to us beforehand. In addition to this , we look at things like driver scorecards, hoping to encourage good driving behaviour, in a sharing economy-like manner. We know this has an positive effect on safety for our communities and is also a further extension of looking after our vehicles a lot better which will add to their lifespan and reduce waste in repairs and maintenance which will have an overall positive effect on our environment. In addition, IOT in the campers allows us to promote regional tourist attractions, never more important than now for small business trying to recovery post bushfires and COVID-19