Open to all attending delegates, the Strategy Summit will take place over two days at Routes Silk Road with many high level speakers in attendance.

Following a welcome address from Kate Aleksidze, CEO of United Airports of Georgia, hosts of Routes Silk Road 2015, attendees of the Summit will hear keynote addresses from Giorgi Kvirikashvili, Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development & Vice Prime Minister of Georgia and George Chogovadze, Head of Georgia National Tourism Administration.

The Summit will continue with a series of keynote presentations and moderator led discussions from panels of leading industry experts addressing key air service development issues affecting commercial aviation across the Silk Road region.

The first session entitled Airlines – Settling the turbulence - How Are Regional Tensions Touching Travel? will be moderated by Guy Brazeau, Director of IATA Consulting who will also give a keynote presentation ahead of this session. Panellists during this session will include; Andrew Pyne from Discover the World; George Molodinashvili, Deputy CEO, Airport Operations for UAG and George Chogovadze, Head of Georgia National Tourism Administration.

Session two, Air Service Development – The art and science of route planning will discuss core elements of route development and air service development strategies as well as the challenges for small countries & states with limited resources. This panel will feature Dilhan Haradasa; Executive Director Network Planning of LOT Polish; Levan Karanadze, Deputy CEO of Georgian CAA and Mark Sixel of Sixel Consulting.

The third and fourth sessions will take place on Monday 6^th July with session three titled Airports Developments – Meeting the changing needs of the Region this panel will be moderated by Thomas Niehaus, Head of CIS Region, Lufthansa Consulting with input from Serkan Kaptan, Business Development & Investments Director for TAV Airports; Oleg Panteleev, Executive Director and Head of the Analytical Department of Aviaport and Oliver Setchell, Senior Manager, Airport Development & Procurement for easyJet.

The fourth and final session is titled Airline & Airport Trends Across the Region – Where is the Market Growth? This session will be an overview of data analysis showing how traffic has changed year over year by Flightglobal / Ascend followed by a panel discussion. Moderated by Oliver Clark, Senior Reporter from Flightglobal panellists will include Andras Bognar, Senior Manager at ICF SH&E; Adam Wu, Chief Operating Officer of China Business Network and Kairat Sadvakassov, Deputy Director of the Kazakhstan Tourism Industry Department.

A number of presentations will also feature as an important part of the Strategy Summit including a Presentation from our strategy summit sponsor, Embraer along with further keynote presentations from Serkan Kaptan and Adam Wu who also take part in session three and four respectively.

Routes Silk Road attracts the industry’s key decision makers and is the must attend event for all those interested in meeting with the industry's key players. The event, which is the annual gathering of air service decision makers for the entire Silk Road region, is expected to attract representation from 50 airlines and 70 airports along with a number of other industry stakeholders to discuss air service development.

Keep reading the HUB for regular updates on the Routes Silk Road Strategy Summit and for more information and to register for Routes Silk Road 2015 click here.