Welcome to the October 2024 edition of Life at Agoda Highlights! In this blog series, we take you inside Agoda to discover our culture and see what’s happening in our offices each month.
From town halls to tech meetups, here’s how we enjoyed our Life at Agoda this month.
Sharing insights at our Town Hall
We gathered for an exciting Agoda Town Hall at our Singapore headquarters, where our CEO Omri took the stage alongside Laura Houldsworth, Managing Director of Asia Pacific at Booking.com. Laura captivated us with her career stories and shared some of her most memorable travel adventures, along with what she admires about our culture and life at Agoda. Learning from our colleagues from Booking Holdings brands across the world is always a highlight, and this Town Hall was no exception. After the event, Agodans also enjoyed connecting with one another at our Deepavali celebration.
Enjoying friendly competition
The Agoda Barcelona team embraced the outdoors and took to the beach for some friendly volleyball matches. Meanwhile, in Bangkok, the Agoda Golf group organized a tournament that brought together 45 attendees for a day of competition and camaraderie on the greens.
Celebrating Diwali together
The Agoda India team had a marvelous time celebrating the Festival of Lights! To mark the occasion, there was a vibrant stall competition, and plenty of delicious food and festive snacks. To keep the fun going, the team enjoyed some lively games of tambola, followed by a Diwali gift handover.
Life at Agoda takes JavaScript Bangkok 2.0.0
As a sponsor, we were proud to support JavaScript Bangkok 2.0.0, a conference where local and international JavaScript communities unite. Our Tech team learned so much from industry peers while our Talent Acquisition team got to speak with fellow tech professionals. Nattaaek Wattanuyan, Senior Software Engineer, also gave an insightful talk on ‘Beyond Compile Times: Leveling Up Your Developer Experience’.
Connecting with our partners
The Editory Riverside Hotel was the perfect setting for Agoda’s first partner event in Lisbon, Portugal. Adrian Lopez Barros, Director of Agoda Europe, and the Iberia team led insightful sessions where we shared key learnings, explored opportunities in emerging markets, and mapped out how we can continue making an impact together.
Serving community needs
Giving back is a pillar of our Life at Agoda. 50 Agoda Thailand volunteers joined forces with the Mirror Foundation to strengthen disaster management efforts. A group of Agodans also partnered with TerraCycle to reduce plastic pollution in local waterways. Meanwhile, in Korea, Agodans were hard at work in Seoul Forest, “plogging” to keep the park litter-free.
In Malaysia, Agodans visited the Second Chance Animal Shelter in Hulu Langat. They helped shower and feed the dogs and gave the facilities a thorough clean. Another team headed to Zoo Negara, dedicating their time to maintaining and cleaning the zoo’s spaces. These efforts are a testament to our commitment to making a positive impact together!
Sparking creativity at Agoda Leap
Agoda Leap is a learning initiative that encourages our employees to become true entrepreneurs. With the help of their mentors, our participants come up with creative concepts and turn their ideas into concrete business cases.
Over 80 participants were involved in Agoda Leap 2024, narrowing down from 32 initial ideas to the final few. This month, the five finalist groups presented their business ideas to Agoda’s leadership team, including our CEO Omri, CMO Matteo Frigerio, CCO Damien Pfirsch, CTO Idan Zalzberg, and CPO Ittai Chorev. The event brought together a supportive audience of mentors, peers, and managers, all there to champion our finalists. Congratulations to our winning team, Agoda Buddies! Kudos to Akshay Kakani, Nelson Moreno, Shu Yen Sia, and Zeeshan Sayed for an outstanding achievement.
Join our team and be a part of the Agoda community. We’re hiring!
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