"We don't use online travel agents." That single distribution decision, delivered by Andrew Dixon, founder of Cempedak and Nikoi island resorts, cuts against the dominant sales playbook in experience-led hospitality — and it anchored a WiT Indie panel on how independent operators are building experience products that filter, rather than chase, their customers.

The session, "The Experience Surge," was moderated by Jacinta Lim, co-founder and CEO of Seek Sophie, and featured Dixon, Dara of Daraism & Artists, and Rebecca Wilkinson-Duckett of Tiger Rock.

Dara spent over a decade building Phare, the Cambodian Circus, a social enterprise that created jobs for hundreds of young Cambodian artists, before leaving last year to launch his own venture. His entry into hotels came by accident: his uncle bought a villa and asked him to run it.

"I never thought in my life I'd run a hotel, though I worked in one for four years in sales," he said. The property turned out to match his tour business exactly. One guest booked five nights, extended to 11 by text, and booked his two other tour guides as well. "The hotel became my open door to reach the kind of customer who fits my curated cultural company," he said. "Now it's an ecosystem of things I have to make work together."

His signature experience takes guests into his birth village near Siem Reap, weaving in his family's story — including the accident that broke his father's back while gathering firewood and prompted the family's move to Battambang. "It's not a soul-searching sad story, it's a transformative one," he said.

He also stages a village festival at a local art school, centred on a UNESCO-recognised intangible dance heritage. Crucially for sellers of travel, the two products have very different scalability. The village home visit can never be scaled — Dara leads it personally, capping groups at 10, with no staged performances. The festival, by contrast, can scale because it involves the wider village's children.

Wilkinson-Duckett built Tiger Rock on Pangkor Island on 14 acres of former rubber smallholding, after leaving Kuala Lumpur with her husband David. "We built the house with the help of local villagers — the Malays built the Malay-style house, Chinese contractors built the main bridge," she said. The property has been run by a local family from Pangkor ever since. Her portfolio — Tiger Rock, Tropical Spice Garden, and Tiger Blue in Indonesia — was never planned. "They were never done deliberately to make a business — they were a good idea, and we thought, let's go for it, and then, oh, now we've got to pay for it," she said.

Dixon, a former banker, came to Nikoi as a side project. Nearly 20 years in, his resorts run artist and writer residencies, a fully-acted murder mystery, turtle walks, and black soldier fly composting tours. He said the guest experience came first, but conceded the side effects on earned media have been considerable.

"It definitely allows us to stand out. But we do it foremost for guests, so they go away with something different — that's number one," he said. "It does create real interest among journalists, though; our writers' and artists' residency has gotten us into travel media in a really compelling way."

The unplanned benefits extended to staff. "I walked past the artist's residency and my GM and my executive chef were both in there making art," he said.

On distribution, Dixon was blunt. "Our guests found us, rather than us finding them. We're an unusual product — driftwood-built villas, no air conditioning, no TV, plenty of bugs, the sound of fishing boats at night. It's not going to suit everyone, but it suits the curious," he said. His advice: "Focus on the guest experience. If you let people leave saying, wow, I had a great time, they'll do your marketing for you — it just takes a while to build."

He paired that with a warning on labour. "Look after your staff — the hotel industry generally doesn't do this well, and COVID was a classic example. It's not just salary, it's the training, the investment in their future. Staff are the most valuable asset, and in most cases, they walk out the door every day undervalued." He recommended one book on the subject: "Unreasonable Hospitality."

Lim raised the tension between authenticity and intrusion in village visits, and Wilkinson-Duckett flagged pricing as an unresolved problem — she wants to sponsor Malaysian artists who have never left the country, but said pricing access and sponsorship properly is "a genuinely difficult issue."

Asked what an indie hotelier should do tomorrow, Dara is building meditation experiences with Buddhist monks. "Find your own colour, and build your packages and experiences around it," he said. Dixon's answer was to hand experiences to genuinely passionate people — the murder mystery is run by a whole creative group. Wilkinson-Duckett's was risk: "Sometimes you just have to follow the passion and give it a go — because if you don't, you'll never know whether it would have worked."