Created business strategy · Papua New Guinea tourism
Laikim PNG
A Papua New Guinea tourism and commercial access platform — not a tour operator alone, but infrastructure for trust, local operators, and international reach in one of the hardest environments I have worked in.
Trust travels further than technology.
Created the business and strategy, raised capital, and provided ICT — working with Erue Taunao and her deep PNG tourism expertise.
The story
- Problem
- PNG holds enormous value but outsiders cannot access it safely or at scale — logistics, culture, government, and trust all block conventional tourism models.
- Constraint
- Platform had to grow local operators and communities, not extract from them — while Erue Taunao’s relationships were the non-negotiable foundation.
- Decision
- Build Laikim as trust infrastructure first: created the business and strategy, raised capital, and provided ICT — layered on Erue’s PNG expertise.
- Outcome
- Multi-format tourism and commercial access platform; operator network across PNG; ongoing relationship work in Enga, Port Moresby, and diplomatic settings.
What mattered
- Created the business and strategy — then raised capital and built ICT capability.
- Partnership with Erue Taunao — decades of PNG tourism relationships, not a startup pitch deck.
- Tourism as infrastructure: jobs, local operator capacity, culture, and repeat access — not one-off extraction.
- Tours from Port Moresby day trips to Enga Province, business access, rugby league, yacht charter, and remote experiences.
- Registered in PNG and Australia; work with government, leaders, and operators across the country.
The situation
Papua New Guinea holds extraordinary cultural, environmental, and commercial value. It is also one of the hardest places on earth to operate if you are an outsider — logistics, security, government, culture, and relationships that cannot be shortcut.
Most “PNG tourism” attempts fail because they treat the country as a destination listing. Laikim PNG was built around a different question: how do you earn the right to operate before anything scales?
Why Erue — and why not alone
Erue Taunao brings more than thirty years in PNG tourism — Miss Papua New Guinea 1988, executive roles in hospitality, cultural attaché work, and leadership across the tourism industry. She is not a figurehead. She is the reason local trust exists.
I created the business and strategy, raised capital, and provided ICT. Erue holds the relationships, cultural authority, and on-ground operating knowledge. Laikim PNG only works because both halves exist.
We are long-term friends as well as colleagues. That matters in PNG more than any platform feature.
What we built
Laikim PNG was founded in 2018. The first years went into structures, plans, and operator relationships — then COVID closed the borders and we kept building for when they reopened.
The platform spans thousands of tour options: Port Moresby day tours, cultural and WWII tours, business tours, film and photography logistics, exclusive custom travel, rugby league tours, yacht charter, hiking, diving, and remote experiences.
Local operators provide guides, transport, provisions, and language — Laikim provides reach, marketing, technology, and international customers. Tourism creates jobs and repeat access to places that would otherwise be visited once and forgotten.
What it proved
In environments with no playbook, relationships are infrastructure. The technology was rarely the hardest part. Earning trust — with communities, operators, government, and diplomatic settings — was the work.
That is the same pattern I saw at Aston, in professional sport, and in manufacturing: the system is complex, the stakes are high, and conventional thinking stops working long before people admit it.