F1 boosts SEA travel. Booking loses Etraveli appeal. Laters.com raises $1.5M. VantisCorp’s TMC platform. More
VantisCorp debuts white-label automation platform for TMCs
VantisCorp launched a white-label corporate travel platform, aimed at Travel Management Companies (TMCs) still relying on spreadsheets, email approvals, and manual invoice reconciliation; it unifies hotel and flight booking (with TMC-specif [...]
Online Travel in Asia: The Unwritten Story (Documentary premiere)
WiT's follow-up documentary sits down with travel tech founders, leaders and rising innovators to ask what's about to change, what never will, and what they'd tell their younger selves.
Every industry has a moment it can't quite explain until it's living through one. For online travel in Asia, that [...]
Resilient travel demand for GCC destinations signals recovery potential through the end of 2026
Travel intelligence analysis by The Data Appeal Company finds that, while the February escalation triggered an immediate shock to travel sentiment and hotel demand across the GCC, travellers have progressively become less reactive to renewed tensions—pointing to strong recovery potential if disrup [...]
Google AI books hotels. Eurovision taps Agoda. Heat influences travel decisions. Acai Desk launched.
Google AI Mode adds direct hotel booking, flight price tracking
Google has fully launched agentic hotel booking in Search's AI Mode in the U.S. (following a recent pilot), with inventory partners including Expedia, Booking.com, Hilton, Hotels.com, Choice Hotels, IHG, Priceline, Marriott, Wyndham an [...]
What the big OTAs are betting on as the next frontier
True to his financial roots, Adrian Currie, former Booking Holdings executive, opened his panel on “OTAs: The Next Frontier”, with numbers to illustrate the size of the four companies on his panel. Booking.com, Expedia Group, Trip.com Group and, in spirit, Katrina Barry’s former employer Webje [...]
Klook expands Kreator Shops feature to all creators on its platform
Klook has rolled out an upgraded version of its Kreator Shops feature to all 30,000-plus creators on its platform across 88 markets. The announcement was made at KREATORVERSE 2026, the company's annual creator summit, held this year in Phu Quoc, Vietnam.
Kreator Shops allows content creators who pa [...]
APAC air passenger demand drops slightly, global demand grows
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released data for July 2026 global passenger demand:
Total demand, measured in revenue passenger kilometers (RPK), was up 0.2% compared to July 2025. Excluding the Middle East, demand grew by 1.2%. Total capacity, measured in available seat [...]
72% of APAC rail bookings now happen online | Report
Car rental lags behind at 47%, but OTAs and AI are closing the gap fast across Asia's ground transport market
Rail is crushing it online in APAC with 72% of gross bookings going digital in 2025, and state-owned operators are keeping most of that traffic in-house through their own apps rather than h [...]
Why empathy, not argument, is Airbnb’s approach to short-term rental regulation
Mich Goh on listening her way through hostile hearings, and what governments across APAC actually want when they talk about short-term rentals
Every APAC market wants something different from tourism, and that's the challenge Mich Goh (Director of Public Policy, APAC, Airbnb) has built her career a [...]
Tourvis Select wins big. Surge in refund protection. Spotnana buys TROOP. eviivo and Dida’s new channel.
Tourvis Select wins 2026 Virtuoso 'Best Agency Culture Award,' first for North & Southeast Asia
Tourvis Select, the luxury hotel platform run by Korean travel tech company Tidesquare, won the "Best Agency Culture Award" at the 2026 Virtuoso Travel Week gala in Las Vegas, the first time an agenc [...]
