The story of China told in a hotel brand
In many ways, the story of Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts in China parallels that of the most populous nation on earth.Consider this. Shangri-La’s first hotel in China was in Hangzhou – it took over a government-owned hotel, renovated and restored it, and opened it in 1984. Early signs of a regi [...]
To Japan with Love
The To Japan with Love campaign, launched on May 10, is a collaborative effort of AirAsia Bhd and its affiliate airlines - AirAsia X, AirAsia Indonesia and AirAsia Thailand - to help Japan in its recovery. It includes a fundraising drive across the airline’s entire network and logistical [...]
Travel hot for startups, a lot of pain points to be solved
Travel is an old, complex industry with complicated structures and processes. This is what makes it a great industry for entrepreneurs because there are many pain points to solve. This was one of the key messages from travel's inaugural session at Echelon 2011, the digital start-up conference in Si [...]
Shangri-La’s first dip into social media ‘exciting’ and ‘touching’
Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts' foray into social media has opened up a whole new level of customer engagement for the group, says Kent Zhu, group director of sales and marketing, when we met up at the opening of the new Kerry Hotel, Pudong, Shanghai.“We were getting about 250 comments with each p [...]
Skyscanner wants to be Amazon of flight search
Nine years after he personally wrote the code to simplify flight search to solve a particular problem he had, Gareth Williams, CEO of Skyscanner, remains focused on one goal – to make travel search more like a book search – flexible, fast and cheap.“Will it also come with recommendations like [...]
Solare first with HotelSnapShot to predict guest booking behaviour
In a country-wide first, Japanese operated Solare Hotels & Resorts has implemented a new software application -HotelSnapShot that allows up to date analysis of internal metrics plus access to key external data that impacts hotels and resorts.HotelSnapShot is the creation of Intouch Data Pty [...]
Something is not working with the Great Firewall of China
Officially, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are banned in China.I've been in Beijing and Shanghai for nearly 10 days with the ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) Study Mission to China. We had meetings with several government departments where we were repeatedly told there was no acces [...]
South Asia and Southeast Asia lead APAC’s tourism boom
International visitor arrivals into Asia Pacific destinations grew by 4% year-on-year in May 2011, with South Asia and Southeast Asia recording particularly strong performances for the month.Preliminary results released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) showed South Asia had a 15% incr [...]
The Wrap: Tune Hotels targets Chinese travellers in first foreign deal with Plateno
In the news this week: It’s all about partnership this week as Tune Hotels collaborates with China’s Plateno, Ryanair partners with Amadeus, Travelport renews agreement with BCD Travel, and AirAsia BIG teams up with Hilton Hhonors. Tune Hotels targets Chinese travellers in first foreign deal wit [...]
FastBooking hotels more visible to travel agents with Travelport’s hotel tool
The partnership between Travelport and FastBooking sees the latter’s hotels displayed and bookable via the latter’s newly-launched Travelport Rooms and More™.The tool also boosts the visibility of FastBooking client hotels among the 65,000 connected travel agency customers in the worldwide [...]
