Fast feet, centre court: Agoda’s leaders on building for a future nobody can see
Twelve years in, Agoda’s CEO Omri Morgenshtern and CTO Idan Zalzberg still talk like founders. At WiT Singapore, I asked them what the next chapter looks like when the ball could come from anywhere.
I have known Agoda long enough to remember when it was the scrappy Bangkok upstart that most peopl [...]
The shifts in travel: The who, how and why, 21 years on
On the flight from Singapore to Bangkok, the captain’s voice stopped me. A woman’s. I hope one day I won’t notice anymore, but it’s still rare enough that I do. A quick search: 102 female pilots across the Singapore Airlines Group, including Scoot. That’s 2.8% of 3,676.
On the way back, [...]
Travel will become experience-first: GetYourGuide doubles down on Asia
A year ago, when GetYourGuide brought its Unlocked Summit to Asia for the first time, I sensed first-time jitters, some trepidation as to how the event and its content would be received by partners. This year, I sensed much more confidence, more purposefulness.
And I guess one shouldn’t be surp [...]
The agents are swarming: Lessons from the bees
Well, well, well, the great Agentic race is officially on. I’ve lost track of the agents coming our way.
At WiT Singapore, there was of course a lot of talk about what all this means for travel. I played with three possible scenarios in my head and tested it, in various conversations.
One is a [...]
Travel deserves its own agent, and its own soul: Key takeaways from WiT Singapore
The car has broken down. We are stuck in Kuala Selangor, a small town in Malaysia I’ve only heard about but never visited. We are two hours away from our destination, Lumut, where we’re supposed to take a ferry to Pulau Pangkor to stay at an artist’s retreat called Tiger Rock on the island.
[...]
CarTrawler, Tiqets integrated: Expedia’s Alfonso Paredes on keeping focus in B2B long game
It may be a couple of months since the World Cup final, but Alfonso Paredes, Expedia Group’s President, B2B & Chief Commercial Officer, is still euphoric about his home country’s win.
Speaking to me from his Madrid office, he said, “Spain won not because they had the best individual playe [...]
Food, identity & tourism: The story grown when no one is watching
A soil scientist by accident, a MasterChef alum turned custodian of culture, and a data analyst who’s read 1,300 diners’ minds walked into a Queenstown pre-lunch session – and ended up agreeing on the same verdict: New Zealand’s food story is still “emerging”.
That was the key takeawa [...]
The leap of faith Instinct can’t book
I suppose it is fitting that I used Instinct to book tickets for the movie Odyssey. A robotic agent that can accomplish tasks in seconds, buying tickets to a three-hour film about one man’s arduous, perilous journey over the seas – fighting the wrath of Poseidon – to return to his family afte [...]
Letter from The Cotswolds: Pretty little villages, naked gardens, buried bodies
In Wiltshire, in the Cotswolds Area, there is a tiny, sweet village called Castle Combe. Despite its name, it has no castle, but visiting it, I couldn’t help but think that the villagers living there (last count: 326) wished they had a fortress and moat to keep out the visitors.
It was past six [...]
Unfinished business: Inside the founding of Flagship Group
When I put it to Stephen Oddo that buying back into the tours and activities business he’d built and sold looked a lot like unfinished business, he answered rather reticently. “To a certain degree, for sure,” he said, and then proceeded at some length to explain it off as a “happy coincidenc [...]
