Longhaul low cost the next wave – airlines have to become ecommerce companies that fly
In the last 10 years, longhaul low cost airlines have mushroomed with international seats growing by 900%. Newcomer World Airways, the first longhaul LCC in the US, will be 100% digital and Millennial-focused while Cebu Pacific is trying to think of itself less as an engineering company but more of [...]
We in APAC are most vacation-deprived but guess who takes the lead?
Walking through Resorts World at Sentosa the other day, and spending time in Penang during the Chinese New Year festive period, It is hard to believe there are vacation-deprived folks in Asia. Both places were crowded with families and groups from all over Asia, with Chinese travellers clearly leadi [...]
Chinese travelling more, spending more, favour mobile payments: Nielsen/Alipay report
Chinese travellers are travelling more, spending more, and are more prone to using mobile payment when travelling.
These are the key findings of the latest of many reports on outbound Chinese travelling trends. According to the Outbound Chinese Tourism and Consumption Trends: 2017 Survey, by Niel [...]
Letter from Penang: As Year of the Dog dawns, so will new travellers and citizens with different aspirations and expectations
Tomorrow, February 15, will be the peak of travel as millions of Chinese and their diaspora make the journey to wherever home is to gather for their Lunar New Year reunion dinners.
You can already feel it in Penang, when the population of the island more than triples with the return of Penangites [...]
Parikh gets scrappy at Hotwire and says, “never say never” to Asia
In August 2017, Neha Parikh left Hotels.com where she’d been since April 2008 to become president of Hotwire and it's clear she's bringing her own style and personality to the brand which calls itself “a leading discount travel site that offers ridiculously low prices”. Last November, she anno [...]
SIA launches loyalty digital wallet: Travel retailers are clearly hoping blockchain is their Internet 3.0 moment
The hottest word on the block these days is blockchain. Even though it’s been on the periphery for a few years, it’s been in the shadow of the other hotter word, cryptocurrency.
But as the technology underpinning cryptocurrency, it’s been getting more attention of late.
Like everyone els [...]
How Aaron Sarma ventured into Touristly and a 50% deal with AirAsia
Other than a little exposure to travel during his stint as country manager at Street Deal, a group buying company in Malaysia, Aaron Sarma knew very little about the vertical.
But when he was looking to do his own thing after leaving the daily deals company, the first industry he looked to was tr [...]
SnapShot launches Marketplace to solve hotels’ data and tech woes
One of the biggest pain points in hospitality is fragmentation of data points, and hence too many data silos. One company that is trying to solve that problem, as well as solve the industry’s access to “a properly integrated data platform which would dramatically accelerate the hotel technology [...]
Best practices in storytelling, an STB case study: Use your brain and make people happy
Last year, Myfanwy McGregor, co-founder of Adhesive PR in Sydney, had an idea for a campaign – was there a way to measure the happiness levels that Singapore can create?
And so the agency for Singapore Tourism Board worked on a programme where it brought a team of influencers and neuro scientis [...]
STB to unleash passionate marketers and storytellers to support and animate its new brand
Having launched its “Passion Made Possible” brand last year, the success of which depends on unleashing the passion of Singaporeans and residents, the Singapore Tourism Board is investing in building an industry of marketers and storytellers.
As a first step, it has opened its internal Ma [...]
