Letter from KK and Penang: A new world of travel, a new class of accommodation
I hardly recognise Kota Kinabalu (KK) these days. It’s been just over a year since I’ve visited this East Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, and the developments blew me away.
KK is an example of a destination transformed by low cost airlines and the rise of the middle class traveller a [...]
A thought for the Rooster year – can fortune tellers be replaced by AI?
The bad jokes have started. The first press release arrived last week with a headline that used words like “crowing” and “strutting” and phrases like “feather in our cap”.
Yes, right after we’ve just said goodbye to the new year, it’s time to greet the Fire Rooster as he comes fly [...]
Letter from a Homeliday: I wished I had stayed in La La Land
Warren Buffett once famously said, when everyone is doing one thing, do the other. It’s something I try and keep in mind whenever I feel a herd instinct come over me. It’s something I do particularly over the holiday season – while everyone’s travelling, I have a “homeliday”.
A holida [...]
Mobile is generation-busting, it’s not all about Millennials, be Mindful of that
I know there are many of us who can’t wait to see the end of 2016. It’s been a horrible year and even one day before New Year’s Eve, there are people saying, “Hey wait, it hasn’t ended, let’s get through 2016 first.”
It’s like we’re constantly bracing ourselves for more bad news [...]
How dragons became sharks, and lessons on overcoming fear and rejection from Robert Herjavec
The first thing I learnt from listening to Robert Herjavec of “Shark Tank” fame is that dragons don’t exist in America, or at least they don’t believe in them as we do in Asia.
Speaking at the Expedia Partners Conference in Las Vegas held earlier this month, Herjavec, one of the sharks in [...]
Myanmar, a sleeping beauty being woken up by technology and tourism
Growing up in Myanmar in the 70s, May Myat Mon Win dreamt of a day “when our country could be like our neighbours” in South-east Asia. “We just didn’t know how long it would take,” she said.
Today, as the chairperson of the Myanmar Tourism Marketing Committee (MTMC), she sees that the d [...]
Why voice will be big and Barry Diller on Netflix, Tesla and Trump
Voice is the next technology frontier and companies who do not plough resources into it now will be in danger of being disintermediated and disrupted, said Barry Diller, chairman of IAC/InterActive Corp and Expedia Inc, at the Expedia Partners Conference in Las Vegas last week.
Speaking to CE [...]
Expedia’s $100b target and how it intends to get there with its army of brands
Twenty years on since its founding, Expedia Inc intends to become the first $100b travel agency in the world and it is pulling out all stops to hit that target.
With current gross bookings standing at $71b, representing a 29% year-on-year growth, and if you take into consideration the journey s [...]
Letter from Las Vegas: Where polar bears play, Elvis is alive and Trump rules
At San Francisco airport, the queue for immigration is packed with mainly people of Asian descent – Malaysians, Singaporeans, Indonesians, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Koreans and Indians.
Maybe it’s the timing – I have flown in direct from Singapore – and the flights at this time of the [...]
From food delivery to helping hosts, Limpert eyes global play for GuestReady
During his stint as managing director of Food Panda for Taiwan and Philippines, based in Taipei last year, Alexander Limpert became an Airbnb host. That was when he realised that being a host for the sharing accommodation site wasn’t that easy, there were many things to handle.
“I saw an [...]
