Rakuten acquires tours & activities platform, Voyagin
It's official. Rumours had been circulating for a while and today, Rakuten, Inc., Japan’s leading ecommerce site, announced that it has acquired a majority share in Voyagin, Asia’s leading platform to discover and book tours and activities. Cofounded by Masashi Takahashi, Hiroyuki Haya [...]
Maggie White: She called Australia home and she is now at home
She was the soul of discretion. You can imagine that’d be annoying to a pesky, nosy journalist wanting to find out news about the organisation she worked for almost her entire career, but Maggie White had a way of keeping that bit at a distance and yet drawing you close to her way of being.As long [...]
When a venue becomes a true partner, your event cannot help but fly – thank you, Nikko
For the last four years, we’ve held our WIT Japan at the Hotel Nikko in Odaiba and over the years, I’ve come to regard it as home. That Rainbow Bridge right outside my hotel window inspired the theme for our inaugural event in 2012 – “Building Bridges”. The staff know us. They know our eve [...]
The crazy world of start-ups – from freelancers to tour guides, smart dog collars and avatar animation
In today’s world of disruption, everybody can do and be anything we want to be. We can be taxi drivers (Uber), hoteliers (Airbnb), bloggers (Wordpress), celebrities (social networks), headhunters (LinkedIn and lately, social recruiting sites like Wantedly from Japan) and, with Freelancer, the glob [...]
Smell the real coffee at Balestier, join us for Heritage Race July 4
In the age of Starbucks, Costa Coffees and Coffee Beans, where coffee has been commoditised and globalised, it is nice to find an establishment like Lam Yeo Coffee Powder still holding its own in Singapore.Lam Yeo, housed in an old shophouse in Balestier Road, sells its own roasts of coffee beans fr [...]
AccorHotels is a “why not” moment as it throws down the gauntlet in battle for “Iron Throne”
In the finale of Season 5, Game of Thrones, everyone dies. There, no spoiler alert. We know that’s what happens in this TV series which Agoda’s Timothy Hughes compared to online travel at the recent WIT Japan & North Asia.Well, the battle is about to get more brutal.Accor’s announcement th [...]
WIT Warrior Spotlight: Fritz Demopoulos – be focused, stay humble and bust stereotypes
At the WIT Conference last year in Singapore, we recognised 11 individuals whom we felt have had the most influence on the development of online travel in Asia Pacific. This is the fourth article in a series of interviews profiling the WIT Warriors. Fritz Demopoulos was one of three co-founders of Q [...]
travelmob no more as HomeAway builds brand to grow global vacation rental travel
The dropping of the travelmob name to become HomeAway Asia this month is part of a wider move by the Austin-based company to build a global brand and encourage global vacation rental travel. travelmob was started by two co-founders, Turochas Fuad and PK, who sold 63% of the business to HomeAway in J [...]
Travel is getting like “Game of Thrones”, be like a Hobbit to win
The news is sweet. Online travel is growing faster than the overall market and APAC remains a high growth market. However that didn’t stop Timothy Hughes, vice president marketing of Agoda, from reminding everyone “it’s a brutal market out there” and predicting a “bloodbath”.Hughes said [...]
Kathleen Tan leaves Expedia following global reorganisation as HQ takes charge
Rumours had been flying of leadership changes that would take place in the Air Asia Expedia joint venture after Expedia increased its stake to 75% this February, and this week the changes happened.A global reorganisation was announced this week to staff in Asia, along with news that CEO Kathleen Tan [...]
