Letter from Dubai: Lights, sand, fog, the work goes on
It’s 6am Dubai time and outside my room at the Oberoi is a city that never sleeps. By that, I mean, work never stops.
In the darkness of the dawn, I can hear hammering and knocking as men at work continue their labour to build a city that’s been in the making for at least the last two decades [...]
Mobile meet Millennials: Cleartrip bets on mobile to take leap to the top
A year is a long time in online travel and that was quite evident when we returned for our second Middle East edition in Dubai last week.
In a region where 60% of the population are under 30 – a generation that can change its habits overnight – and smartphones are nearly as plentiful as sand in [...]
10 lessons from Singapore, the Start-Up: Learning from Lee Kuan Yew
Like everyone living in Singapore, I spent most of last week reading, listening and learning about the life of Lee Kuan Yew and how he built a nation from scratch. And it made me realise that in many ways, Singapore is like a start-up and the late Mr Lee its founder.
Here are the 10 lessons I fee [...]
WIT Japan Bootcamp goes full day, open to all, including hoteliers
The fourth edition of WIT Japan & North Asia will feature a full-day Bootcamp the day before, June 4, for all delegates. It will set the stage for the main conference which will be held at Hotel Nikko on June 5, marking the theme, “A New Dawn Rises”.
“As we’ve grown, demand for mo [...]
Remembering LKY by his words, and deeds
As much as any of us has been expecting it, we’re never prepared for that moment of finality.
I remember the doctors preparing us, days ahead, for my father’s death. Yet when it came, it was still like a thunderbolt that left a big gap that’s yet to be filled.
Noise, then silence. Transi [...]
Airbnb & Uber and how they used technology to build trust between strangers
Listening to two speakers from Airbnb and Uber back-to-back on the same stage at ITB Berlin drummed home the amazing and scary scale the two companies have built in a short time and how disruptive they truly are at all levels. Both were interviewed by Philip Wolf, founder of Phocuswright during the [...]
Emirates Hackathon: Youths want it simple, social and more personal
If there were some recurring themes that came out of last weekend’s Emirates Travel Hackathon, it was youths want to share, meet each other, make friends, play games and make travel fun, cheap and easy for themselves.
They also want it simple, with most saying there was just too much informatio [...]
Pause the clicks and conversions, time for “magic” in hospitality
In today’s world of performance-based marketing, where everything is measured by clicks and conversions, it is almost sentimental to see a hotel company invest in something as intangible as “entertainment” and “magic”.But this is what Accor Asia Pacific has been doing for well over a decad [...]
Virtual reality, smartwatches and Apple Pay – their implications for travel
The first time I started wearing glasses was when I noticed how many people were wearing them too. It made me less self-conscious to be called “Specky”.So when I put on my first pair of Occulus Rift virtual reality glasses, it made me wonder if in a few years’ time, when this technology become [...]
You got to milk the cow to survive in the OTA farm
So there I was – I had just written my post about how hard it is to build an OTA of any consequence and during the first session I attended at ITB Berlin, Darren Huston, President & CEO of Priceline Group, was talking about “milking the cow”.“Our employees are workhorses, not show ponies [...]
