The future is price differentiation – do you agree?
During the panel I ran at the China Travel Distribution Summit in Guangzhou, I asked a final question of my panelists, “What’s the one trend they’ll be watching in the next 12 months?”Most cited was China outbound and regionalization of online travel; however the answer was Stan van Roij, ma [...]
Groupon makes comeback with travel, mobile push and a new ‘pull’ model
One of the most frequent questions I’m asked these days – after Groupon set up its Travel vertical group in Asia Pacific earlier this year – is “how long do you think they will last?”In the rapid-fire world of online, it seemed only yesterday when Groupon, the daily deals monster, was ha [...]
Armed with new funds, Traveloka looks to build on OTA offering
Traveloka, which recently raised Series-A funding with Global Founders Capital, a new VC set up by Rocket Internet, is looking to cement its position to become the leading online flight booking in Indonesia.Co-founder, Ferry Unardi (pictured left) said with the funds (he declined to disclose the a [...]
Letter from Guangzhou: Mobile rules, outbound’s the new black
Alipay has 700 million customers. There were 83.2 million outbound trips in 2012 and Chinese travellers spent US$102 billion overseas. 98% of Chinese travellers, totaling 295 million, own a smartphone.At every conference, staggering numbers about the Chinese market are thrown at you. On their own, [...]
To crack mobile in travel, loyalty and frequency are key, says Bubbly’s Clayton
Thomas Clayton, CEO and founder of Bubbly (pictured below left), was sceptical about travel apps in the beginning. “I used to think, every travel company is coming up with a mobile app but no one would use them.”Today, as a “passionate frequent traveler who lives on the road” who does abou [...]
Letter from Seoul: Change will come as low cost effect takes hold
Just returned from Seoul – did you know, it may not have the fastest average Internet speed in the world (fourth after Hong Kong, Japan and Romania – Latvia was fifth) but it does have the highest high broadband penetration (10mbps) in the world, followed by Japan, Hong Kong and Latvia in that o [...]
Letter from Honolulu: Bringing back ancient ways to the islands
The last time I was in Honolulu, I joined a pilot friend on a ferry flight across the Pacific back to Hong Kong where I was living at the time.
We took about three weeks on a single-engine Piper Malibu to fly across the Pacific, from the Hawaiian island through Kiribati, Tahiti, Cook Islands, We [...]
Tea & Horse Caravan Trail, Pt 5: Spending time in Shangri-La
My first morning in Shangri-La and I have to admit, I didn’t wake up as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I had planned. I had been warned that I’d have a fitful night. The body needs time to adjust to the thin air and sure enough, I felt dehydrated all night, plus it was colder than I was used to [...]
Letter from Singapore: Tale of contrasting worlds
Every now and then, I feel an urge to write a letter from Singapore because when you travel a lot, you can sometimes forget what’s happening on hometurf, so couple of things got my attention this week.One, the announcement by Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong about “Project Jewel” [...]
Tea & Horse Caravan Trail, Pt 4: Onwards to the first bend of the Yangtze, onto Shangri-La
I wake up with a sense of excitement. Never mind the rain, but today is the day I will finally get to see Shangri-La. It’s a place I’ve long wanted to visit, it being the home of Uttara, my friend, for the last 16 years.But first, we take a detour to Yuhu, the base of Joseph Rock, a self-made bo [...]
