Letter from Fort Lauderdale: Pongy pooches inflight, and an underdog at his best
Hopper to reach profitability next year, doubling down on B2B and lodging
I am writing this on Delta Airlines from Fort Lauderdale to New York where I will catch that epic 18-hour flight back to Singapore. It’s been quite a week. In New York, it was unseasonably warm, and I was able to spend a lo [...]
Letter from New York: Sleep tourism’s the next big thing
From Booking.com’s “Reboot Retreaters” prediction to sleep suites in hotels, travellers are yearning for a good snooze
I suppose it is ironic that I am writing about sleep in a city that doesn’t sleep but travelling to New York on that epic 18-hour flight from Singapore has a tendency to se [...]
Korean air market entering Season 3 of K-drama moments
One step closer to Korean Air-Asiana merger, Korean Air to launch NDC in 2024, new airlines Air Premia and T’way jostle for supremacy, Lufthansa and KLM Air France push on with NDC, agents anticipating disruption in distribution in traditional market
It felt like something out of a K-drama. Afte [...]
Welcome to the “Squid Game” of Korean travel startup world
K Travel Tech Summit puts spotlight on role models and aspiring stars
If there was one key message from the first K Travel Tech Summit, held in conjunction with WiT Seoul, and organized by the Korea Tourism Organisation, it is that Korean travel startups are more than ready to take on the world.
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Are passports a thing of the past? SITA is working on it
Digital Travel Credentials will smooth the journey from boarding to Butterfly Farm
In the three decades he’s been with SITA, Sumesh Patel, who was appointed president, Asia Pacific, in 2017, has seen all that’s evolved in airline and airport technologies, and he remains as impassioned about the [...]
Thailand’s Kasikorn Bank Group invests $25m in Traveligo, rebranding to Gother
Thai domestic OTA to partner with TakeMeTour and expand overseas
Thailand’s Beacon Venture Capital, a subsidiary of Kasikorn Bank, has invested US$25m in Traveligo, a Thailand domestic OTA founded in 2015 by Anupong Kriangkrailipikorn, and which will be rebranded to Gother.
The news, announc [...]
Money, sustainability and tech dominate talk in hospitality boardrooms
Sensor Flow wins HICAP's first Tech Challenge, showing what's top of mind for hotel executives
In moderating the “Views From the Boardroom” panel, at the HICAP hospitality investment conference last week, I did some homework to find out how boardroom conversations in hospitality companies had c [...]
GHA’s investment in direct booking pays off, $70m saved in commissions
Hospitality CEOs on brand loyalty, tech investments and cybersecurity risks
The Global Hotel Alliance (GHA) has been able to save up to $70m in commissions payouts to third parties since it built its direct booking platform, said Christopher Hartley, CEO of the world’s largest alliance of i [...]
Riding on robust recovery, Trip.com in quest to drive inbound to China
“Real universe must defeat the metaverse,” says James Liang
The first impression I had when I walked into the Resorts World Convention Centre on Sentosa to attend the Trip.com Global Partner Summit was that I had travelled through a time tunnel back to October 2019 in Shanghai.
That was the [...]
Letter from Samarkand: Forget alien encounters, this happened for real
I’ve been to many events in my life but never have I had an experience where a woman was vacuuming the stage, three minutes before the scheduled starting time, and in the middle of my delayed-by-an-hour panel, we were interrupted by a helicopter taking off on the lawn outside the venue.
That it [...]
