What a journey ahead – buzzwords for 2022
New Normal, Metaverse, “I minted my own NFT”, Connectivity – what’s yours?
WELL, 2021 has been quite the journey and it looks like we could be in for another journey in 2022, the way the year is starting out. And there, I’ve done it – committed the crime of the journalist’s profess [...]
From Volaris to OYO, why Ramirez chose to have skin in the game at Katanox
JULIANA Ramirez was working at OYO Hotels when she got a visit from the founders of Katanox, the startup offering direct API connectivity between sellers and hotels.
Ramirez, who has just joined OYO in 2020 after a 10-year stint with ultra low cost Mexican airline Volaris, knew first hand the c [...]
Welcome to a year that requires grit, strength and a leap of faith
CLOSING out the year, battered by news of yet another Greek tragedy unfolding in our world and the travel industry, I was determined to start 2022 on an optimistic note.
So I listened to an interview with Espen Fadnes, one of the world’s most famous base jumpers, who I think is the most optimi [...]
New generation of startups will change France’s travel scene, and why DMCs remain critical to the trip
Cambon Partners' Morgann Lesne on what makes French travel tech tick or not tick these days
HAVING lunch with investment banker Morgann Lesne in Paris late December, our conversation turned to the acquisition of Etraveli Group by Booking Holdings and we wondered if France has the capability to p [...]
The boy who liked to fix things and now he wants to fix corporate travel tech
After a three-decade journey, Johnny Thorsen believes he’s in right spot at right time to achieve life’s ambition
EVEN as a child, Johnny Thorsen remembers his interest in pulling things apart and then trying to put them together again in a new and better way.
“That’s
what my mother t [...]
To API or not? Travel agents face dilemma as cruising distribution undergoes shift
New players like Klook, Lazada swooping into vacuum created by pandemic – sales went from zero to “couple of million dollars”
HARRY Sommer, president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line, told a good story during last week’s CruiseWorld Asia. He spoke of how he started a travel agency right [...]
Here’s to more jetlag and more “defiant soldiers” in 2022
THIS is the longest jetlag I've ever had, and I am enjoying every moment of it.
In my youth, or as we would say in Singlish “when young time”, I reveled in my jetlag. Those sleepless hours in the night, when everyone was sleeping, were the best time for writing – no interruptions bar the o [...]
Cruising to nowhere getting somewhere, as domestic cruises resume in Malaysia Dec 22
Cross-border cruising on table, Singapore-Penang-Phuket itinerary being planned
IT is ironic that even though air travel in Asia is going nowhere, the only sector that seems to be going somewhere even though it is mostly to nowhere, is cruising.
On December 22, domestic cruises from Penang, [...]
Pandemic boom in fitness gives RunGo wings to fly
WiT Startup Pitch 2021 finalist RunGo, described as the “#1 running app for discovering the best routes in the world”, is hoping to tap into the pandemic-induced craze of running, walking and general wellness and fitness trends to fuel the next lap in its startup journey.
Noah Bloom was [...]
D’EDGE accelerates on Europe, consolidates in APAC as pandemic rages on
IF there is one thing the pandemic has done, it’s forced global companies to retreat to local and regional frontiers and Paris-based D-EDGE Hospitality Solutions is certainly looking at the Asia Pacific region in a new light, given the slow recovery of the market.
Pierre Charles Grob: “At le [...]
