Hyenas, hippos and the human experience: Beyond the room in Africa
What makes a hotel stay truly unforgettable?
For one panellist, it was waking to the sound of a baby wildebeest being hunted by hyenas and wild dogs just beyond the balcony railing. For another, it was the simple ritual of a cup of coffee delivered to bed at exactly the right moment, rugs laid out, [...]
The aspiring traveller has spoken, now who will build for them?
MOVE’s Nadia Omer on unlocking ASEAN's next wave of travellers
The desire to travel has never been stronger in South-east Asia. The problem, says Nadia Omer, is that the industry hasn't caught up with the person doing the desiring.
Speaking at Travel Tech Thursdays Kuala Lumpur, themed “ [...]
Fly first, earn later: How HeyMax wants to turn loyalty upside down
Joe Lu has a simple problem with loyalty programmes. You earn for months, sometimes years, working towards a reward that may be devalued, unavailable, or simply not worth the wait by the time you get there. The goalpost, as he puts it, can move at any time.
So he decided to move it first.
HeyM [...]
OTAs: The Next Frontier — trust, plumbing and the local advantage
Three OTA veterans take on the existential question: in a world reshaped by AI, geopolitical disruption, and the complexity of African markets, what does it mean to be a travel platform – and does the name even matter anymore?
The panel, “OTAs: The Next Frontier”, opened with a show of hands. [...]
Letter from Cape Town: Finding your Table Mountain
The travel industry is living through its most unsettling moment in 30 years since the Internet. AI is redrawing the front door through which travellers enter the funnel. Jobs are being reconsidered, business models questioned, and in classrooms from Singapore to Cape Town, students are asking the q [...]
SAA’s Tebogo Tsimane: On survival, looking east and fixing tech in small steps
South African Airways' Chief Commercial Officer on navigating the Middle East crisis, rebuilding from business rescue, and why open skies in Africa can't happen without cheaper fares.
Tebogo Tsimane has spent 24 years at South African Airways, starting behind a reservations desk – issuing manual [...]
Wego’s Craig Hewett: Homecoming, building through crisis and carrying Cape Town
At WiT Africa, the Wego co-founder returned home and in doing so, revealed a story not just about building a global travel company, but about resilience shaped by place, crisis and the long arc of time.
Craig Hewett rarely steps on stage to speak. In fact, after more than 20 years of building Weg [...]
From Autobahn dreams to AI travel: Saad Saeed’s bet on escaping travel’s startup graveyard
Growing up in Pakistan, Saad Saeed dreamt of fast cars and soccer, and it was those two things that brought him to Berlin to study.
Germany’s Autobahn fascinated him. “It’s crazy,” he says. “Out of all the countries, the one with no speed limit has to be Germany – with all the rules.� [...]
From Jollibee to Wall Street: How Hotel101 is bringing fast food logic to global hospitality
When Jollibee acquired Mang Inasal in 2010, it wasn’t just another consolidation in the Philippines’ fast food wars. It was the coming together of two entrepreneurs born in the Year of the Dragon – Tony Tan Caktiong and Edgar “Injap” Sia II – who believed scale, simplicity and system cou [...]
Beyond the gallop: Why the future belongs to the herd
We’re midway through the Lunar New Year celebrations (which, in case you didn’t know, stretch a full 15 days) and I swear if I see the word “gallop” in one more press release, I may well leapfrog into the nearest lake — which would have been rather dramatic two weeks ago when I was in New [...]
