Sumba Hospitality School reopens, 10 students supported by WiT begin their term
IT’S been a challenging year for Inge De Lathauwer and her team at Sumba Hospitality Foundation, which runs the hotel school on the Indonesian island. The resort, which provided some income for the school, stalled. Any funds raised went towards Covid-related health issues. Tourism to Sumba has st [...]
Philip Wolf, pioneer, legend, mentor, traveller
EVER since I could remember, from the day I started WiT in 2005, everyone would ask me, “Have you been to Phocuswright?” That was the gold standard, they told me, in travel tech conferences. “And Philip Wolf, have you met him? You must.”
For years, those two phrases rang in my mind as I [...]
Talent drain from travel will hurt recovery – the time to upskill and reskill is now
FOR those in hospitality and whose employment has been impacted by the pandemic, the time is now to upskill and give yourself the best chance to re-enter the industry which has been transformed likely for good, says hospitality veteran and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT)’s associate profe [...]
“Cannot stand anymore” – after a year of no travel, what have you learnt?
“CAN you believe it? Today’s the day WHO called Covid a pandemic a year
ago,” said my caller this morning (March 11, 2021).
At this stage I am ready to believe anything. Well, not everything because there’s a lot of mixed reality out there – there’s someone’s truth and then there� [...]
ShopCash to give Wego new wings and funds till travel takes flight again
IN launching ShopCash, its new online
shopping cashback and deal discovery app for Middle
East consumers,
Wego wants to ride on the coat-tails of the
soaring instant cashback e-commerce culture that got further accelerated during
Covid and give investors another reason to back its future growth.&nb [...]
TripActions bucks trend: Gets new funding, sees strong growth, predicts robust comeback for business travel
IN the midst of the pandemic and a travel shutdown, TripActions, a business travel and spend management platform, announced it raised US$155 million in Series E funding. Its co-founder & CEO Ariel Cohen said in spite of the events of 2020, TripActions had seen accelerated adoption by companies [...]
Solo Female Travellers chomping at the bit to travel – Greece tops bucket list
IN a year of no travel, the Solo Female Travellers Club managed to grow its members base from 15,000 to 80,000. “Engagement was really high,” said Mar Pages, co-founder of the group that started on Facebook six years ago and is primarily run on the social network.
“I
think people were real [...]
Despite Asia being closed, Maldives on track to achieve tourism recovery by mid-2021
Having practised Covid-safe management policies since July 15, destination will get headstart when borders fully open
THE Maldives is betting that its own vaccination programme, the
earlier-than-expected global vaccine rollout and the effectiveness of its Covid-safe
management policies will stan [...]
Amadeus takes hit in revenues and profits, steamrolls ahead with new partnerships and NDC initiatives
DESPITE a 61% contraction in revenue to €2,174.0 million and a 123.9% decline in profit to a loss of €302.4 million in its 2020 results, Amadeus continues to push ahead with new partnerships and New Distribution Capability (NDC) initiatives to drive advanced travel retailing.
In announcing i [...]
Indie hotels need to step up digitisation to get fair share of online rebound
How the OTA landscape in Asia changed during Covid
IT speaks to the acceleration of technology adoption among independent hotels in the Asia region that despite a year of literally no cross-border travel, ZUZU Hospitality Solutions was able to double its customer base from 1,500 to 3,000 last ye [...]
