The Sound of Quiet: Why the tourism ecosystem needs silence
"When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light, That split the night,
And touched the sound of silence."
~ Paul Simon
Let’s be honest: most of us in the travel industry spend our lives building infrastructure for the crowd. We map out route expansions, track footfall events, optimi [...]
What happens when capital enters Musk’s orbit?
Everyone is talking about the eventual SpaceX IPO as though it is preordained to be the largest and most successful public offering in history.
Maybe.
But perhaps we should spend a little more time discussing the risks. Not the risks to SpaceX itself. The risks to everything around it. Perhaps [...]
Magnifica Humanitas | A Moment. A Reflection.
There are moments in life when a paper arrives not as instruction, but as interruption.
The recent ecclesiastical letter Magnifica Humanitas from Pope Leo XIV on Artificial Intelligence did not strike me as a policy paper about technology. It struck me as something much less comfortable: an exami [...]
A blockbuster eCommerce announcement and a strange travel signal with an Asia-Pacific twist
Amazon has just done something not quite so quietly disruptive: it has taken another piece of its logistics engine, put a price on it, and handed the market a benchmark. That matters far beyond e-commerce. Which is why we should all be paying attention.
For travel, the lesson is obvious. The indu [...]
Whose order? Or, why everyone wants to own your trip (and make you pay for it)
A few weeks ago, as I planned my trip to join WIT’s 20th Anniversary Celebration, my inbox was littered with the usual barrage: multiple confirmation emails for each trip element and no single journey umbrella document. Each came from a different brand, with a different reference number, in a diff [...]
China’s Umetrip: A revival or a reboot?
When the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and 37 Chinese carriers – pretty much all of them – announced the launch of a unified direct ticket sales platform — embedded in the popular Civil Aviation Information app “Umetrip” — it immediately drew parallels to past airline-le [...]
How travel hurts itself: The blessings and the curse of multi-source content
Once upon a time, in the golden age of air travel distribution (let’s say 30 years ago), we the consumers and intermediaries had this magical thing called full content. Airlines — for better or worse — filed all their fares, schedules, and inventory into a GDS. If you were an agent, an OTA, or [...]
From Viral to Value: How social influencers in travel are monetizing their platforms
The era of influencers chasing viral fame is shifting into one of strategic monetization, particularly in the travel industry. Once defined by the constant pursuit of likes and shares, the influencer landscape is evolving as creators recognize the need for sustainable revenue streams. Platforms like [...]
Musings on AI, knowledge appliances and the travel consumer
Just lately I, like so many people, am scratching my head to get a handle on AI, which I prefer to think of Assisted Intelligence. For me, the question I am asking is, how can we provide value to our consumers? At present we don’t seem to be doing anything that directly helps the customer, other t [...]
Tech debt in the travel industry: Why airlines are still trying to fly with fossils
Welcome to the airline industry’s secret shame: Tech Debt. Decades of patchwork systems, outdated booking platforms, and clunky old databases that might as well be fossilized – if these systems were any older, archaeologists would be studying them. Airlines have essentially been strapping roller [...]
