WIT Speakers Corner: We need more competition in search, says Varley
The recent partnership between Yahoo Japan and Google, which will see the former adopt the juggernaut’s search engine, only exacerbates advertisers’ and users’ concerns that “there isn’t a significant competitor to Google in most global markets”.Said Matthew Varley, executive general man [...]
Pay-what-you-want Ibis fetches record price
In a sign of the times and an indication of how strongly the hotel market has recovered in Asia Pacific, the largest single hotel asset transaction in terms of dollars took place yesterday.The Ibis Singapore on Bencoolen, a WIT partner hotel in 2009 and 2010, was sold in a transaction that exceeded [...]
You weren’t looking for a holiday but what about this?
I've written a couple of articles lately on websites/applications that allow us to plan a trip. Essentially they act as a portal providing access to information around certain aspects of the trip - the flight, the accommodation, and, as I recently reviewed in the case of NileGuide, events happening [...]
How America needs to engage with the Chinese traveller
As a growing number of Chinese travel abroad for business and leisure, competition to lure mainland travelers is also heating up and one person who's seen the market evolve first hand is Delta Airlines’ Director & Chief Representative of China & Hong Kong, Sandeep Bahl (left).From his offi [...]
New Abacus, Net Trans tie-up takes pain out of hotel commissions
A new tie-up between Abacus and Net Trans may see travel agencies in Asia increase their revenues from hotel commissions between 30-50% within a year.The new agreement offers travel agencies a total solution for the collection, recovery and reconciliation of hotel commissions. Travel agencies that [...]
WIT Speakers Corner: Search in Japan just got more interesting, says travel.jp’s boss
Yahoo Japan’s decision to adopt Google’s search engine rather than following Yahoo Inc in working with Microsoft may have raised concerns in some quarters that the deal will hand the whole search market in the world’s second biggest economy to Google and stifle competition but one man thinks d [...]
ITB Asia 2010 Attracts 30% New Exhibitors
ITB Asia has returned quickly to strong growth with floor space sales up markedly compared to same time last year. Over 30% of exhibitors are new participants at the show which is in its third year.Guangdong Tourism Authority, Bhutan Department of Tourism, the Moscow Exhibition and Convention Agency [...]
Women rule in social networking space
More women than men use social networking sites and they have a higher level of engagement with these sites than do their male counterparts.These findings are contained in a global report on women’s online usage titled “Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet” released by comScor [...]
World’s most liveable cities, why not world’s most responsible destinations?
Every now and then comes along a new list of world’s most liveable cities and in any case, everytime I see the list, it makes me think that liveable equals boring.For example, if you take Mercer’s latest city ranking by quality of living, and you look at Asia Pacific, Auckland at number four wor [...]
eRevMax expands in Asia
eRevMax, pioneer in the field of online benchmarking and channel management for the hospitality industry, is expanding in the Asia Pacific region.The company plans to further increase its global presence by more aggressively distributing RateTiger and SimpleDistribution in Singapore, Thailand, Malay [...]
