Dangerous Festivals, here I come
A few days ago, as reported in WIT, NileGuide announced their new ‘events’ functionality for their already great website. I test drove the NileGuide website before here.As soon as I was on the site I immediately felt ‘at home’. Although I haven’t used the site a lot, my experiences so [...]
WIT Speakers Corner: 10 things I’d like WIT to address this year
I attended my first WIT in 2008, where we introduced our company, Circos Brand Karma, to the Asia Pacific travel market. I am looking forward to taking part again this year, both as a speaker and delegate. Here's what I want to learn.1. What can we do together to ensure the romance of travel is alwa [...]
Would you risk showing TripAdvisor’s opinions on your home page?
I have many friends who always go on TripAdvisor to check out the reviews of a given hotel, prior to making a booking. And when I listen to them recite comments on a given place, based on the reviews they read, I can't but help think what is the purpose behind some of these reviews. I guess I'm a [...]
Year in Review: Predictions & Reflections
What lies ahead and what have we left behind? As the year winds to a close, we kick off a series of predictions and reflections from industry leaders. Here's three to kick it off. Ram Badrinathan, General Manager-Asia, PhoCusWright IncQ: What are the three things you think will happen in the trave [...]
Zicasso on the hunt for luxury travel specialists in Asia
A US-based online luxury travel referral service is out in the market in Asia/Pacific looking for retailers who want to focus on selling luxury custom tours, and also for inbound agents and tour operators who are interested in capturing a portion of the large US luxury market. “We are looking for [...]
More people will opt for independent travel, that’s a fact
Well, the image of “travelling in tour groups” has taken a severe battering of late. First, there was the Hong Kong tour guide rant at a group of Chinese tourists for not shopping enough, which makes you wonder how long these zero-commission tours should be allowed to continue.Then, we watched [...]
WIT Speakers Corner: The dawn of a new romance in travel in Asia, says Tan
The empowerment of the customer in Asia is the biggest change that’s taken hold in the regional travel market in the last decade, said Kathleen Tan, group head of commercial for AirAsia.“There’s the empowerment to fly and there’s the empowerment to buy. Low cost airlines and the Internet hav [...]
NileGuide launches “Ask Locals”
Have a question about your upcoming trip, or just exploring travel possibilities? This week, NileGuide debuts its “Ask Locals” functionality, incorporating questions and answers from Localyte.com into top-level navigation on the website.Here, NileGuide users can ask their most pressing trave [...]
Ancillaries Part 2: Understanding the fuss around it
There are clearly a lot of forces lined up on the issue of ancillaries. In part two of my piece on Ancillaries, I will try and make sense of the issues surrounding Ancillaries. For clarification purposes, I am discussing only airline-based products. However as every traveller knows – the ancillari [...]
Hostage crisis: The role Social Media played, and what Philippines needs to do
With the advent of social media, handling a crisis is subject to changed expectations. Citizens and consumers are more demanding of the truth, there is a wider range of influencers than ever before and there is more activism as a consequence of social media and its power to communicate issues very [...]
