Thorsen: Covid could produce well-funded corporate travel startups to go after long-term opportunity
TRAVEL tech evangelist Johnny Thorsen, who has his own vision of a “Traveltopia”, is watching to see if Covid will give the industry a new generation of well-funded startups “that are able to go after the long term opportunity, and really become a threat to the established environment”.
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Massive opportunity in alternative payments as e-wallets soar in Asia and BNPL gains ground
Multi-currency payments; fraud; how many payment methods should you offer – key headaches addressed
WITH 1.7b unbanked adults in the world, according to Findex Database,
Worldbank, the opportunities to address this market with alternative payment
methods are immense. The potential is biggest i [...]
Travel product chiefs on tech that works, those that didn’t and those that should
IN the last year, tech teams have built platforms that went unused and scrapped projects only to repurpose them later in new incarnations; as Thomas Edison said once upon a time, “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.”
Tech and product c [...]
The chase for tech talent – go to where they are and hire ‘A’ players to attract others
IT is
ironic that even as the travel industry has shed millions upon millions of
jobs, one sector that has expanded and remains voracious for talent is on the
tech side.
Almost all
travel businesses have used the down-time of Covid to invest in their tech
stack, whether consumer-facing or back- [...]
The rise of social chat apps in Asia: Consumers showing preference for virtual agents
SOCIAL chat apps have developed faster in Asia than in any other part of the world, and “in Asia you can't talk about social chat apps without going into super apps and how they are essentially like remote controls for our lives,” said Shyn Yee Ho-Strangas, director, global product management a [...]
Sustainability and tech converge to put pressure on business trips and events
New questions being asked – “Can this meeting be done virtually?” “What is your average carbon emission per travel day?”
FROM corporate travellers setting their own carbon goals
to how corporates reclassify “essential business trips”, it is clear that
corporate travel and meetings [...]
Middle East trade heralds return of physical Arabian Travel Market as the push needed in recovery
'Let's get back to business' sentiment prevails
THE physical return of the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai has been heralded as a signal of positive things to come for the travel and tourism industry in the Middle East. And while it wasn’t as busy compared to previous years, the overall sentime [...]
Putting Mixed Reality to the road test
How WiT and Marina Bay Sands teamed up to co-create a story
IN the absence of real travel, one has to use the powers of imagination,
aided by technology, to travel with the mind.
I recently had the opportunity to put to the road-test the new Mixed
Reality capability at the Marina Bay Sands� [...]
Global OTAs face being squeezed by twin forces in South-east Asia
Asia Partners’ Rippel on trends accelerated by Covid and the building of unicorns in the region
IN March this year, Singapore-based growth equity investment firm Asia Partners closed its inaugural fund at US$384 million in commitments. During the WiT Travel Roadshow, Episode 2, we sat down wi [...]
The multi-pivots of an urban hotel on a small island during Covid
From e-commerce vending to farming and hybrid studio, the things Fairmont and Swissotel The Stamford did to keep going through a pandemic
THE story of how Fairmont Singapore and Swissôtel The Stamford (combined 2,030 rooms) with the Raffles City Convention Centre (70,000 square feet of event sp [...]
