Letter from Shanghai: Ctrip pushes on, global brands and lessons learnt in China and holy places, here we come
Things are at a different scale in China and this fact was hammered home when on my walk to the venue for the 12th TravelDaily Conference & Digital Travel Show (CDTS), I encountered a giant giraffe at the road crossing.
Whatever its purpose is, it served as a great landmark and over my two da [...]
WIT Startup Pitch 2018 announces shortlisted startups, and new collaboration with Amazon Web Services
Webintravel (WiT) is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the first time in its annual Startup Pitch event, offering AWS Cloud credits, training, and support to the 12 shortlisted startups selected to participate in the WiT Startup Pitch 2018.
The WiT Startup Pitch is an annual even [...]
Work on digital literacy to compete against aliens, magicians and barbarians, futurist Rohit Talwar urges
In a world where “aliens, magicians and barbarians” are shaking up the world at large with their tech and tech change is happening at an exponential rate, organisations have to ensure digital literacy at every level if they are to transform successfully.
Rohit Talwar, futurist and CEO of Fast [...]
Sean Menke pushing the limits with his own Sabre endurance race – 80 miles to go
The toughest endurance race Sean Menke, Sabre president & CEO, has ever run is the Leadville Trail 100, a 100-mile race in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, which you have to be complete in 30 hours. It has an elevation gain of 5,000 metres and you do it without oxygen and sleep.
He completed [...]
Stop thinking in verticals, says Menke as Sabre sets out to become platform at the centre of travel
To travellers, a trip is a connected journey – we grab a ride to the airport, fly, arrive, grab ride to hotel, hopefully have a lovely stay and if we have time, book a couple of activities (or should we say experiences these days), depart hotel for airport, and the loop continues.
The travel in [...]
Everyone wants to be an Experience Maker – lessons from Coca-Cola and ONE Championship
It seems everyone wants to be in the experience business these days, whether you’re selling bottles of sugared water, body lotion, education or sports. At the Adobe Symposium, held in Singapore this week, they call themselves experience makers.
As I listened to speaker after speaker talk about [...]
Game on as LINE enters travel: Key lessons from WIT Japan & North Asia
There we were at WiT Japan & North Asia speaking of the disruption taking place in travel and the day after we wrap up our two-day event comes the news that LINE, Japan’s main messaging app, is getting into travel.
The news release said that LINE Travel “would be a comprehensive travel se [...]
Razzle. Dazzle. Frazzle. A robot’s welcome to Tokyo
It’s probably not what the doctor would have ordered – catching the Robot Show in Tokyo right after two days of intense conferencing and sleep deprivation. But maybe it was exactly what I needed to take me completely over the adrenalin meter.
After all, we had spent two days at WIT Japan & [...]
As funding consolidates and channels fragment, small startups will face challenges
One message was clear at the WIT Japan & North Asia Bootcamp which took place in Tokyo today – small startups, especially in the B2C space, will face massive challenges going forward in the battle for user acquisition and funding.
Masahiko Honma, general partner of Incubate Fund, was first [...]
Letter from Tokyo: So who wants to be a Disaster Chef or a Super Chicken?
Last night, I was having dinner at one of the many hole-in-the-wall Japanese restaurants in Tokyo that every traveller likes to boast about discovering when I had a culinary epiphany of sorts.
Based on a recommendation from a local (the best kind there is), this one was called Hanawasabi, serving [...]
