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 [...]
10 to vie for WIT Japan & North Asia Startup Pitch title in Tokyo
Ten semi-finalists, covering areas from tours & activities to hotel technology solutions and a photography marketplace, have been selected to compete in the WIT Japan & North Asia Startup Pitch happening in Tokyo June 28-29.
Powered by Amadeus APAC, the competition will see one winner cro [...]
Travel industry urged to step Through the Looking Glass and embrace five new values at WIT Singapore 2018
In its 14th year, the award-winning WIT (Web In Travel) invites the travel industry to take a step Through the Looking Glass at this year’s WIT Singapore 2018 Conference at Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre from October 15 to 17.
Attendees will also be encouraged to imbibe WIT’s f [...]
Travel Innovation and Tech-Focused Debate Share the Spotlight at Phocuswright Europe
Phocuswright Europe, in its eleventh year, gathered 600 European travel leaders for elevated content and unprecedented networking. Over two days (15-17 May), more than 40 speakers from Europe’s leading travel companies presented fresh insight into the unique challenges of the European travel marke [...]
Hail the future drone-based society – Kotaro Chiba bets big on drones and inbound tourism
Drones will be to society what the mobile phone is now – they will connect us, they will do all kinds of stuff for us, they will be everywhere and they will be invisible.
That’s the vision of Kotaro Chiba, founder of the newly set-up 1 billion yen (US$16m) DroneFund in Japan. The co-found [...]
Record turnout at WIT Seoul 2018 shows interest in digital travel at all-time high
If there was one thing WIT Seoul 2018 proved, it’s that interest, and hunger for knowledge, in the digital travel space is at an all-time high in a market where rapid technological change and changing consumer behaviour are forcing travel incumbents to wake up and smell the web, as it were.
A r [...]
