Letter from Cempedak: Seven secrets to landing among the stars
It was exactly a year ago that I visited the private island of Cempedak in the Riau Archipelago of Indonesia and saw it in the making of stage. Piles of bamboo were strewn all over the white sand but there was a definite shape of a resort that resembled a sail unfurling out of the waters.
The isl [...]
WIT 2017 Conference: How Asian hotel groups keep their home advantage in a changing world
Home grown independent, owner-controlled hotel groups are mushrooming in Asia, and are competing not only among themselves but also in a world of scale, consolidation and distribution power. How do they fend off the global competition? By localisation, personalisation and doing things differently, s [...]
WIT 2017 Conference: Rail is real (big) business
Rail travel is a huge business. The industry is estimated to be worth US$350 billion – about two-thirds the airline industry.
In India, for example, 90% of the population have never flown but everyone would have travelled by the railway — run and subsidised by the government.
Aloke Baj [...]
Biggest influencers in Asia’s online travel honoured in WIT’s inaugural Hall of Fame
The biggest influencers in Asia’s online travel industry were recognised in WIT’s inaugural Hall of Fame ceremony last night.
“As the APAC travel industry stands at the threshold of another inflexion point – one that will see the true blending of online and offline travel to become one [...]
WIT Bootcamp 2017: Vision, motive, resilience, right team: These make for a better startup
“The best founding teams are like cockroaches, they get stepped on and go crunch a little but then keep on running,” a quote by William Bao Bean, general partner of SOSV and managing director of Chinaaccelerator best sums up what make a better startup, and perhaps set it on the road to being a [...]
Google’s Heckmann on how machine learning will Translate to better travel and how Asia is setting pace in mobile
Ahead of his speaking on the WIT Main Stage on Tuesday, October 24, Oliver Heckmann, Vice President, Engineering for Travel and Shopping, Google, shares what's top of his mind on how new technology such machine learning/AI and voice can make better travel.
Q: As you get set for to speak at WI [...]
Letter from Hong Kong: From real estate to community, from brick to clicks, can hospitality make the leap?
The sky is piercingly blue, as blue as it could only get after a huge storm has just whipped through. I am in Hong Kong two days after the last Typhoon 8 visited this city built on a rock.
At the Hotel Investment Conference Asia Pacific (HICAP), I heard a panel of investors saying perhaps [...]
Tech should make Better Travel for everyone, with disabilities you can or cannot see
What’s your disability? Because as far as clinical psychologist Nicky Abdinor, born without arms and shortened legs, is concerned, “everyone has a disability, it’s just that you can see mine”.
And perhaps disabilities you can see versus those that aren’t visible may be easier to deal wi [...]
Letter from Muscat: And so we enter the golden age of digital travel in Middle East
For some reason, Muscat seems closer in my mind than it really is. To get here, I had to connect via Dubai and with a four-hour layover, it’s almost a 12-hour journey and I thought I could have flown to London in that time.
But returning to Oman eight years later was what I wanted to do. After [...]
Thought leaders, disruptors to gather in Singapore for travel forum sharing ideas on Better Travel
In less than two weeks, the bigwigs of the travel industry and up-and-coming disruptors will gather in Singapore for a three-day conference to cultivate ideas and ponder new ways to improve the travel experience.
Some 500 delegates are expected to attend the conference that will run from [...]
