Second European Mountain Travel Summit scales new heights
Top-level executives involved in mountain travel and tourism exchanged notes and gathered valuable information at the second annual European Mountain Travel Summit (EMTS) in Crans-Montana, Switzerland which concluded recently.
With over 160 senior executives from the mountain travel industry in a [...]
Summary of WIT 2017 Conference, Day 1, in videos
As 2017 comes to a close, it’s time to take a moment to reflect on the lessons learned and the stories told throughout WIT 2017… and how we can take these new insights and adapt in time for the coming year. Here is our first take of all the key highlights from Day One of WIT 2017 as well as link [...]
Expedia continues global push, invests in new tech to power hoteliers and travellers
The Expedia Partner Conference held in Las Vegas last week opened on a defiant and upbeat note. Mark Okerstrom, walking on stage after the opening rhythm and drum beats of Le Reve, The Dream, said that despite the crazy year of terrorism and natural disasters, the world travelled more in 2017 with $ [...]
Letter from Fort Lauderdale: From storms to tech, global forces that bind us
Piles of seaweed lie strewn along the water’s edge along Hollywood Beach in Fort Lauderdale. I am told it’s the remnants of Hurricane Irma which crashed through the state of Florida last month.
From the other side of the world, I’ve been receiving updates of the floods that have devastated [...]
The Phocuswright Conference announces the next generation of groundbreaking travel innovators
The winners of Summit and Launch, held November 7 and 8 during The Phocuswright Conference, have been announced. During Summit, 24 innovative startup and emerging companies and the winners of Battleground: The Americas, APAC and EMEA demonstrated groundbreaking applications and solutions set to chan [...]
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 [...]
