From California to Catalonia: How Elizabeth Hecker heard the vines of Priorat and followed her heart
Elizabeth Hecker’s life changed in 2003 when she tasted a wine from the Priorat region of Catalonia, Spain, and the Californian native said it revealed a landscape in her head unlike anything she had seen before. She moved there, bought a 200-year-old house, restored it and for the next 15 years, [...]
Breaking the illusion: Apple Vision Pro can’t replicate “real” experiences
"There is a lot of effort and money going into trying to make synthetic experiences as real as possible."
At the WIT Japan and North Asia, Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) posed a question. She asked “Apple Vision Pro – the beginning of spatial computing. This will be massive for travel inspiration [...]
Building Meili and Manna: How Bobby Healy wants to end “fiasco of car hire brokering” and change the world of delivery
The one thing you can count on when you speak to Bobby Healy is, he’s a straight shooter. When you ask him why he founded Meili Travel Technology, his new car rental business in direct competition with CarTrawler, the company he helped build over 15 years, his answer, “It was the right thing to [...]
Future of Extended Reality; eating “phygital” chocolate; Air NZ’s digital goals; More
McKinsey’s take on the future of XR in travel
McKinsey and Co, in an extensive new report, has posed the question, ‘Can travel go virtual’, can the travel industry grab a US$20 billion opportunity offered by the metaverse.
The answer? Yes, no and maybe.
McKinsey suggests it’s time for [...]
Fever is customising live entertainment and cultural experiences, one city at a time
“From day one of the pandemic, we saw a strong demand for live entertainment. What changed was how people wanted to consume those experiences.”
It’s funny - it’s often easier to find things to do when you’re travelling to destinations outside the city, even in the remotest parts. You can [...]
Virtual tours are getting popular, and Actsugi meets that demand in Malaysia
“Virtual tours are not an alternative to actual tourism - it’s a pre-marketing tool.”
When the pandemic first hit, one concept that gained popularity was virtual tours. With travel restricted, people turned to digital tours of popular destinations as an alternative. Some travel companies surv [...]
Metaverse Builders in Asia: Sentosa creates a symbiotic relationship with its virtual world
SentosaLand encourages cross-marketing and brand-building in a non-intrusive way
According to Statista, in 2026, an estimated 25% of consumers will spend at least an hour a day in the metaverse for digital activities. This includes work, shopping and retail, education, entertainment, and even socia [...]
Making sense of the metaverse of madness
“The real meaning of Web3 is all about community”, says DayAway’s Waslen
There are few conversations that don’t feel surreal in 2022, yet since the carnage in the crypto-currency market, businesses built around blockchain have had a particularly rough ride. Yet as WiT 2022 said ‘Hello Oth [...]
WiT and Phocuswright team up for Global Startup Pitch
“Time to unite around innovation”
AS part of the Northstar Global Travel Technology group, WiT and Phocuswright are kicking off 2022 with a round-the-world Global Startup Pitch. This combined effort is the next evolution of a relentless, ongoing 25-year search for startups that disrupt, innovat [...]
Cruising to nowhere getting somewhere, as domestic cruises resume in Malaysia Dec 22
Cross-border cruising on table, Singapore-Penang-Phuket itinerary being planned
IT is ironic that even though air travel in Asia is going nowhere, the only sector that seems to be going somewhere even though it is mostly to nowhere, is cruising.
On December 22, domestic cruises from Penang, [...]
