How dragons became sharks, and lessons on overcoming fear and rejection from Robert Herjavec
The first thing I learnt from listening to Robert Herjavec of “Shark Tank” fame is that dragons don’t exist in America, or at least they don’t believe in them as we do in Asia.
Speaking at the Expedia Partners Conference in Las Vegas held earlier this month, Herjavec, one of the sharks in [...]
Tours & Activities: The Misunderstood and Under-Loved Segment
The tours and activities space could almost be described as a final frontier in travel simply because of how vast and often misunderstood the space truly is.
At the Expedia Partner Conference earlier this December, Douglas Quinby (VP Research, Phocuswright) shared the key challenges facing the to [...]
Myanmar, a sleeping beauty being woken up by technology and tourism
Growing up in Myanmar in the 70s, May Myat Mon Win dreamt of a day “when our country could be like our neighbours” in South-east Asia. “We just didn’t know how long it would take,” she said.
Today, as the chairperson of the Myanmar Tourism Marketing Committee (MTMC), she sees that the d [...]
The present and future of online travel: Thoughts after WIT and Phocuswright
Kei Shibata, CEO of Venture Republic and co-founder of WIT Japan & North Asia, shares his observations on trends in the online travel space and how they might play out in 2017.
Now that the WIT (Web In Travel) conference (Singapore) that's well known in Japan and the world's largest on [...]
The future of travel: Catching up to Asia, learning new behaviours and protecting the little guy
Expedia Inc marked its 20th anniversary with the annual Expedia Partner Conference in Las Vegas last week.
A crowd 4,000 delegates strong, representing many of Expedia’s brands as well as delegates across global travel markets, had their ears pricked and tuned towards finding out what the mult [...]
Why voice will be big and Barry Diller on Netflix, Tesla and Trump
Voice is the next technology frontier and companies who do not plough resources into it now will be in danger of being disintermediated and disrupted, said Barry Diller, chairman of IAC/InterActive Corp and Expedia Inc, at the Expedia Partners Conference in Las Vegas last week.
Speaking to CE [...]
Expedia’s $100b target and how it intends to get there with its army of brands
Twenty years on since its founding, Expedia Inc intends to become the first $100b travel agency in the world and it is pulling out all stops to hit that target.
With current gross bookings standing at $71b, representing a 29% year-on-year growth, and if you take into consideration the journey s [...]
Viator explores how to make a foreign brand feel local as it expands into Asia
Two years after its acquisition by TripAdvisor in 2014, Viator is now ready to put more resources into Asia and build a name for itself in the tours and activities space in the region.
And that job falls to Anita Ngai, general manager of Viator APAC, and she certainly has a strong base from which [...]
Letter from Las Vegas: Where polar bears play, Elvis is alive and Trump rules
At San Francisco airport, the queue for immigration is packed with mainly people of Asian descent – Malaysians, Singaporeans, Indonesians, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Koreans and Indians.
Maybe it’s the timing – I have flown in direct from Singapore – and the flights at this time of the [...]
From food delivery to helping hosts, Limpert eyes global play for GuestReady
During his stint as managing director of Food Panda for Taiwan and Philippines, based in Taipei last year, Alexander Limpert became an Airbnb host. That was when he realised that being a host for the sharing accommodation site wasn’t that easy, there were many things to handle.
“I saw an [...]
