Why the older guy-meet-young techies thing worked for Rome2rio
Interviewing Rod Cuthbert, CEO of Rome2rio, and Michael Cameron, one of the two co-founders of the multi-modal search site is like watching a ping pong match in action – Cuthbert incidentally was a table tennis coach in his hometown of Tasmania.
There’s a sense of camaderie and mutual respect [...]
BonAppetour raises US$500k seed investment, with plans to expand presence in culinary capitals
BonAppetour, a community marketplace that connects travellers with home chefs around the world for a true ‘local dining experience’, has raised US $500,000 seed round.
The round was led by Wong Toon King (managing director of FarSight Capital), and Prasetia Dwidharma, the investment arm of In [...]
Why we should all fear Google: Open letter from Axel Springer to Eric Schmidt
An open letter to Eric Schmidt from Mathias Döpfner (While his comments are specific to Europe they are also relevant to Asia where the only market Google is not dominant is China and, in particular, travel as it rolls out its plans to get deeper into the sector.)
Dear Eric Schmid [...]
Dreamers may still win the day in online travel as brands go “upper funnel”
Ten years ago, we struggled to get the word “inspiration” mentioned at online travel conferences. Everyone was more interested in clicks, conversions and transactions.
I remember a debate we had at the WIT Conference over “Inspiration vs Transaction” and the dreamers among us voted with o [...]
Art in hotels, and the role it can play in the grey space
This was my third stay at The Gibson in Dublin. I like this hotel. It has the right touch of creativity without being too contrived. Its staff are friendly without trying to be too cool. Its rooms are contemporary in design but functional and comfortable.
Themed around music – it’s located ri [...]
WIT Indonesia startup winner takes plunge into dive marketplace
Congratulations to Deepdive Travel, the victors of WIT Indonesia’s Start-Up of the Year!
Deepdive presented the most compelling pitch to an admittedly intimidating judging panel of industry experts, including Kei Shibata (CEO Venture Republic), David Peller (Booking.com), Brett Henry (AngelVest [...]
The intent behind Air Black Box and how it got to power Value Alliance
The technology powering the just-announced Value Alliance, which sees eight low cost airlines partnering on a sales and distribution platform allowing customers to book on all of them, including ancillaries in a single booking, was developed by UK-based startup, Air Black Box.
ABB was set up by c [...]
Value Alliance, a breakthrough in low cost airline distribution
When you think about it, the first pan-Asian low cost airline alliance, Value Alliance, launched today in Singapore is a pretty big deal in the annals of airline distribution.
One, it’s a world first and shows Asian LCCs ahead of in their innovative thinking and two, it is primarily a technolog [...]
Responses to Google’s travel plans – “bad news”, “they can go wrong” and “transformational”
A sampling of responses to Google’s talk yesterday at Phocuswright Dublin.
Rod Cuthbert, CEO, Rome2rio
“Google's relentless push to replace existing travel intermediaries with their own solutions is bad news for the whole travel industry. Their key products -- Flights, Hotels, Transit [...]
Google’s quest to become our personal travel assistant – to be loved or feared?
You could almost feel the air being sucked out of the room as Oliver Heckmann of Google closed off Day 1 of Phocuswright Dublin with a talk on everything the world’s largest search engine was doing in travel. I sensed everyone was grappling with the massive implications everyone of its products wo [...]