Top of the WiT 23: Anticipating ATE23, Malaysian road trips, and content creation in travel
Top Of The WiT is a grab of the trendiest news that happened this week in travel, tech and Asia - all condensed into a quick-and-easy nugget-sized podcast.
In this episode, we connect from different timezones - Siew Hoon takes a couple of road trips in Malaysia while Arvindh is in Queensland, Aus [...]
KabuK Style wants to create diverse culture with its blockchain-powered travel subscription service
Japanese fintech startup with fixed price model expands to South Korea
In terms of timing, Kenji Sunada, founder and CEO of KabuK Style, couldn’t have picked a worse moment to launch his online subscription travel service in 2019. “It was very disappointing,” he laughed. “We didn’t expe [...]
Japanese food platform byFood raises $2.24m to expand in Japan and Asia
The paths of Serkan Toso and Kaoro Joho first crossed when they found they were doing something similar with their food startups – Toso was running Tokyobyfood.com, a website to help foreign travellers find Japanese food while Joho was operating Tablecross, a restaurant reservations app.
Both h [...]
From reseller to global bedbank: How technology “became a weapon” for DidaTravel
Dida expands, gets into flights and tours & activities
The first time you meet Rikin Wu, founder and CEO of Chinese hotel bedbank DidaTravel, you immediately sense his pride in his Teochew roots.
This dialect group, hailing from the Chaoshan region in Guangdong Province, China, is known fo [...]
Letter From Sydney: A city that hides its secrets in plain sight
Like the rest of the world, Australia is gearing up for an interesting year in travel and hospitality. The Australian Tourism Exchange or ATE23 is back in full force for the first time since 2019, welcoming travellers both international and domestic to an array of new attractions in the colossal cou [...]
How to bag a Coronation tag; Air India is all tech; Russians avoiding European destinations
Air India enters the digital age
Air India chief, ex Scoot Singapore boss, Campbell Wilson, is making digitalisation of the airline’s operations a priority.
The national carrier has been a laggard for years but under new owners Tata Group, Air India hopes to recapture some, if not all, of its [...]
From Thailand to Singapore to Malaysia: Of farming tips, colonial tales and curated experiences
I don't know much about farming or gardening. The closest I came to either was listening to my father talk about his time hiding amongst the sweet potatoes during the Japanese invasion of then-Malaya and oh yes, just to name drop, when Prince Charles (soon to be King) took me on a tour of his garden [...]
GT Pay: From Covid baby to Finalist in Business Innovation awards
GlobalTix’s new payments product allows merchants to accept different digital wallets across Asia
You could call it a Covid baby but GlobalTix’s latest product, GT Pay, which allows merchants to accept up to more than 30 digital wallets across Asia, took a while to grow into its own.
Said CE [...]
GHS doubles down on Alex to arm hoteliers in chat-heavy markets
One key characteristic of the pandemic is how travel technology companies which doubled down on product development during the lean years have come out looking rather different from their BD (Before Covid) selves.
Global Hospitality Solutions, a hospitality tech company focused on South-east Asia [...]
Travel startups: End of the boom, or beginnings of a renaissance?
With the second edition of WiT and Phocuswright’s Global Startup Pitch still open for entries, Mike Coletta, manager of research and innovation, Phocuswright, analyses the state of travel startups in this report. The deadline to apply is April 30.
Travel startups have enjoyed a good run. Pho [...]
