From Mallorca to the world: How Hotel Treats, nurtured by two couples, is going places with day experiences
Every startup has an interesting back story and Hotel Treats, the Scaleup Winner (People’s Choice) of the Global Startup Pitch 2024, is no exception.
It was founded seven years ago by two couples, who didn’t even meet in person until 18 months after starting the business. “We did everything [...]
Pass the “mala” please: Asia demand for China travel surges
Recently, a headline in Bloomberg, “China’s Biggest-Ever Bid For Foreign Tourists Is Falling Flat”, caught my eye.
It reported that despite the extension of visa-free entry access to 38 countries, “the influx of foreign tourists and the billions of dollars in spending they could have brou [...]
Your Guide to 2025 – Problems to be fixed and trends no one is talking about yet
Happy new year. Everyone had a good break, all ready to take on the new year, whatever it may bring?
The good news is, travel is alive and well. All over the world, people were going places, experiencing new adventures and finding escape in new scapes and climes while the work world hibernated f [...]
Letter from Penang: Some repetitive tasks should not be replaced by AI
When Eric Chong of Green Acres, Penang, suggested we spend a morning harvesting cloves, I jumped at the chance to detach from the wired world – if only for a little while. It wasn’t just for me, though. I was also looking for something to get two Gen Alpha kids out of their YouTube bubble and in [...]
Kayak’s Steve Hafner likens travel search to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
Twenty years after founding Kayak with Paul English, Steve Hafner remains resolute that there is a future for travel search, even while acknowledging the growth limitations due to the dominance of Google in search and traffic acquisition.“People need a place to compare prices,” he said in an exe [...]
Trailblazing travel tech in Korea: The Journeys of Donggun Lee and Jiha Jung
In the world of Korean travel tech, two entrepreneurs – Donggun Lee, the visionary founder of MyRealTrip, and Jiha Jung, the driving force behind Tripbtoz.
Lee, who won the WiT Startup Pitch in Japan in 2014, started MyRealTrip in 2012, using tours and activities as an entry point. Jung, who wo [...]
Two Sisters, One Dream: Building Nowadays to transform event planning
Meet Anna Sun and Amy Yan, two sisters who started with a desire to work together on something impactful. Their event planning startup, Nowadays, won the People’s Choice – Seedup Category at the Global Startup Pitch 2024 at WiT Singapore in October. This is their story.
Post-graduating, Anna, [...]
Uncovering the real Korea: From Hanoks to Jang and Herbs, three entrepreneurs taking the Slow, deliberate path
While inbound numbers to Korea are not yet back to 2019’s level of 20 million, currently hovering at around 15-16 million, most of it is being fuelled by the huge interest in everything K – K-pop, K-drama and K-beauty – with travellers from Asia forming the majority of visitors.
But underne [...]
Hopper’s HTS lands second card partnership in South Korea
Travel booking portal to be launched with Woori Card
HTS, the B2B division of Hopper, has landed its second partnership in South Korea, signing on card company Woori Card, a subsidiary of Woori Financial Group.
The agreement calls on HTS, which now accounts for over 75% of the Hopper business, t [...]
Rob Rosenstein on building Agoda, entrepreneurship and solving travel’s structural problems
In the fast-paced world of online travel, few names stand as tall as Rob Rosenstein, co-founder of Agoda. While today Agoda is one of the world’s leading online travel agencies (OTAs), specializing in the Asia-Pacific market, its beginnings were far humbler.
In a candid conversation at Phocuswr [...]
