Amid the constant setbacks, the good that came out of Covid
“DO you
think this thing will ever end?” asked my niece this week as Singapore
announced a tightening of Covid restrictions – groups of eight to five,
workforce in office back to 50%, events down from 750 pax to 250 pax (with
pre-event testing), three-week quarantine for travellers from “hi [...]
AC, Which Way Forward? The different roads that have diverged in travel
“TW0 roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less travelled by,And that has made all the difference.”So penned Robert Frost in “The Road Not Taken”.
Well, it seems that on the long, long road to recovery AC (After Covid),
more than two roads have diverged in travel and all [...]
The WiT Podcast – Episode 36: Demystifying Sustainability, Lee Cheh Hsien, Divisional Director, Planning, Sentosa Development Corporation
How to climb your “Carbon Everest”: Break it down into small actionable steps.
LEE Cheh Hsien, Divisional Director, Planning, Sentosa Development Corporation, is all about breaking down the big topic of sustainability so that island destinations like Sentosa and businesses on the island can [...]
HUAZHU expands into luxury, eyes Japan and Thailand for expansion
Landmark JV with Sunac changes “love-hate” relationship between owners and brands, says Nong Xia
CHINESE hospitality giant, HUAZHU Hotels Group (NASDAD:HTHT), will be stepping up its expansion into the high end hotel segment through its joint venture signed in March this year with Sunac Chin [...]
South Korea domestic stays resilient, Tidesquare cautiously preparing for return of outbound by Q3
SOUTH Korea may still be averaging more than 600 Covid cases a day but the domestic travel market has stayed resilient throughout.
In an update from Seoul, Min Yoon, CEO of Tidesquare and co-founder of WiT Seoul, said, “People have started travelling again domestically. Some specific destinati [...]
VFS Global brings visa expertise and govt experience to health passports
Synergies between pass providers, tech companies and governments needed to open borders: Jiten Vyas
IN 2019, VFS Global processed 30 million visa biometric enrolments across 144 countries. In 2020, that number plummeted by 70% and it would have been much worse without the first three months when [...]
Fortified by Tin Men, GlobalTix doubles down on tech roots
Fresh $3m funding is not survival money, it’s to go full force on digitisation mission
THE new funding round of S$3 million raised by GlobalTix from Tin Men Capital and SEEDS Capital is not “survival or rescue money” but fresh capital to build up its arsenal of tech tools and to fortify it [...]
25 years on, Expedia flips “green screen” again to become the traveller’s companion
“It matters who you travel with” falls on shoulders of new brand custodian, Shiv Singh
SHIV Singh, the new senior vice president and general manager of Brand Expedia, was sitting in front of an impressively-stacked bookcase when I spoke to him on Zoom. I had to ask, “Is that fake or are th [...]
Trip.com Group first global travel group to be dual listed in Hong Kong and US
TWENTY two years after its founding, and 14 months after its business was crushed by the pandemic, Trip.com Group officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange today (9961.HK), becoming the first global travel group to be dual listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as well as the NASDAQ stock e [...]
Cleartrip sale to Flipkart inevitable, as Covid crushes travel and marketplaces seize moment to enter vertical
IN many ways, the proposed acquisition of Cleartrip by Flipkart, known as the “Amazon of India” was inevitable – inevitable because the pandemic has no doubt devastated the 15-year-old company’s India business, leaving it vulnerable, and inevitable because of the ambitions of e-commerce mar [...]
