China’s Umetrip: A revival or a reboot?
When the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and 37 Chinese carriers – pretty much all of them – announced the launch of a unified direct ticket sales platform — embedded in the popular Civil Aviation Information app “Umetrip” — it immediately drew parallels to past airline-le [...]
How travel hurts itself: The blessings and the curse of multi-source content
Once upon a time, in the golden age of air travel distribution (let’s say 30 years ago), we the consumers and intermediaries had this magical thing called full content. Airlines — for better or worse — filed all their fares, schedules, and inventory into a GDS. If you were an agent, an OTA, or [...]
Tapping into Asia’s Traveller Economy: A growing force shaping consumer spend
When you earn miles by dining out, take a Grab to the airport, or use a rewards card while shopping, you’re already participating in what we call the Traveller Economy, even if you’re not currently traveling.
This shift is redefining how people think about travel around the world. It’s no l [...]
Musings on AI, knowledge appliances and the travel consumer
Just lately I, like so many people, am scratching my head to get a handle on AI, which I prefer to think of Assisted Intelligence. For me, the question I am asking is, how can we provide value to our consumers? At present we don’t seem to be doing anything that directly helps the customer, other t [...]
Decoding the future of search and travel discovery in an AI-driven world
The Evolution of Search: From Cave Walls to Google
With the rise of social networks in the last 10 years, and Generative AI in the last two, it’s a messy time to start predicting the future of search and travel discovery.
Most of us have spent the last two decades using Google as the ultimate [...]
All-inclusive travel is booming. Travel partners should take advantage. (Sponsored)
About the author: Greg Schulze is the Chief Commercial Officer at Expedia Group
All-inclusive holidays have exploded in popularity in recent years, with more travelers booking all-inclusive packages now than ever before. Since 2019, the all-inclusive demand on Expedia and Hotels.com has grown [...]
Tech debt in the travel industry: Why airlines are still trying to fly with fossils
Welcome to the airline industry’s secret shame: Tech Debt. Decades of patchwork systems, outdated booking platforms, and clunky old databases that might as well be fossilized – if these systems were any older, archaeologists would be studying them. Airlines have essentially been strapping roller [...]
Seek Sophie’s Jacinta Lim on the dichotomy between generations in travel
As a first-time speaker and attendee at WiT Singapore, Jacinta Lim, CEO & co-founder of Seek Sophie, found the experience very enlightening.
“I actually went to a lot of conferences (tech though, not travel) when we first started because the conversations were quite shallow. But I found the [...]
Where the leap comes – AI moves outside
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne gets excited about an experimental project called I-XRAY which removes the screen and could potentially change the human-machine interface like nothing we’ve yet seen. He also examines its possible applications for society and travel and how to mitigate privacy concerns.
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A thaw in the airline-GDS relationship is happening
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne reports on his key observations made at the recent T2RL Engage conference in London.
That great chill between airlines and the GDSes is beginning to see a softening and a thaw in the relationships. Perhaps global warming can have some positive impact.
That’s th [...]
