NE Asia’s rebound: Beefing countries, China’s outbound, and $11.2B in mobile gross bookings by 2025
Smartphone penetration and foundational shifts from outbound to domestic tourism are sending NE Asia in interesting directions during this travel recovery phase
We recently covered digital transformation in Southeast Asia and how a surge of offline - online in travel and hospitality is helping the [...]
Rise of a region: Digital transformation to supercharge Southeast Asia’s travel recovery in 2023 and beyond
Digital transformation will continue to accelerate rapidly across Southeast Asia, with online bookings more than doubling between 2022 and 2025
It’s no secret that the pandemic hit different regions and their travel sectors in different ways, and there’s no common rulebook on how to recover fro [...]
TrustYou splits from Recruit, buys back ownership
TrustYou has bought back full ownership of its shares from Recruit Holdings, five years after the Japanese travel/media company acquired the German guest feedback platform.
The management buyout was backed and led by technology investor Ventech. TrustYou founder and CEO Ben Jost is also a sig [...]
Eric Ricaurte: From voice in the wilderness to “travel’s most wanted man”
After years of toiling away at the fringe, Greenview finds its moment in time
FOR more than two decades, his was a voice in the wilderness. Although Eric Ricaurte started his company, Greenview, to focus on sustainability practices in hospitality, in 2008, the Singapore-based executive has been inv [...]
Budgets and options: Could “Save Now Buy Later” take off in travel?
Buy now, pay later - a form of credit that allows a consumer to pay off a purchase over time in smaller installments - has taken off in the travel industry in recent years.
From 2019 to 2021, the number of BNPL loans originated in the United States by five lenders grew by 970%, to 180 million loan [...]
Top of the WiT 15: Singapore doubling on tourism, Bookaway Group prepares for surge, coliving Spaces – slow burn or fast fad?
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.
On this week's episode, we talk about Singapore's tourism projections for the next twelve months and how it forecasts a doubling of tourism [...]
The “shopping cart” no longer evades travel as Agoda becomes one of the first to launch feature
IT’S interesting to note that, despite leading e-commerce transactions globally, travel and hospitality booking platforms have largely existed without this standard mechanism of online sales - the shopping cart.
This week, Agoda became one of the first online travel agencies to offer this fun [...]
Travellers go local when booking with OTAs
The big three OTAs – Booking.com, Agoda and Traveloka – topped the STAAH Booking Engine’s list as the top online booking channels worldwide that brought the highest booking revenue to hotels in 2022.
The top 10 online booking channels across the world are ranked as above, by STAAH.
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Tech In Travel: A new way of selling cruises; VR gains new friends; the sector that ‘knows too much’ but not enough; cruise ships get TikTok
Cruisebound, a new online travel agency for cruise travel, has launched with US$10 million in Series A funding, led by former Booking Holdings chairman and Priceline CEO Jeff Boyd and PAR Capital Ventures.
Other participants are TripAdvisor founder and former CEO Steve Kaufer, Concur founder and [...]
Looking to double numbers in 2023, Singapore plots path to full recovery
Amid changing customer trends, STB to invest $110m in events, plans Rewards scheme
ON the Grab ride I took to attend the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) media briefing this morning – to unveil its 2022 tourism results – the driver told me he used to run one of Singapore’s top limousine transfer [...]
