Biggest pain point in transition to NDC world is post-booking and servicing: Mystifly
“This moment will reshape the industry,” says CEO Rajeev
As NDC adoption by airlines accelerates, led by American Airlines, intermediaries are struggling to remain relevant as new pain points emerge. Yeoh Siew Hoon catches up with Rajeev Kumar, CEO & co-founder of Mystifly, to find out what [...]
NDC Revolution: Time To Face The Oncoming Train
Sabre’s Mendis on NDC’s momentum, painful transition to new world, AI innovation
For the last eight years or so ever since it was first introduced into the airline vocabulary, the acronym “NDC” has been percolating away in the background, and now, post-pandemic, it looks like it’s coming [...]
Trials & Tribulations of Nigeria: Not for the faint-hearted but vast potential
Travelstart builds new tech to fuel new dreams on back of recovery
You couldn’t pick a more challenging market than Nigeria to build an online travel business – poor economy for starters, 1.6% credit card penetration for another, currency issues etc, etc, – but therein lies the opportunity [...]
Building Meili and Manna: How Bobby Healy wants to end “fiasco of car hire brokering” and change the world of delivery
The one thing you can count on when you speak to Bobby Healy is, he’s a straight shooter. When you ask him why he founded Meili Travel Technology, his new car rental business in direct competition with CarTrawler, the company he helped build over 15 years, his answer, “It was the right thing to [...]
Shifting traveller trends: Asia and Middle East make waves in Barcelona
I’ve always felt at home in Spain, almost a sense of déjà vu each time I visit, and it thus felt fitting that I should be bringing the flavours of Asia, as well as the emerging markets of Middle East and Africa into the first Phocuswright Europe in Barcelona. Consider the similarities in our foo [...]
Mini-apps, flagship stores, Rapid API: Travel tech brands build windmills for the future
Wego, Expedia, Alibaba Fliggy share product roadmap
There is a Chinese saying, “When the wind of change blows, some build walls while others build windmills.” Well, travel tech brands around the world have certainly been busy building windmills when travel stopped for the time it did.
During [...]
Rakuten STAY: Japanese e-commerce giant unveils new, unmanned vacation rentals model
Alibaba has its future hotel, FlyZoo, launched in Hangzhou inn 2018. Tencent launched an AI Smart Room at the Atour S Hotel in Beijing. There was a time when Amazon sounded out the idea of Amazon-operated hotels.
Where these projects are right now is unclear but Rakuten the Japanese e-commerce gi [...]
From baseball hotel stay to Suica integration, SQUEEZE hits home run with hospitality innovation
Fancy staying in the middle of a baseball stadium? Try tower eleven hotel
Shinichi Tatebayashi, CEO and founder of SQUEEZE, is understandably very excited about his newest hotel, which he says is a world first. “tower eleven hotel” is a 12-room lifestyle accommodation, with a sauna and hotspr [...]
Let’sfly sets up HQ in Singapore to “go deep” into low cost airline content
Dusting off the aftermath of the pandemic, Let’sfly, the Chinese flight platform which prides itself on providing good quality low cost airline content via direct API, is building up its global team to expand beyond China.
The flight platform, which started in 2014 focused on providing low [...]
Growing Hilton in APAC: Deploying AI, innovating the app and enhancing “the stay”
With 126 hotels opening this year in Asia Pacific, you could say Hilton is growing at its fastest in the region, although Ben George, APAC SVP & commercial director, concedes, not as fast as generative AI is developing.
“This whole AI vertical is growing so fast,” he told me during one of [...]
