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 [...]
“Boring is good”, says Traveloka’s strategy chief
Ex-banker Joydeep recounts the “emotional” days of Covid, looks forward to “steady and stable” future
Joydeep Chakraborty describes himself as a traveller who loves serendipity. “I never book in advance. I like to walk around, find a nice hidden hole in the wall place. The joy I get from [...]
Expedia doubles down on B2B with new partnerships and tech features
55% revenue growth in Q1 driven by pace of adoption of partners
Following a strong quarter for Expedia Group’s B2B segment where it delivered 55% in revenue growth compared to 2022, the company announced new partnerships and tech features aimed at expanding its partner network, at Expedia Group� [...]
OTAs tipped to benefit most from China’s travel recovery, with Gen Z driving growth
OTAs are tipped to be the key beneficiaries of the Chinese travel market, which is expected to grow 13% per annum post-Covid, according to a report by DBS, Singapore’s major bank.
The report, “China Online Travel Sector”, states that more than 60% of online bookings are via online travel ag [...]
KabuK Style wants to create diverse culture with its blockchain-powered travel subscription service
Japanese fintech startup with fixed price model expands to South Korea
In terms of timing, Kenji Sunada, founder and CEO of KabuK Style, couldn’t have picked a worse moment to launch his online subscription travel service in 2019. “It was very disappointing,” he laughed. “We didn’t expe [...]
From reseller to global bedbank: How technology “became a weapon” for DidaTravel
Dida expands, gets into flights and tours & activities
The first time you meet Rikin Wu, founder and CEO of Chinese hotel bedbank DidaTravel, you immediately sense his pride in his Teochew roots.
This dialect group, hailing from the Chaoshan region in Guangdong Province, China, is known fo [...]
GHS doubles down on Alex to arm hoteliers in chat-heavy markets
One key characteristic of the pandemic is how travel technology companies which doubled down on product development during the lean years have come out looking rather different from their BD (Before Covid) selves.
Global Hospitality Solutions, a hospitality tech company focused on South-east Asia [...]
Phare Circus implements “breakthrough” payments solution; Dara Huot “still amazed by struggles to go online”
Partnership between Siem Reap Tourism Club and Sathapana Bank to solve digital payment woes in Cambodia
Phare, The Cambodia Circus, has become one of the first Cambodian travel businesses to take advantage of a partnership agreement signed between the Siem Reap Tourism Club and Sathapana Bank of Ca [...]
