The present and future of online travel: Thoughts after WIT and Phocuswright
Kei Shibata, CEO of Venture Republic and co-founder of WIT Japan & North Asia, shares his observations on trends in the online travel space and how they might play out in 2017.
Now that the WIT (Web In Travel) conference (Singapore) that's well known in Japan and the world's largest on [...]
The future of travel: Catching up to Asia, learning new behaviours and protecting the little guy
Expedia Inc marked its 20th anniversary with the annual Expedia Partner Conference in Las Vegas last week.
A crowd 4,000 delegates strong, representing many of Expedia’s brands as well as delegates across global travel markets, had their ears pricked and tuned towards finding out what the mult [...]
Why voice will be big and Barry Diller on Netflix, Tesla and Trump
Voice is the next technology frontier and companies who do not plough resources into it now will be in danger of being disintermediated and disrupted, said Barry Diller, chairman of IAC/InterActive Corp and Expedia Inc, at the Expedia Partners Conference in Las Vegas last week.
Speaking to CE [...]
Expedia’s $100b target and how it intends to get there with its army of brands
Twenty years on since its founding, Expedia Inc intends to become the first $100b travel agency in the world and it is pulling out all stops to hit that target.
With current gross bookings standing at $71b, representing a 29% year-on-year growth, and if you take into consideration the journey s [...]
Letter from Las Vegas: Where polar bears play, Elvis is alive and Trump rules
At San Francisco airport, the queue for immigration is packed with mainly people of Asian descent – Malaysians, Singaporeans, Indonesians, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Koreans and Indians.
Maybe it’s the timing – I have flown in direct from Singapore – and the flights at this time of the [...]
Getting real and more human is the only way we can beat the machines, AI included
I was at the Accor Hotels Showcase last week. This is an annual roadshow put together by the fastest-growing hotel company in Asia Pacific to showcase their range of hotels across the region.
It’s an event that’s been going for 13 years (formerly named World of Accor) and Singapore was the fi [...]
Exploring the power of emotional intelligence in online travel
The inaugural Tern Tables was launched on Wednesday last week at Spacemob, the co-working space in Singapore. Sponsored by The Travel Corporation and HotelsCombined and in partnership with Travel Massive, the travel career coaching session focused on the power of emotional intelligence in a high-tec [...]
Getting to the bottom of “big data” buzzword will help airlines fly higher
‘Big Data’ was a buzzword of choice at the CAPA Asia Aviation Summit in Singapore recently.
A panel, moderated by Stephen Pearse (managing director of CAPA – Centre for Aviation), explored what embracing big data could mean for the aviation industry going forward and anticipated what barr [...]
Technology, travel and Trump – key takeaways from Phocuswright
Call it a funnel or a sieve or whatever, let’s face it, things are changing in online travel, lines are blurring even faster than you can say “revolution” and everyone, it seems, wants to be all things to all people.
Has specialisation died at the altar of growth – imagine, Airbnb getting [...]
My 15 Minutes of Fame (and Why Airbnb is Killing it)
In 2010, I was working on an update to our U.S. vacation rental market research, and one name kept popping up: Airbnb. I began digging in. The model was odd – people rent out their primary residences or spaces within their homes – but the product and founders were compelling. They took a very de [...]
