How Asia’s hospitality industry can stay relevant in this competitive digital age
A new study by Meltwater, which provides insights and consultancy to help brands future-proof their business, examines how digital disruption is redefining the customer’s travel experience across the hospitality industry in Asia.
Adopting a digital-first strategy could give hospitality compane [...]
Wego secures new funding for expansion in the Middle East
Online travel marketplace Wego has picked up more investment, this time from Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP) in exchange for an equity ownership.
The equity stake and the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by both companies.
MEVP is a leading venture capital firm in the Middle [...]
The Wrap: Meet Toby the Chatbot – Tigerair Australia’s new personal travel consultant
In the news: It’s all about airlines and flights this week with Tigerair Australia’s new chatbot, KLM’s offering of WeChat Pay and booking flights on hotel websites
CHATBOTS: Meet Toby the Chatbot - Tigerair Australia’s new personal travel consultant
The next time you make a bookin [...]
6 openings, 3 months – AccorHotels’ rapid move into APAC’s luxury hotel space, first Sofitel in Malaysia
Soaring high above the office blocks and residences in Damansara Heights, an affluent suburb of Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, Sofitel Kuala Lumpur Damansara is an impressive sight with its wide driveway, sparkling marble floors and lofty ceilings.
Opened last month the 312-room hotel is the fir [...]
Japan Airlines, TripAdvisor join forces to grow Japan’s inbound tourism in lead up to 2020
Japan Airlines (JAL) and TripAdvisor have formed a strategic partnership to launch an immersive multi-media portal, Untold Stories of Japan, to promote inbound tourism to the country, as well as encourage repeat visits.
The portal, which will be launched next month, highlights the best that Japan [...]
SEO, IBE, SEA, Metasearch…FASTBOOKING guide works through complex world of hotel marketing and distribution
As a small, independent hotel, it can be quite intimidating to navigate today’s world of hotel marketing and online distribution. What should be enabling can be paralysing for some.
The good news is, as FASTBOOKING details in its latest “Guide for Independent hotels”, “technology is a gre [...]
Fried scorpion may not be his thing but helping travellers have better vacations is: Steve Kaufer on TripAdvisor’s great end game
Steve Kaufer, CEO & founder of TripAdvisor, could hardly remember what he ate for dinner the evening before. “It was something interesting,” he said. I was curious because he kept talking about how TripAdvisor wants to help travellers have awesome experiences in destinations – from tours t [...]
AirAsia wants to remove “cash from the plane”, first step a new Freedom Flyer scheme
Low-cost airline, AirAsia launched its new Freedom Flyer Programme last week at RedQ in Kuala Lumpur, a first step in group CEO Tony Fernandes’ dream of “removing cash from the plane”.
At the launch, he said, “we never really knew loyalty very well… having said that, we have 13 million [...]
Why chatbots are transforming the travel Industry
This is a guest post by Bronwyn White, co-founder of MyTravelResearch.com, a market research and marketing firm specialising in the travel, tourism and aviation industries.
Chatbots can be simply defined as artificial intelligence programmes that conduct conversations with humans through chat [...]
Writing about failures taught him, “be a person of character, not a personality”
My first question to Vincent Ng, the co-author of “Why You Should Fail”, was, of course, “have you failed?” To which his eyes lit up with glee and he said, “Yes.”
“I’ve been doing entrepreneur things since I was 16,” he said proudly. “I sold candy to my schoolmates. The money [...]
