Egypt is partner country for ITB Berlin 2012
Egypt, the partner country of ITB Berlin in 2012, will feature very strongly at next year’s event.The agreement between the leading trade fair for the worldwide travel industry and its partner country, Egypt, was officially signed on July 1 by the Egyptian Tourist Authority and ITB Berlin. “As [...]
Liar Liar Pants (Eventually) on Fire
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an in-depth article about the doping controversy surrounding Lance Armstrong. In the article, Armstrong’s former teammate, Floyd Landis, described the doping that was done in the 2004 Tour de France (which Armstrong won) as being “…part of the spo [...]
AirAsia moves to new booking system in a “year of innovation”
Its offices may not be the poshest but one thing the airline is investing in is technology and on July 11, AirAsia will unveil its new booking system in a move it says will put it ahead of competitors in offering user-friendly booking features.The new system, which will be available from 6pm on July [...]
Amadeus helps airlines boost ancillary sales
With more airlines looking to ancillary revenues to bolster profitability in an age of dwindling margins, Amadeus has launched a number of initiatives to enable airlines to maximise revenue and for travel agents to easily handle ancillary sales. Corsairfly has started to pilot Amadeus Ancillary Ser [...]
Trust and integrity even more important in digital era, says Blyth
The most important thing you can do in today’s competitive and noisy environment is to establish and maintain a brand with integrity and trust, said Stephen Blyth, executive director, sales & marketing, Asia Pacific, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International.And the fact that Fairmont has such a b [...]
Check-Mate takes off, Virgin Blue eyes Asian corporates
Virgin Blue is seeing a high adoption rate for its Check-Mate mobile service among its corporate customers, said Gordon Young, the airline's manager of interline and international sales.“As we educate the customers, the conversion rate increases. There was obviously a high need for it, we just did [...]
Don’t make social media conversations a one-way street
June 30th was Social Media day. It was actually Global Social Media day as declared by Mashable. It was also a day when I went to discuss Social Media strategy with a large company based here in Singapore.Our Social Media Day event at Zsofi in the evening was great fun, and a chance to meet some gr [...]
Sabre Airline Solutions beefs up team
Sabre Airline Solutions has made several appointments to its senior management team.• Sanjay Nanda joins as Senior Vice President of Consulting and Solutions Delivery, overseeing implementation and delivery of all Airline Solutions projects. Nanda was previously at McKinsey & Company and prior [...]
Asia Web Direct raises 99,000 baht for Bangkok
AsiaWebDirect.com has donated a sum of THB99,000 (about US$3,000) to the Together We Can fund from a one-week fundraising campaign run through their accommodation booking website. The amount was raised between June 23 and 29, when US$1 was set aside from every hotel booking made on AsiaWebDirect.c [...]
Google, Troogle: The world of travel just changed
With the Google and ITA acquisition now public, we can now evaluate how this will impact the world of travel.As I wrote in the three-part series on search – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, I have long felt that search was akin to an unnatural act and one that left the customer dissatisfied. I also sai [...]
