Letter from Kuching: Want to get uncomfortable? This is the place
From the unexpected to its crafts and cuisine, Sarawak is an undiscovered jewel
When I told an American friend I was in Kuching, Sarawak, last week, she asked me, what do you do in Kuching?
It was a question that made me pause. Instead of firing off the usual quick responses we do these days on [...]
MATTA Fair 2023: A microcosm of Malaysian tourism and its appetite for international travel
The expo estimated 250,000 visitors and RM400million in sales.
I need to make a couple of things clear before getting to the heart of this article. The only times I’ve been to a MATTA (Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents) Fair were when I was a kid, with my dad. This was back in the 9 [...]
Top of the WiT 20: Thoughts on ITB Berlin 2023, discomfort zones, Bonza takes flight
Top Of The WiT is a grab of the trendiest news that happened this week in travel, tech and Asia - all condensed into a quick-and-easy nugget-sized podcast.
In this episode, Siew Hoon and this week's guest, Tim Hughes, are back from ITB Berlin - jetlagged and buzzing with excitement about the retu [...]
Riyadh Air aims big; UAE’s high-speed rail; SITA’s air taxis; Klook takes top spot
Riyadh Air revs up to ‘shape the future’ of global air travel
Tony Douglas, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s new airline, Riyadh Air, has promised that “digital innovation and Saudi hospitality” will be key in establishing the carrier’s international credentials.
The new airline, due to become [...]
I dream of Finland, happiness, “onnellisuus” and everything, everywhere all at once
I once had a penpal from Finland. His name was Jukka Touvinen. He wrote to me about snow and ice, I told him about sun and sand. That correspondence sustained me until I reached my teens when I overcame my shyness to communicate with real boys and I supposed the same thing happened to Jukka, when he [...]
MyRealTrip built its AI Trip Planner in 2 days using ChatGPT
“In travel, it’s not just people asking random questions to have fun with this thing, they are actively trying to gather information.”
The announcement of the multimodal GPT-4 by OpenAI and Microsoft this week has sent every tech industry scrambling to unlock all its capabilities, and the tra [...]
Business travel leads the way in recovery in China
Leisure travel wave should follow in early summer, projects McKinsey’s Saxon
Other than VFR (visiting friends and relatives) and student travel, whose comeback was immediate, it is business travel that is leading the recovery in China, said Steve Saxon, who leads McKinsey’s Travel, Logistics & [...]
Excuse me, what’s your discomfort zone?
The seven desires of travellers in 2023, according to Booking.com
You couldn’t ask for a more comfortable start to the year than the one Booking.com just had – in January 2023, room nights booked hit 95 million, surpassing the previous record set in May by more than 10 million. The 95 million [...]
Chinese consumers booked 4.5x more flights in first 3 months of 2023, records Fliggy
Pre-sales of the company’s cruise tours along Nordic fjords and the Mediterranean each surpassed RMB1 million in a single day
The resumption of ITB Berlin this year brought about a range of travel discussions from around the world, one of them being the reopening of China and the impact it might [...]
Despite high air fares, Sabre data indicates significant outbound travel rebound in China
WITH more than 166 million international trips booked by Chinese travelers in 2019, contributing over $245 billion to global tourism in the process, it is no wonder that the world has been watching, and waiting, for China to re-open its borders, after nearly three years of Covid-19 closure.
Now t [...]
