The Wrap: Demand for self-service at Saudi Arabia’s airports to escalate in 2017
The weekly news roundup: SITA 2016 Passenger IT Trends Survey with focus on Saudi travellers, Air Seoul’s partnership with Sabre, Wego’s Christmas holiday guide
SURVEY: Demand for self-service at Saudi Arabia's airports to escalate in 2017
Saudi travellers' love of smartphones will dri [...]
Tripping.com raises US$35m to expand brand in US and internationally
Tripping.com, a San Francisco-based search engine for vacation homes and short-term rentals, has secured US$35 million in Series C funding.
The company plans to use the fund to expand and build its brand both in the US and internationally, mainly in Asia.
The round was led by Princeville Globa [...]
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 [...]
Viator explores how to make a foreign brand feel local as it expands into Asia
Two years after its acquisition by TripAdvisor in 2014, Viator is now ready to put more resources into Asia and build a name for itself in the tours and activities space in the region.
And that job falls to Anita Ngai, general manager of Viator APAC, and she certainly has a strong base from which [...]
The Wrap: CatchThatBus adds home delivery feature to its mobile app
The weekly news roundup: Home delivery of tickets by CatchThatBus, TripAdvisor’s year-end value report, Skyscanners’ list of emerging destinations for 2017
STARTUPS: CatchThatBus adds home delivery feature to its mobile app
Customers of Malaysia-based startup CatchThatBus now do not [...]
AccorHotels buys 5% stake in Banyan Tree for S$24m
AccorHotels, fresh on the heels of wrapping up the concierge deal with John Paul, has made another acquisition – a 5% stake in Singapore-based Banyan Tree Holdings – for S$24 million (US$16.9 million),
The investment will be made through a mandatory convertible debenture that, at conversion, [...]
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 [...]
