Letter from Penang: Lessons from the Monkey King
I was sitting in my doctor’s office and browsing through his reading materials, I came across comic books about the Monkey King, a main character in the Chinese classical novel, Journey To The West.Known as Sun Wukong, the Monkey King has been in my consciousness since childhood. Sun Wukong, a mon [...]
Why Travelstart’s Ekbergh decided to get married after 10 years of bacherlorhood
It was around March last year that Stephan Ekbergh, sole owner and founder of South Africa-based Travelstart, was first approached by Amadeus Capital Partners (not related to Amadeus IT by the way).The first meeting with Andrea Traversone took place in ITB Berlin and Ekbergh recalled it didn’t go [...]
Racing through Kuching for a good cause, Heritage Race to go places in 2016
Sarawak’s tourism industry raised a total of RM20,000 (US$4,750) on January 30 from the inaugural Kuching Heritage Race, supported by Northstar Travel Group's brands - WIT (Web In Travel) and Travel Weekly Asia.The two-hour event, which was created by WIT founder Yeoh Siew Hoon, saw close to 48 te [...]
Aladdin Street, M’sia’s first halal e-commerce platform, sets sight on the world
Like the fictional Aladdin and his magic lamp, new Malaysian start-up Aladdin Street is ready to light up the e-commerce world with halal products and to give giants in this field, Amazon and Alibaba, a run for their money.The new venture’s co-founder Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, the first Malaysia [...]
The Millennial Traveller: How a heritage race opened my eyes to Kuching
In an industry where government tourism boards relentlessly invoke buzzwords and catch phrases to generate publicity, it becomes easy to build a certain level of cynicism (or perhaps ‘scepticism’ is a better word) about the strategies used to attract visitors to target destinations.
There is an [...]
China’s pink travel market waiting to be tapped
The global LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) travel market is big – over USS200 billion in annual spend, and is growing. One market, which is slowly but surely contributing to this growth, is China.Although homosexuality is a sensitive topic in China, where traditional family values are s [...]
Booking.com dominates, Agoda makes showing in Europe
SiteMinder's list of top 10 hotel booking sites in 2015 within five of Europe and Asia Pacific's top travel markets shows the clear dominance of booking.com across markets including Thailand where its sister company Agoda is based.Interestingly, the results also show Agoda making headway in markets [...]
Grab, fly and how to win customer love
This week I received a letter (well, an email) from a CEO that grabbed my attention.It was from Anthony Tan, CEO and co-founder, of GrabTaxi telling me (well, it felt like he was talking to me but I am sure it went out to hundreds of thousands of customers) that he’s decided to change his company� [...]
Silence of the web at ASEAN travel leaders level
For all the chatter and plans unveiled at the ASEAN Tourism Forum held in Manila earlier this month, nowhere did the Internet feature, or any discussion on the impact of the web on travel.The silence on the topic was staggering – aside from the Malaysian national tourist office (NTO) press briefin [...]
APAC is biggest travel market, Thailand is the star
APAC’s tourism industry is now the biggest in the world (having overtaken Europe in 2014 in its contribution to global GDP), and the underlying momentum for growth is expected to continue, with a projected 500m arrivals by 2020.The findings contained in MasterCard's inaugural Asia Pacific Destinat [...]
