The Wrap: New hospitality standard for hotels to make Muslim travellers feel at home
In the news: A new hotel reference tool for Muslim travellers, 7-day booking calendar for HotelQuickly, Etihad and Adobe team up New hospitality standard for hotels to make Muslim travellers feel at home A research by Thomson Reuters revealed that Muslim travellers are big spenders on tourism pr [...]
A modest proposal: travel technology dominance
This is a guest blog by Arnie Weissmann, editor in chief, Travel Weekly.The question that Singapore’s minister of foreign affairs put to attendees at the Web in Travel conference last week seemed a little silly: “How many of you are in the travel industry?”Every hand went up.And the followup s [...]
How Stone saw the light and decided to bring it home to Uluru
“There’s something in today’s society that draws people to personal experiences more,” says Ray Stone as he explains why creating experiences such as the “Field of Light” exhibition in Australia’s most sacred place are key to drawing in more visitors to destinations.It was four years a [...]
For Asia, the real story is only just beginning
Richie is a 27-year-old orang utan living in the Semenggoh Wildlife Reserve of Sarawak. Philip Yong, CEO of Borneo Adventure, found him living in a cage as a baby, paid to free him and now he’s hanging out at the sanctuary, which rehabilitates apes and returns them to the wild.Obviously Richie is [...]
From cables to tables
She was in the telco business for 20 years. Then she entered a reality television cooking competition – Masterchef Australia Season 4, emerged a finalist, and that changed her life forever.Audra Morrice decided then that she wanted to follow her passion, which is food, left the corporate world, an [...]
Rimoto wins the WIT Start-Up Pitch
Three starts-ups made it to the finals at the WIT Start-Up Pitch during the annual WIT 2015 Conference in Singapore on October 21, and just one took home the "crown".The winner is Rimoto, a disruptive service that enables international travellers to book a taxi, buy show tickets, or make reservation [...]
Geeks rule the world at the Great WIT Debate
by Mar Pages, luxury travel writerThe Great WIT Debate at the final session of the WIT 2015 conference pit Bobby Healy, CTO of CarTrawler against Stephan Ekbergh, former deejay and CEO of Travelstart. The topic? Whether geeks should rule the world.Bobby's argument is that a geek is defined as a pecu [...]
MakeMyTrip eyes mobile market
Stock prices are no indication of how a company is performing, said Deep Kalra, CEO and founder of Indian OTA MakeMyTrip (MMT) at the opening session of the WIT conference on October 21.Once the disruptor, MMT took the world by storm with a phenomenal IPO listing on NASDAQ in 2010. Despite falling s [...]
Niche properties seek a moment in the sun
By Mar Pages, luxury travel writerTravel experience is the new buzzword. At the final day of the WIT conference, we heard from a wide spectrum of businesses involved in creating unique experiences. At one end, the larger travel OTAs and, at the other, the hoteliers and food experts who are trying to [...]
When mega marketplaces hop on the travel bandwagon
By Alisha SomanasEveryone’s jumping on the online travel industry bandwagon, and the mega marketplaces like Alibaba and Rakuten are no exception. But when you see what they’ve got on their hands, it’s no surprise they want to wield what they’ve got. They’ve found a way to differentiate in [...]
