Shangri-La’s first dip into social media ‘exciting’ and ‘touching’
Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts' foray into social media has opened up a whole new level of customer engagement for the group, says Kent Zhu, group director of sales and marketing, when we met up at the opening of the new Kerry Hotel, Pudong, Shanghai.“We were getting about 250 comments with each p [...]
Shark-el-Sheikh?
Flying from Cairo to Sharm el Sheikh, over the Sinai peninsula which geographically is the beginning of Asia, you see below the harsh, inhospitable landscape. Rugged mountainous terrain, valleys filled with rivers of sand, a landscape so untouched and unapproachable that you wonder how this peninsul [...]
Sing It Loud and even geeks can cry
With this post, I’d like to thank kd lang for unlocking something in me. I caught her live at the Esplanade in Singapore the day she turned 50. I liked the way she declared it in front of 1,800 “fellow freaks” as she called us.The day I declared turning 50, I did in in front of only 20 close f [...]
Six tips for startups at Singapore WITovation Enterpreneur Bootcamp
Travel startups always have wonderfully optimistic ideas and aspirations – in fact, overwhelming positivity is practically omnipresent and often rather intoxicating.But as an industry we see startups come and go quicker than you can say “trip” (a very intentional pun, drawing on how a few year [...]
Skyscanner wants to be Amazon of flight search
Nine years after he personally wrote the code to simplify flight search to solve a particular problem he had, Gareth Williams, CEO of Skyscanner, remains focused on one goal – to make travel search more like a book search – flexible, fast and cheap.“Will it also come with recommendations like [...]
Small things and the best email one Company President ever wrote
I met a good friend yesterday. It had been a while since we’d met and he informed me of a new exciting venture he was entering into with some other good folks. It’s an online project centered around the facilitating of environmentally focused activities of its members.We got to talking about the [...]
Solare first with HotelSnapShot to predict guest booking behaviour
In a country-wide first, Japanese operated Solare Hotels & Resorts has implemented a new software application -HotelSnapShot that allows up to date analysis of internal metrics plus access to key external data that impacts hotels and resorts.HotelSnapShot is the creation of Intouch Data Pty [...]
Something is not working with the Great Firewall of China
Officially, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are banned in China.I've been in Beijing and Shanghai for nearly 10 days with the ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) Study Mission to China. We had meetings with several government departments where we were repeatedly told there was no acces [...]
South Asia and Southeast Asia lead APAC’s tourism boom
International visitor arrivals into Asia Pacific destinations grew by 4% year-on-year in May 2011, with South Asia and Southeast Asia recording particularly strong performances for the month.Preliminary results released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) showed South Asia had a 15% incr [...]
Spreading the love of learning beyond WIT to Myanmar
I am exhausted but elated. Two days of Web In Travel are over and this morning, we continue with WIT Ideas Lab at ITB Asia.The last two days have seen personalities shine and points of views emerge – this is the intent behind WIT. Our programming is crafted to allow people to shine and points o [...]
