Discovering Kuala Lumpur the TripAdvisor way
TripAdvisor recently announced it added 30 global travel destinations to its offline mobile City Guides (for iPhone and Android) including Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Hearing good things about these guides, I decide to test drive my adopted city of residence – Kuala Lumpur.In the course of my wo [...]
The world is flocking to UK for London 2012
Travel data provided by Amadeus and ForwardKeys.com, revealed the travel trends impacted by London 2012 Olympics. International visitors are set to flock to London for the Games (July 23-August 12), based on actual global air reservations, with Asia representing the highest growth region for bo [...]
Wego’s global and digital queen – the face of a new travel generation
Blanca Menchaca was born in Mexico, studied in Australia and now lives in Singapore. She flies around the world on a regular basis, thinks nothing of heading to Norway for a long weekend, and believes a flight of 30 hours is ‘not really that long’. To refer to Menchaca as a global citizen is the [...]
Wotif takes lessons from local markets as it expands
Wotif.com has cornered the online accommodation booking space in Australia and New Zealand, turning over US$1.1 billion worth of bookings per year for the 10,000 accommodation providers in Australia and New Zealand and 7,000 in South-east Asia listed on its site.Claiming a market share of 10% of a [...]
WITNext job camp: Calling students, entrepreneurs, tourism professionals and mentors
From left, Syaz and Gerry testing the visualiser in a seminar room; one of the rooms where the bootcamps will be held; and the auditorium where the conference track will staged So we’ve done our site inspection of the SMU Admin Building where we will be holding our first ever WITNext Summ [...]
Interest in Myanmar on the rise
TripAdvisor revealed that travellers have shown significantly more interest in Myanmar as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won a parliamentary seat in the country's by-elections in April.There was a sharp rise in travellers’ searches on Myanmar by 70% across TripAdvisor branded sites [...]
RajaKamar banks on call centre and new focus to make it big
So that there is no doubt about what it does and what it aims to stand for, the new branding of rajakamar.com states it clearly – the “Indonesian hotel expert”. And now it is ready to shout about it in a major marketing drive that will start June 1. CEO Scott Blume told WIT, “This refle [...]
Putting air fight behind it, MakeMyTrip ramps up push across Asia
The recent scuffle between airlines and OTAs in India over the latter’s use of “opaque fare schemes” merely serves to highlight the ongoing tussle between the two parties over control of distribution.For a period of two to three weeks in April, Jet Airways and InDiGo withdrew inventory from a [...]
Kissing the roses goodbye – a resort transforms
Since my last visit to Sampran Riverside in Thailand more than 20 years ago I had made a promise to return, but somehow that did not materialise. So when a weekend retreat was planned there after WITX-Women In Travel in Bangkok last month, I jumped at the opportunity. Situated about 30km west of B [...]
All-Star OTA panel takes the spotlight at WIT Japan
Picture shows from left: Wilfred Fan, Director North Asia, Agoda; Johan Svanstrom, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Hotels.com; Dan Lynn, CEO, AAE Travel (AirAsiaExpedia), Masabumi Mori, IKYU.com; Suguru Tomizuka, Recruit (Jalan); Toshiyuki Imai, JTB (i.JTB) and Masashi Okatake, Rakuten Travel. Co [...]
