Letter from Amsterdam: Scale Infinity War and Local Avengers
The promise of summer is in the air as I walk through the streets of Amsterdam. The smells from both the canals and coffee shops waft through the air as I stroll aimlessly in a city made for walking and cycling, although these days, bicycles seem to have taken over.
I find crossing the streets in [...]
Wegogo takes a long shot at the long tail – can outsiders to travel and China make a go of it?
They are not your usual travel tech startups. First, they are hardly in the first blush of youth. They had successful corporate careers in blue chip companies in Singapore before they took the plunge into their first travel startup in 2014.
Second, their office is not in some cool co-working space [...]
Hyatt collaborates with Ctrip to open first flagship store in China
Leading global hospitality group Hyatt has teamed up with Ctrip Group to launch its first flagship store on the Chinese OTA's website and mobile app.
Over 300 million Ctrip members are now able to access Hyatt hotels in the Greater China region and, in the near future, Hyatt properties globally. [...]
Travel Innovation and Tech-Focused Debate Share the Spotlight at Phocuswright Europe
Phocuswright Europe, in its eleventh year, gathered 600 European travel leaders for elevated content and unprecedented networking. Over two days (15-17 May), more than 40 speakers from Europe’s leading travel companies presented fresh insight into the unique challenges of the European travel marke [...]
Bleisure presents “profound opportunity”, more than 60% of business travel become bleisure
Bleisure – the practice of combining business travel and leisure travel into one trip – is booming and presents itself a viable revenue segment for travel companies to tap.
According to Expedia Group Media Solutions’ latest report Unpacking Bleisure Traveller Trends which sampled 2,500 blei [...]
Value Alliance ups ante on website, promises “seamless experience”
The world’s first pan-regional Low Cost Carrier alliance has announced a new website, powered by Air Black Box technology, that enables cross-airline booking for connecting flights. It also features ancillary products offered by its members.
It claims to offer a “seamless booking experience i [...]
Grand Park City Hall rolls out app to map customer experience, capture data
It’d be fair to say that hotels have largely lost the booking battle to OTAs, but there’s one area they are trying to fight back to capture customer data and that’s in the in-stay experience.
After all, that’s when they have the captive audience from the moment of check-in to check-out; [...]
The Wrap: APAC airlines flew high in 2017 with US$8.8bil net earnings
In the news: APAC airlines reported improved financial performance; Trip.com, HanaTour boost service delivery with new solutions
Aviation: APAC airlines flew high in 2017 with US$8.8bil net earnings
2017 was a good year for Asia Pacific airlines as they achieved healthy combined net earn [...]
Hail the future drone-based society – Kotaro Chiba bets big on drones and inbound tourism
Drones will be to society what the mobile phone is now – they will connect us, they will do all kinds of stuff for us, they will be everywhere and they will be invisible.
That’s the vision of Kotaro Chiba, founder of the newly set-up 1 billion yen (US$16m) DroneFund in Japan. The co-found [...]
Rebranded Vidi aims to capture bigger slice of tours & activities market
Malaysian online travel startup, Touristly, has rebranded as Vidi to reflect its “evolution from a traditional trip planner to a visual discovery platform.”
The rebranding is also part of the company’s strategy to get a slice of the rapidly growing tours and activities market in Asia Pacifi [...]
