Think mooncakes, not nuclear weapons – the best blends east and west
At this time of the year in Beijing, as summer gives way to autumn and the Chinese offer mooncakes to the Lady of the Moon, there’s a change in the direction of the wind that blows through the city.From one day to the next, when I was there last week, a hot, humid summer day gave way to cool, blus [...]
Powerful line-up of speakers at ITB Asia
Messe Berlin (Singapore), organiser of ITB Asia, has added four new conferences to this year’s show that will be held from October 19-21 in Suntec Singapore.These include panel discussions on loyalty programmes, boutique hotels, women in action and a business travel plenary session.The conference [...]
Raja Kamar makes first acquisition in bid to become ‘king of rooms’
Signalling its serious intent to be the number one B2C hotel portal in Indonesia, PT Raja Kamar International, Indonesia’s recently formed hotel distribution company, has acquired 100% of MG Holiday, Indonesia’s leading hotel wholesaler, with immediate effect. Scott Blume (left), Group CEO of R [...]
Singaporeans, Chinese work the hardest; Indians like their gyms
Business travellers surveyed in the Accor Asia Pacific Business Traveller Survey 2011 are a hard-working lot, with folks from Singapore and China topping the hard-working charts.The survey found that 75% worked in the hotel at some point during their trip, increasing to 82% for respondents travell [...]
Skyscanner brings its local approach to Asia
Caught up with Skyscanner’s Frank Skivington (left) and Ewan Gray this afternoon, their last day of a hectic week recruiting staff and finding office space for their new operations in Singapore.They both looked surprisingly fresh, considering they have had 40 meetings in a week, and definitely up [...]
Skyscanner expects Asia traffic to surpass Europe’s in 2 years
Skyscanner’s new office is pretty swish. From the 40th floor of the Ocean Financial Centre, you can pretty much scan the skyline of Singapore.On the walls are computer screens that show revenue tickers, session tickers, downloading times, tweet tracking – it’s like being in a medical room hook [...]
Hotels.com localizes sites for Indonesia and Vietnam
Lately, the stars have been aligning for hotels.com in the Asia Pac region. They have just localized their website for the Indonesian and Vietnamese markets, allowing consumers to do searches on over 135,000 hotels worldwide utilizing their destination preferences and languages. This brings the [...]
Japan Internet users spend most time on blogs
More than 80% of Japan’s entire online population in Japan visited a blog site in June 2011, an increase of 7% from the previous year, according to comScore Japan KK, a subsidiary of comScore, Inc.FC2 inc. led the pack with 46.7 million visitors, followed by Livedoor-Blog with 33.4 million visito [...]
Letter from Dubai, the day after
So it’s the day after (the news of the death of Osama bin Laden). Our intrepid Professor Sabena is at the Arab World’s biggest travel show, now one of the largest in the world. He reports from the show floor, the cafes, the hotels and the taxi cabs.The mood amongst people in Dubai on the street, [...]
OTAs, VCs and Angels zero in on Indonesia
Everyone I know in the OTA corporate development space, VCs and travel-focused angels (and many people I don't) have been contacting me for information about the Indonesian online market.OTA GreenfieldFrom a travel perspective, it's really still a greenfield and could be anyone's game. My money is o [...]
