Fancy a flight to space – it’s going for US$100,000 a pop
It seems rather fitting that John Mims, who as a young boy was fascinated by the space race and remembers watching it endlessly on television, now finds himself selling commercial space flights.“I have always thought that to be in apace would be the ultimate adventure. Until now I had only hoped [...]
Azran Osman-Rani leaves AirAsia X, Kamarudin Meranun takes over as new group CEO
“AirAsia X would like to confirm Azran Osman-Rani’s cessation from the chief executive officer office with effect from 30 January 2015.”This sentence in the press statement on AirAsia X’s “leadership changes” did not come as a big surprise as speculation of Azran's departure has been goi [...]
Millennial Traveller: Light at the end of the tunnel
The standard of public transport in a country like Singapore is frankly superb. I can get from one side of the island to the other in under an hour on the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit), costing me a couple of dollars at the most. The bus routes make for a more leisurely journey, but so long as I have got [...]
AirAsia removes fuel surcharge across the group
When global oil prices started declining many airlines were asked if they would reduce or remove the fuel surcharges, and consequently the prices of air tickets. Almost all replied in the negative at that time. However, now a number of airlines have done so.Virgin Australia incorporated fuel cost [...]
Hotels in China need to embrace cloud based offerings in distribution technology
The mindset of hoteliers in China is changing towards integrated solutions with one source of data flowing in real time between systems improving distribution efficiency and enhancing the guest experience through the booking process.Hotel organisations are constantly looking at automating their dist [...]
Travelstart buys Satisfly
Travelstart, an OTA headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, has acquired Satisfly, a Hong Kong based social intelligence company, for an undisclosed sum.With the acquisition Sergio Mello, who founded Satisfly with Edoardo Serra, joined Travelstart as head of innovation while remaining as Satisfly [...]
Check out this smart hotel room controlled entirely by WeChat
This article is reproduced courtesy of Tech in Asia.On the sidelines of CES in Las Vegas, Ceasars Entertainment partnered up with WeChat to give tours of new smart hotel rooms at The LINQ, a local hotel and casino. Visitors could use an app inside WeChat to control lighting, thermostats, and curtain [...]
Mercure kicks off international casting for journey to test #6FriendsTheory
Mercure Hotels has embarked on a unique experiment to check out the well-known six-degrees-of-separation theory, which claims that we are all only six people away from everyone else on the planet.It has introduced a worldwide digital operation, The Six Friends Theory, which is based on this principl [...]
The Wrap: Qantas tops AirlineRatings.com’s list of world’s safest airlines
In the news: Qantas world’s safest airline, Travelport's investment in travel-IT, taxi-transfer service from Amadeus and Cabforce, first prepaid card for MyanmarQantas tops AirlineRatings.com’s list of world’s safest airlines A new year’s honour for Australia’s Qantas, as it has been ranke [...]
Doing hotels differently, the Taipei Inn way
Like Warren Buffet, Taiwanese investor Jimmy Dai believed that if everyone was going one way, he would go the other. And so 10 years ago, when he thought of building a hotel in Taipei, he went against the trend and built the city’s first design boutique hotel.“At that time, the hotel industry in [...]
