Everyone wants to be an Experience Maker – lessons from Coca-Cola and ONE Championship
It seems everyone wants to be in the experience business these days, whether you’re selling bottles of sugared water, body lotion, education or sports. At the Adobe Symposium, held in Singapore this week, they call themselves experience makers.
As I listened to speaker after speaker talk about [...]
Bringing GRRRL Power to Asia – how Olson built a women sportswear brand out of a social movement
In our continuing series of articles around our WIT Singapore Conference theme of “Through The Looking Glass”, where we look outside travel in search of different stories and lessons, we look at how Kortney Olson built a women sportswear brand out of a social movement around giving women self-co [...]
South Korea’s MyRealTrip joins hands with Naver to launch “Naver Tour”
South Korea’s leading travel platform, MyRealTrip, has launched a new service called “Naver Tour” in partnership with Naver, the country’s largest Internet company.
Naver Tour was co-designed and developed by the two companies, said MyRealTrip’s CEO Donggun Lee. Naver offered the platfo [...]
Armed with $200m more, Klook eyes global domination as it steers course to hit $1b in bookings this year
It seems there is no stopping Klook which will go down in Asia’s travel history as the startup that has raised the most in the shortest time. Today, it announced it has closed $200m in Series D funding, bringing its total financing to date to US$300 million. This latest round makes the in-destinat [...]
Letter from Sydney: Of food made for instagram and the journey towards NDC, diversity and chatbots
At the Two Sis café in Pyrmont where I had lunch my last day in Sydney, the place was packed with youngsters from Asia – there’s a local university nearby and so it’s popular with students. Let’s say my friends and I brought up the average age substantially.
The café, owned by a Cor [...]
Letter from East Coast road trip, Malaysia: Places have not changed, the way we travel has
Driving along the highway that cuts into Kuantan, Pahang, on the Malaysian east coast, my mind casts back to the first ever travel conference I covered as a rookie in the world of travel trade journalism.
The speaker was Mahathir Mohamad, then-Prime Minister who, in this year’s general election [...]
Meet MARVIE – Scoot’s new virtual intern and transactional chatbot
The low cost arm of Singapore Airlies, Scoot, on July 23 launched a transactional chatbot named MARVIE (Most Awesome and Resourceful Virtual Intern Ever) on its Singapore Facebook page via Facebook Messenger.
The 'recruitment' of MARVIE, described as “the first chatbot by an airline in Asia to [...]
Know your farmer – Sampran Riverside’s Arrut leads organic tourism movement in Thailand
In today’s age, where we have our personal trainers, doctors and lawyers, why shouldn’t we have our personal farmer? That was the food for thought offered by Arrut Navaraj, managing director of Sampran Riverside, at the Travelport Live conference in Bangkok earlier this month when he spoke of ho [...]
The Wrap: Raffles, Fairmont and Swissôtel loyalty platforms integrate with Le Club AccorHotels programme
In the news: Of loyalty programmes, partnership and NDC - this week’s focus featuring AccorHotels, Malaysia Airlines, Livin and Travello, and Sabre.
Hotels: Raffles, Fairmont and Swissôtel loyalty platforms integrate with Le Club AccorHotels programme
AccorHotels Group’s loyalty pro [...]
Surprise and delight or frighten: Hoteliers search for the line between connecting with and creeping out their customers
So what are hoteliers overwhelmed by when it comes to leveraging consumer data and what are their priorities in an increasingly digitalised world?
Some answers emerged during the Facebook APAC Hotels Summit held in Singapore in June during a panel discussion of three hoteliers – Emilie Couton ( [...]
