Legends wins WiT/Phocuswright Global Startup Pitch
Legends has won the 2023 Phocuswright/WebinTravel Global Startup Pitch event while SquadTrip received the People’s Choice Award.
The competition began in May with more than 120 startups, categorized by region - Asia Pacific, Europe, Americas, Middle East/Africa – and a Wild Card division. [...]
84% jump in Asian vacation rentals, big uptick in longer rental stays
Data from Trip101 confirms growing trends in the vacation rentals space and the shifting nature of work in the region
According to global travel media startup Trip101, which curates and recommends vacation rentals and hotels, Asian vacation rentals have experienced an 84% surge in bookings from 202 [...]
GetYourGuide gets into pole position to win in $250b experiences market
The biggest risk is cultural risk, says CEO Johannes Reck
Racing between meetings, and fresh from watching his first Singapore Grand Prix, you could say that Johannes Reck, CEO and co-founder of GetYourGuide, is as on top of the world as Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who won the Singapore race.
Afte [...]
Growth of OTAs, superapps: Trends low-cost airlines have to watch, says Ashmore Butler
After having spent 20 years of his career on the airline side of the fence, with carriers such as Jetstar, Qantas and Scandinavian Airlines, Clive Ashmore Butler felt it was time to see airline distribution from another perspective. He joined Atlas, the technology platform that connects travel selle [...]
Wego acquires Travelstop in bid to build first corporate travel unicorn in Asia, Middle East
The first thing Prashant Kirtane, CEO and co-founder of Travelstop, did when he and his team of 26 moved into the Wego office in Singapore was to buy his own coffee machine, even though there were already two coffee machines, laughed Ross Veitch, CEO and co-founder of Wego. “I am used to my own br [...]
Moon landing, 1,000 aircraft orders – India’s on a roll but it’s still a long game
TBO’s Gaurav Bhatnagar has “big plans” for APAC
Gaurav Bhatnagar, who is on a mission to build the world’s largest travel distribution platform, was elated when TBO.com clocked $10 million in GTV/sales in a single day in April 2023. “Coming out of COVID, it was hard to imagine that this [...]
Meet the five finalists of the 2023 Global Startup Pitch
Five companies have been picked to compete in the Grand Finals of the 2023 Global Startup Pitch, by WiT and Phocuswright, at WiT Singapore, Oct 2-4.
In the four-hour virtual Semi-Finals which ran today, a team of almost 20 judges picked these finalists from the different regions, as well as a Wil [...]
An early mis-step but Weeva on way to become “Fitbit” of travel sustainability
Startup came out of pandemic – “to scale, we have to digitise sustainability”
A lot of startup founders, probably, at some point in their journey, will say, “If only I had known then what I know now”.
For Cape Town-based Julie Cheetham and her co-founder of Weeva, Lindsey Walter, both [...]
A minute of silence for the physical SIM card, please
Airalo’s bet on eSIMs pays off as it raises $60m – “we want to be available at every OTA checkout”
In 2019, during an investor’s pitch, Bahadir Ozdemir, co-founder of Airalo, which uses software-based eSIM connectivity to provide a wide range of lower-cost mobile data packages for interna [...]
How Tali Goldman uses tech to scale Market For Good
Travel a key target for platform that aligns procurement to empower local communities and environment
Armed with a masters in systems engineering, Singapore-based Israeli entrepreneur Tali Goldman was working mainly in the aero defence industry when she decided to switch career paths about 10 yea [...]
