High tech can lead to higher human touchpoints
GlobalTix’s Chan Chee Chong and Nam Ho’s Marshall share how technology can help agents further drive better engagement and customer service.
Filmmakers have loved to unsettle us with movies that depict machines taking over the world. But don’t hear it from the movie industry, hear it from t [...]
From Bengkulu to Traveloka: How Caesar Indra is fulfilling his dream of “making the developing world better”
“Local is our DNA, so is DIY,” he says, but can that playbook scale as Traveloka expands
When I asked Caesar Indra how a kid growing up in Bengkulu, a small mountain village on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia ended up being president of Traveloka, Indonesia’s poster child of online travel, h [...]
Sponsored: Why a positive experience is all that really matters to travellers
By James Marshall, VP, Air Account Management, Expedia Group
CONSUMER behaviour continually changes, but the volatility we have experienced over the past few years has brought this into even sharper focus. All industries are having to adapt to these changes and re-examine how they meet consumer n [...]
SEA’s digital economy to hit $200b GMV this year, travel “will take years to reach 2019 levels”
ESG factors “key to unlock the full potential of region's $1 trillion digital economy by 2030”
SOUTH-east Asia’s digital economy is on track to hit $200B GMV in 2022, and is expected to grow twice as fast as GDP in most South-east Asian countries and could reach up to $1T by 2030 if the full [...]
Tech In Travel: Dancers in Bali, unhappy travel app users and a passenger security prototype pops up Down Under.
THERE is a new dancer in Bali – and it’s not a beautiful Balinese lady performing the Kecak dance.
Launching 17 November, Bali Dancer NFT (non-fungible token) is a digital asset that works as a membership card and assists tourists in premium clubs, restaurants, cafes and tourist spots in Bali [...]
Sponsored: Welcome to the New World of Travel
FOLLOWING a long period of strict entry conditions, heightened hygiene protocols, and swift vaccine deployment, the summer of 2022 finally demonstrated that it is now largely possible to travel the world once more. Most tourist destinations in the MENA region, Europe, and the world have started to w [...]
Digitalising transport: Merging first, middle and last mile in a single journey
This startup wants to enable mobility transformation for the developing world
THE word "journey" is used loosely in travel to describe the act of getting from Point A to Point B... and then C, D, all the way to Z. It's an idealistic word, come to think of it, that encapsulates what travel-tech comp [...]
Rakuten’s domestic strength will hold it steady as Japan reopens
Supply gap, shift to online and cashless among changes sweeping through Japan’s travel market
Rakuten Travel strengthened its hold in the domestic market through the pandemic, increasing its share of domestic travel nights per month from around 15-16% to 20% in 2022, and that consolidation shoul [...]
A Gen Z’s view of “Exploration & Rejuvenation”: Looking at the endless possibilities instead of the endless problems
Thrilled to be alive in this era but mindful of the strain on travel staff and infrastructure
Medical student, Caitlyn Tan, attending her first WiT conference, reports on a speech that left her “looking at the endless possibilities instead of the endless problems” and asking herself “if the o [...]
“Be the dreamers that do”: Post-pandemic, travel’s desire for genuine change reflected in this panel
In more ways than one, WiT 2022 embraced the desire for a new world order, beginning with travel. Sure, there was the theme and its addictively catchy tune calling out ‘Hello New World’. Yet as Luke Clark writes, just by sitting through a few sessions, you began to sense that this might be more [...]
