Banks see travel as a path to high-value loyalty, but trust is tricky.
Agoda's Damien Pfirsch on why travel is no longer a side perk for financial and loyalty brands, but one of the most valuable, and hardest to get right, customer relationships in their portfolio.
Travel used to be the reward you cashed in your points for. Now it's shaping up to be one of the most po [...]
The secrets to mastering social and commerce in the age of AI
A panel at WiT Queenstown representing Klook, Google and Fabulate shares tips and insights on what’s working and what’s not
Social and AI have increasingly become the means by which travellers discover places and things to do – and the panellists at WiT Queenstown – Marcus Yong of Klook, B [...]
Google buys Spirit Airlines’ data. KLIA amps security. Spotnana x Singapore Airlines. Atlas’ open-source flight booking.
Google buys Spirit Airlines' data for $10 million
Google agreed to pay $10 million for the data assets of defunct Spirit Airlines, outbidding AI-training firm Mercor's $7.5 million offer, according to an Aug. 14 court filing tied to Spirit's court-supervised liquidation (Spirit shut down May 2, 202 [...]
When the founder hands you the keys: SiteMinder’s Sankar Narayan on scaling without breaking what made it great
Sankar Narayan has done this twice now. Not built a company from zero – inherited one. First at Xero, where he arrived as CFO and left as COO with the company’s enterprise value multiplied threefold. Then at SiteMinder, where he has spent seven years as CEO alongside founder Mike Ford, scaling t [...]
Data: The light behind AI
10 key takeaways from a presentation by Filip Filipov, CEO, OAG at WiT Japan
AI is only as good as the data behind it.
Every platform shift in travel – internet, mobile, payments, now AI – has rewritten the rules. But unlike previous shifts, AI's value is entirely dependent on the qual [...]
Full cycle: Hermione Joye on 12 years in Asia travel
In the Chinese calendar, 12 years is a full cycle – every animal has had its turn, and you’re back where you started. Well, Hermione Joye, who has just stepped down as Google’s Head of Travel, APAC, has spent exactly a dozen years in the region and as someone born in the Year of the Rat, she l [...]
Thankless travel planners. GlobalTix x Myrealtrip. Fliggy’s next-gen agent. Saudi’s investment appeal. More.
GlobalTix partners with Myrealtrip
GlobalTix, an Asia-based reservation and distribution platform, announced a partnership with South Korean travel platform Myrealtrip to make GlobalTix's network of over 180,000 experiences available to Myrealtrip's 10 million users, giving GlobalTix's global opera [...]
Travel just won’t quit: What Booking, Expedia and Airbnb’s Q2 results tell us
We asked Claude to summarise second quarter results of Booking, Expedia and Airbnb
Three earnings calls, three beat-and-raise quarters, one unmistakable signal: whatever headwinds are supposedly buffeting global travel this year, the industry’s three largest platforms just posted some of their st [...]
Can Japan leap beyond “the Italy of Asia” in the AI era?
Why quiet power may become Japan’s greatest competitive advantage
The travel industry is undergoing its biggest transformation since the rise of the internet.
The catalyst, of course, is generative AI.
Yet the most thought-provoking question I took away from WiT Japan 2026 wasn’t about AI [...]
The Sound of Quiet: Why the tourism ecosystem needs silence
"When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light, That split the night,
And touched the sound of silence."
~ Paul Simon
Let’s be honest: most of us in the travel industry spend our lives building infrastructure for the crowd. We map out route expansions, track footfall events, optimi [...]
