The agents are swarming: Lessons from the bees
Well, well, well, the great Agentic race is officially on. I’ve lost track of the agents coming our way.
At WiT Singapore, there was of course a lot of talk about what all this means for travel. I played with three possible scenarios in my head and tested it, in various conversations.
One is a [...]
Travel deserves its own agent, and its own soul: Key takeaways from WiT Singapore
The car has broken down. We are stuck in Kuala Selangor, a small town in Malaysia I’ve only heard about but never visited. We are two hours away from our destination, Lumut, where we’re supposed to take a ferry to Pulau Pangkor to stay at an artist’s retreat called Tiger Rock on the island.
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The leap of faith Instinct can’t book
I suppose it is fitting that I used Instinct to book tickets for the movie Odyssey. A robotic agent that can accomplish tasks in seconds, buying tickets to a three-hour film about one man’s arduous, perilous journey over the seas – fighting the wrath of Poseidon – to return to his family afte [...]
Letter from The Cotswolds: Pretty little villages, naked gardens, buried bodies
In Wiltshire, in the Cotswolds Area, there is a tiny, sweet village called Castle Combe. Despite its name, it has no castle, but visiting it, I couldn’t help but think that the villagers living there (last count: 326) wished they had a fortress and moat to keep out the visitors.
It was past six [...]
Letter from Queenstown: Of resilience, soil and microbes
Amanda Currie breeds microbes for a living now. She’s gone from reading spreadsheets in financial regulation to studying soil on a farm.
“I found myself looking at soil under a microscope,” she told a WiT Queenstown panel on “Food, Identity & Tourism”. “And when I did that, I realis [...]
Letter from Penang: How AI sent a stranger to our door and what he, and we, learned
Mo, a hospitality software executive, woke up at 6am in Penang on Friday, July 3. Between brushing his teeth and gargling, he asked Gemini what he should do that day. He was on a solo weekend escape from Singapore, where he works.
One of the first recommendations was “an indie travel event” � [...]
Letter from Athens & Corfu: Of beds, seasonality and service
Landing in Istanbul en route to Athens, I had six hours to kill at IST. Turned out not to be a problem.
The largest airport in Turkey, the second busiest in Europe, and the largest privately-owned airport operation in the world – it is impressive. Massive, in fact. Generously spaced retail, wel [...]
Letter from Tokyo: Samurai power, love robots, AI storm in a teacup
Key takeaways from WiT Japan 2026
A Samurai performance at the start, love robots at the end and in between one-and-half-day of conversations about “The Next 20: Precision, Reinvention and Quiet Power”.
Only in Japan could the precise sit comfortably with poetry, the quiet power of a centuri [...]
Letter from Las Vegas: The Techies built it, now the Fuzzies want it back.
The slot machines get you first. That relentless ding, ding, ding as you walk into the ARIA lobby, the raucous laughter from the bars, the crowds hunched over gaming tables – I can’t be anywhere else but Las Vegas.
I’d come off two full flights from Singapore via San Francisco, and the Stri [...]
Letter from Cape Town: Finding your Table Mountain
The travel industry is living through its most unsettling moment in 30 years since the Internet. AI is redrawing the front door through which travellers enter the funnel. Jobs are being reconsidered, business models questioned, and in classrooms from Singapore to Cape Town, students are asking the q [...]
