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 [...]
Beyond the gallop: Why the future belongs to the herd
We’re midway through the Lunar New Year celebrations (which, in case you didn’t know, stretch a full 15 days) and I swear if I see the word “gallop” in one more press release, I may well leapfrog into the nearest lake — which would have been rather dramatic two weeks ago when I was in New [...]
Letter from Tokyo: Ramen ritual, love robots, a dog and an eel
One of the reasons I love visiting Tokyo is that in a single day, you can be transported to the future – catching a glimpse of what the world might become – and then, just hours later, be pulled gently back in time, into a place of exquisite taste, deep tradition and unexpected warmth.
This [...]
The albatross that had to be let go
Even as we charge pell-mell into the future, it’s good, necessary, even, to take a walk back into the past to understand how we got to where we are today.
This week, I did exactly that. I visited The Albatross File: Singapore’s Independence Declassified, a permanent (actually it’s five years [...]
The direct booking secret no algorithm can beat
This week, a front desk executive succeeded where technology failed – she made me rethink my booking behaviour with a single human act. No algorithm. No AI layer. No vibe coding. Just awareness, initiative and follow-through.
Last week I checked into Amari Boulevard Kuala Lumpur. Since we launch [...]
