How a virus can bring travel to its knees, but we needn’t stay down
So what can
I write about the Wuhan coronavirus that hasn’t been written about already? How
many new cases? How many more infections? How many more countries?
What can I
write about it and its worst possible timing? That it happened during Lunar New
Year, the biggest travel season for China, [...]
Letter from Penang: Going batty in Green Acres and getting lost in Garden of Evening Mists
With sustainability such a hot topic these days, you can imagine my excitement when I heard a team of bat researchers from Rimba Research was doing field work at Penang Green Acres the day I was due to visit Eric and Kim Chong at their durian farm last week.
I was
curious as to what research th [...]
In 2020, mind the facts, ask key questions and channel Rihanna
We couldn’t have asked for a more spectacular way to mark the end of a decade in Asia – the annular solar eclipse on December 26. According to experts, the next time this will occur in our part of the world will be in 2063 and given I won’t be able to wait that long, I didn’t want to miss i [...]
The Millennial Traveller: I worked in New York City for a fortnight. Here’s what I learned.
New York City is an assault on the senses. Arriving on a cold November evening after over 25 hours of travel, I watched as the amber light of sunset descended behind the jagged skyline. The clocks had changed during my flight, dragging night forward an hour earlier, and painting the sky so black th [...]
Expedia: What went wrong? Lessons to reflect on
It’s interesting that at Phocuswright last month, I was having a conversation with a senior leader in online travel about the changes going on at Expedia Group.
I had just come from Explore ’19, the Expedia conference
which, for the first time charged delegates about US$500 to attend, and j [...]
Letter from Fort Lauderdale: Time shifting as search chokes, funds bloat and brands battle for supremacy in next age of tech
As I wait for the first of three flights that will bring me home from Fort Lauderdale to Singapore via Houston and San Francisco, I have downloaded the Timeshifter jetlag app, one of the startups that presented at the Phocuswright conference. It’s relatively easy to set up, I just hope it works b [...]
Immigration, inequality, inclusion – the themes occupying America
It is interesting the amount of soul-searching that’s going on in North America, both on the political and corporate front, as I discovered on this recent trip which started in Las Vegas, continued to New York and now headed for Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for Phocuswright, which begins tomorrow. & [...]
Letter from Explore ’19: Persevere, respect, be mindful – and oh, get more sleep
If I had to sum up the first day of Expedia Group’s Explore ’19 conference in Las Vegas today in three words, they’d be “perseverance, respect and mindfulness”.
The morning opened with a talk by Colin O’Brady who, after nine years of having his legs burnt at a beach party in Thailand [...]
A tale of three places: Bamboo, Bali and never-ending neon
Travelling straight from the private
island of Cempedak to the mass tourism island of Bali is one thing, but going
on from Bali to Shanghai the day after, well, that’s another. The contrasts are
marked but there’s a common thread that weaves through them – the story of
travel – as Yeoh Siew [...]
Letter from the South China Sea: Time for unusual thinking, unorthodox partnerships and old-fashioned making money
Yeoh Siew Hoon gets stranded on a coral
reef off Cempedak and ponders the secrets of the travel universe as they were revealed
at last week’s WiT Singapore 2019.
The sun was about to call it a day when we set out on a boat from Cempedak Island off Bintan, Indonesia. Our destination was a coral [...]
