Bangkok bomb: In times of crises, no knee-jerk decisions please
“Our customers may make knee-jerk reactions because they have a right to. We shouldn't because we have a responsibility not to.” I wanted to wait a couple of days before I wrote about the horrific bomb attack at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok – to digest, to talk to people, to think about it – [...]
If you want to win in Asia, don’t do it by remote control
Picture this. We are sitting in Skyscanner’s offices. It’s our first SkyChat Evening – intimate events where we feature longform conversations with smart people who are in town.On the couch with me is Fritz Demopoulos, co-founder of Qunar and now CEO, Queen’s Road Capital.Just that week, I [...]
Skyscanner’s Williams: “To win, we have to win in Asia”
Gareth Williams, CEO and co-founder of Skyscanner, on what it will take to win big in Asia, his ambitions for the company he co-founded in 2001 and why he won’t give his AI project a girl name.CEO and one of the three co-founders of Skyscanner, Gareth Williams, is spending more time in Singapore t [...]
Letter from Saigon: Big, young, social and mobile, powered by women
One evening in Saigon, after a lovely dinner at a rooftop garden, we stopped on a sidewalk to have a brief chat about where to go next. Ice cream? Beer? Wine? The choices are endless. Suddenly, a bunch of taxis just stopped by us, the drivers looking at us in anticipation for a ride.Simon Christy, f [...]
Letter from Sydney: Loh Lik Peng on the four-year making of the Old Clare Hotel
Loh Lik Peng's latest project, the Old Clare Hotel Sydney, is due to open end of this month. No one is more relieved than he to see the finish line in sight of this four-year restoration project. The day I was at the construction site of the Old Clare Hotel Sydney, workmen were bringing in, to my [...]
Letter from Penang: Hack of a thing to do on a Saturday night
It wasn’t what I was expecting to do on a Saturday night in Penang, but I ended up listening to three teams of developers presenting their start-up ideas at a very impromptu hackathon.That I was doing this in a pre-war Chinese shophouse in the heart of the Georgetown World Heritage precinct made i [...]
The murky world of e-commerce and what happens when credit card fraud strikes you
Last month, I noticed a transaction on my Citibank Visa credit card that I didn’t recall making. It was for an event software solution so it was probable I could have made it, but on checking out the vendor’s website, I knew I hadn’t. I had never heard of it. I then went over my statements mo [...]
Sabre study paints a future of hotel booking that is contextual, intimate and instant
Okay so my survey was not scientific in any way. I merely asked the question on my Facebook status, “If I were to say the words “future of hotel booking”, what words come to mind?”I wanted to get feel of what my network, biased towards frequent travellers, thought about the subject – and w [...]
Here’s grabbing your attention. Are you suffering from LFS? List Fatigue Syndrome
I got into a GrabCar Economy for the first time this week. The driver, a 60-something, is a senior executive working in manufacturing full-time but bought a car for his son and now wants some income to pay off his road tax and insurance.This is the more affordable version of GrabCar, the private car [...]
Letter from Melbourne: Can the city of independents fend off Uberisation?
In a world of bad news – terrorism in Tunisia, terrorism in Charleston, USA, economic disaster in Greece (déjà vu), the MERS scare – I am happy to bring you good news from Melbourne. The spirit of the independent is alive and well in this city which I was told repeatedly will become Australia� [...]
