We need to create “Interstellar” moments
Watched Interstellar, the movie, on IMAX last weekend and I left thinking, it’s film makers like Christopher Nolan who will keep people coming back to the big screen.Sure, the IMAX, which is being hailed as the future of cinema, makes the experience even more mind-blowing but what’s a fancy piec [...]
Letter from Taipei: Seeking “moments of secured happiness”
I leave a Taipei on the cusp of change. Yesterday I spent a day wandering the streets, popping into cafes, eating at roadside stalls, and exploring the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, the enclave for Taiwanese artists.While I was doing that, the people of Taipei were voting. Their decision, in [...]
Letter from Antwerp: Dear hotels, it should be about me, not you
Having completed a round-the-world trip in under 14 days – Singapore to LA, New York and ending in Antwerp, Brussels – I feel I have enough material to write a trilogy but I will confine myself to one column about something that really stood out for me during my travels – the difference be [...]
Two men, one wish: Time for their lives
As I listened to Groupon founder Andrew Mason talk at the Phocuswright conference in Los Angeles last week about the epiphany he had while on his break in South-east Asia – about how technology was making us, including him, shitty people and he wanted to do something different with his life [...]
Letter from LA: Get past the airport and everything’s just dandy
So first let’s get the grumpy part over with – LA is the worst airport in the world. No surprises there because almost everyone agrees with that.The immigration officer attending to me (or rather my passport) because he didn’t look at me the entire transaction had all the appearance of someone [...]
Paul Theroux: Trains, chicks and contradictions
He fired my imagination about trains. “Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.”The opening sentence to “The Great Railway Bazaar” got me on a train from Penang to Singapore, first chance I had.� [...]
WIT Speakers Corner: We need more competition in search, says Varley
The recent partnership between Yahoo Japan and Google, which will see the former adopt the juggernaut’s search engine, only exacerbates advertisers’ and users’ concerns that “there isn’t a significant competitor to Google in most global markets”.Said Matthew Varley, executive general man [...]
WIT Speakers Corner: Search in Japan just got more interesting, says travel.jp’s boss
Yahoo Japan’s decision to adopt Google’s search engine rather than following Yahoo Inc in working with Microsoft may have raised concerns in some quarters that the deal will hand the whole search market in the world’s second biggest economy to Google and stifle competition but one man thinks d [...]
WIT Speakers Corner: The dawn of a new romance in travel in Asia, says Tan
The empowerment of the customer in Asia is the biggest change that’s taken hold in the regional travel market in the last decade, said Kathleen Tan, group head of commercial for AirAsia.“There’s the empowerment to fly and there’s the empowerment to buy. Low cost airlines and the Internet hav [...]
WIT Speakers Corner: Ancillaries 101: What’s the fuss?
Much has been written about the Ancillary Revenue services offered by the airlines. It has left many people scratching their heads wondering why it is so hard to be able to charge separately for – say – a premium seat.In this first article, I will address what Ancillaries are, in a Q&A forma [...]
