Recruit wants to liberate small businesses to unleash ‘omotenashi’ globally
More than 50 years ago, in 1960 precisely, the founders of Recruit Holdings saw an opportunity to match students with jobs and thus started the company’s magazine business.
In the 1990s, with the rise of the Internet, the company began developing information services for the new media a [...]
Inbound fillip for Japan, online travel boom for South Korea – WIT Japan opens May 16
Usually at this time of the year, I’d be fretting about having to get a visa to travel to Japan – the forms to fill, the documents I must secure, the approval process …
You cannot imagine what a liberating feeling it is that I no longer have to go through the process since visa regula [...]
The magic sauce of content creation – keep it you and make it about your audience
(The WIT Next Content panel - from left, Steve Lai, Jacylnn Seah, Koay Yi Ling, Luke Clark and Turochas Fuad)
I remember the first time I saw Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border. This massive body of water just falling over the edge of the cliffs, splashing everywhere an [...]
As competition heats up in Indonesia, disruption could just be around the corner
It’s interesting how the online travel market in Indonesia is evolving. One thing’s for sure, the competition has intensified since the first WIT Indonesia last year – you could even say it’s gotten vicious, as more players enter the market and compete not only for customers but staff [...]
Letter from WIT Indonesia: Welcome to Day 1 of the Internet and be a Calculated Mad Man
As far as Oliver Hua (right), managing director of booking.com, Asia Pacific, is concerned, we are just at “Day 1 of the Internet” in terms of the potential of online travel in the region.
In his first appearance at a travel conference, the former eBay executive, who joined Planet Earth [...]
As with Middle East, youths will drive change in Indonesia – are you ready?
Getting rather excited about our second WIT Indonesia coming up in Jakarta (left) next Thursday – as I do my homework for it, I am struck by the similarities between what’s happening in the Middle East and this archipelago (I love how that word just rolls off the tongue).
It’s easy to [...]
Fresh, visceral take on an old theme – food, sex and intimacy intertwined
Shame opens with the protagonist Brandon (Michael Fassbender) lying in bed half-naked with one hand under the sheets. Immediately, one of those faux Confucius sayings came to mind, “Man who goes to bed with hard problem, wakes up with solution in hand.”
After reading some reviews on Sha [...]
Not just all about ME but all about Mobile as Dubai gets Smart
I am writing this in my room at Lanson Place overlooking what may not be a very attractive view but yet what is to me quintessentially Hong Kong. Foggy morning, tall narrow buildings packed next to each other like sardines, the constant hum of a city that never sleeps.
This is the weekend i [...]
Letter from Dubai: An amazing first day as we count down to WIT Middle East
It’s becoming a familiar journey – my third visit to Dubai in three months. It’s one of those places that’s closer in my mind than it really is. At seven-and-a-half hours, it’s actually closer to Europe than it is to Singapore.
It’s a beautiful sunset as we land – lovely shade [...]
Letter from Cardiff: A tale of flowers, food, fact and fiction
It’s early March and the daffodils are out. Narcissus flowers are blooming (left). This time of the year usually, the flowers are still hiding. But the last weekend I spent in Cardiff, it felt that spring had sprung.
Not too soon though for the poor folks in the British Isles – there’ve b [...]
