Why empathy, not argument, is Airbnb’s approach to short-term rental regulation
Mich Goh on listening her way through hostile hearings, and what governments across APAC actually want when they talk about short-term rentals
Every APAC market wants something different from tourism, and that's the challenge Mich Goh (Director of Public Policy, APAC, Airbnb) has built her career a [...]
Would you relocate for a job if your pet couldn’t come with you?
The $2.4 billion reason companies are rethinking mobility, employee care and relocation packages in a holistic way.
For a growing number of employees, the answer to the question above is ‘no’. As companies compete for specialist talent across Asia-Pacific and beyond, one of the biggest sticking [...]
Guardians of place: Lee Ann Muntz on culturalising commerce, not commercialising culture
A couple of months before my coffee chat with Lee Ann Muntz, a board member of the Māori Tourism Board, a line she had said in the Zoom call had stuck with me. “We don’t commercialise culture. We culturalise commerce.”
I wanted to get deeper into that during our conversation. But first, I wa [...]
Paul Scurrah on timing and building the world’s happiest airline
When it comes to timing, Paul Scurrah, CEO of Fiji Airways, hasn’t quite got it right. In fact, he started his coffee chat in WiT Queenstown with an apology.
“I feel like I should apologise,” Paul Scurrah said. “I was appointed CEO in Australia in March 2019, and less than a year later CO [...]
Full cycle: Hermione Joye on 12 years in Asia travel
In the Chinese calendar, 12 years is a full cycle – every animal has had its turn, and you’re back where you started. Well, Hermione Joye, who has just stepped down as Google’s Head of Travel, APAC, has spent exactly a dozen years in the region and as someone born in the Year of the Rat, she l [...]
Can Japan leap beyond “the Italy of Asia” in the AI era?
Why quiet power may become Japan’s greatest competitive advantage
The travel industry is undergoing its biggest transformation since the rise of the internet.
The catalyst, of course, is generative AI.
Yet the most thought-provoking question I took away from WiT Japan 2026 wasn’t about AI [...]
The Sound of Quiet: Why the tourism ecosystem needs silence
"When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light, That split the night,
And touched the sound of silence."
~ Paul Simon
Let’s be honest: most of us in the travel industry spend our lives building infrastructure for the crowd. We map out route expansions, track footfall events, optimi [...]
Agoda’s Tim Hughes on online travel’s broken promise and AI’s “Reddit” dilemma
Twenty-five years and, by his own count, five completely different versions of Agoda later, Agoda’s Timothy Hughes sat down at WiT Queenstown to talk about why online travel never quite delivered on its oldest promise, and why the fix for AI’s travel-advice problem might be sitting in a small co [...]
The next transformation: Inside Ascott’s agentic AI leap of faith
Chief Commercial Officer Tan Bee Leng on the mindset shift that took the company from owner to operator – and the one she says is even bigger
Ask Tan Bee Leng, chief commercial officer of Ascott, what her immediate challenge is and her answer was not what I had expected.
“Parity,” she says [...]
The reluctant author who sets himself on fire, again and again
New book, new AI-native app, new home – ixigo’s Rajnish Kumar on the next fire trial for travel
Rajnish Kumar didn’t want to write a book. In fact, for eight years, he actively resisted one, he told me when we met over coffee in Singapore, his new home after moving here from Malaga. (We’ll [...]
