Zoomers bloom. Alipay+ goes local. Robotaxi wars heat up. More.
Zoomers on the move in China
China Trading Desk’s latest 15,000-person report shows the continued growth in Chinese outbound travel volumes and that Chinese tourists are increasingly opting for more luxurious accommodations and longer trips booked later and later.
According to China Trading De [...]
Asian mass-affluent travellers expected to invest in long-haul trips, with multiple destination stops
Expedia Group unveiled its study highlighting the preferences of the growing Asian middle class, expected to reach 3.5 billion people and make up two-thirds of the world’s middle class by 2030. The study provides travel industry professionals with the context to better serve the increasing number [...]
Where the leap comes – AI moves outside
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne gets excited about an experimental project called I-XRAY which removes the screen and could potentially change the human-machine interface like nothing we’ve yet seen. He also examines its possible applications for society and travel and how to mitigate privacy concerns.
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The only way to compete, get efficient and productive, says Atlas’ Mary Li
Low cost flight startup develops five digital employees; meet Florence, its newest customer care agent
As a startup operating in the highly competitive and volatile world of third party low cost flight distribution, Atlas’ founder Mary Li believes the optimum way to compete is by using tech to be [...]
A thaw in the airline-GDS relationship is happening
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne reports on his key observations made at the recent T2RL Engage conference in London.
That great chill between airlines and the GDSes is beginning to see a softening and a thaw in the relationships. Perhaps global warming can have some positive impact.
That’s th [...]
South-east Asia: Reality vs hype
Lightspeed report, from Gojek co-founder, aims at resetting expectations of founders and investors
Lightspeed Venture Partners, the multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends, has released a report on “South-east Asia: Resetting Expectations”, to [...]
HalalTrip’s Saudi ambitions in-sync with Kingdom’s Vision 2030 transformation
Singapore-based Muslim travel specialist aims to promote Saudi beyond Hajj and Umrah
The expansion of multi-layered tourist visas and a national drive to diversify the economy has positioned Saudi Arabia as a rising destination for both domestic and international tourists. Couple that with its sign [...]
AI in the air. Toyota backs air taxis. A boost for Podcasters. Switchless, pay less. More
This is your Captain AI speaking
Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines has launched a multilingual project allowing flights to Spanish, Arabic, and Russian-speaking countries to feature AI-generated announcements in the respective local language, following the English version.
The Pegasus Innovation Lab, [...]
A brief history of online travel, 1999-2024, visualised
Inspired by Hans Rosling’s “200 years in 4 minutes”, where the late Swedish stats guru and public educator visualised the story of the world, using 120,000 numbers, Wego’s vice president, strategy and planning, Nedyalko Terziev, has put together this visualisation telling the story of online [...]
These podcasters aren’t real: Our AI experiment with Google’s Notebook LM
Google's new AI tool, NotebookLM, has the tech world buzzing for good reason. Users of the platform can feed it with any sort of raw data in the form of a text document or PDF - from a simple short stories to staggering reports on complicated subjects - and NotebookLM will turn it into a podcast.
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