Southeast Asia slows, Pakistan grows as top destination for MENA travellers
Online travel marketplace, Wego, recently unveiled its analysis of global travel trends for the fourth quarter of 2023. Through data gathered from millions of flight searches and bookings, Wego has highlighted the preferred destinations for travellers from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) reg [...]
Hotels leverage dynamic pricing and personalisation as tug of war with OTAs intensifies
The competitive landscape between online travel agents (OTAs) and hotels is heating up as per the latest insights from SHR Group's Hotel Industry Trends Report 2024. This report, based on analysis from over 2,000 international hotels leveraging SHR Group channels, sheds light on emerging trends that [...]
Seeking human advice on travel in the age of AI
Globetrotter who visited every country by age 25 joins Skyscanner as a travel ambassador and has some tips for us
“The best travel advice I’ve received from someone else would be to always carry a copy of your passport/visa with you during your travel, and to carry some passport sized photos wi [...]
Singapore ends 2023 on a high but concerns loom over costs and demand
STB forecasts 15-16m arrivals in 2024, short of 2019’s 19m
There’s much reason to celebrate within Singapore’s tourism industry as Lunar New Year approaches on Febuary 10. The destination saw a 115% increase in the number of visitors last year, from 6.3m in 2022 to 13.6m in 2023, which fell [...]
Letter from Bangkok: Weaving Sookjai (happiness) into an organic tourism experience
TOCA to link carbon credits calculations to hotels' “green practices”
The day I landed in Bangkok, social media had literally gone wild with the video of the woman driving in an open-top Bentley with a chained lion in the backseat.
For those of us familiar with Thailand, this is one of those [...]
Schiphol app curbs flight stress. Hilton ready to chat. Visa waiver ignites travel surge. More.
Your watch is your flight buddy
Amsterdam Schiphol Airport has created an app for Apple Watch that uses AI and motion sensors to give travellers up-to-date information about their flights. The app tells users when their flight is leaving or arriving, which gate to go to, and provides status updates [...]
WiT Podcast: Customer love to planet love; practise what you preach
This is Episode 2 of the Customer Love series. Listen to Episode 1 here.
In the middle of this episode, “From Customer Love to Planet Love”, Eric Ricaurte, CEO of Greenview burst (nearly) into song, reciting the lyrics of Barry White’s Practise What You Preach – “You say there's a lesso [...]
Phocuswright, WiT to launch Middle East travel tech conference in Dubai, May 3
Northstar Travel Group’s two leading travel tech platforms, Phocuswright and WiT, are joining forces to launch a Middle East conference in Dubai on May 3.
Scheduled to be held pre-Arabian Travel Market week, the one-day conference, at Grand Movenpick Media City, will blend the best of Phocuswri [...]
Mistletoe grows; new αFund seeks to raise $300m-$400m for positive impact investments
Fund started by Taizo Son and Atsushi Tarai buys SoftBank Ventures, aims to build ecosystem of “like-minded investors and founders”
After eight years of running the global seed stage innovation driven impact vehicle, Mistletoe, as a family fund, co-founders Atsushi Taira and Taizo Son are rea [...]
Is this the moment for audio tours? Viator’s Dines not prepared to call it yet
Accelerate 2.0 to bring more tour operators onboard marketplace; Asia sees “enthusiastic bounceback”
Before she joined Tripadvisor in 2018, Sarah Dines, Chief Commercial Officer of Viator, spent most of her career in audio guide, including as CEO of Discovery Channel’s Antenna International [...]
