Clik here to view.
Letter from Sydney: Chatbots are hot but they are no silver bullet
Travelport Live in Sydney kicked off with two female “robot” dancers wearing suits that were more lit up than a Christmas tree, their robot-like movements a hint of where the discussions at the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Letter from Kuching: Lessons for small earthlings in second cities
Just returned from Kuching and on the AirAsia flight to Singapore, I was reflecting on how the combination of low cost airlines and the web, specifically social media, has changed the fortunes and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hotel distribution like Whack A Mole game: Expedia’s de Schepper on taking on...
When you sign up to work in online travel, you know you are never going to have a quiet moment. This is what Mieke de Schepper, who joined Expedia to manage hotel relationships in Asia Pacific from a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Expedia’s US$350m investment in Traveloka: ASEAN’s first travel unicorn set...
It’s finally happened – Traveloka, the Indonesian online travel agency, that’s been streaking ahead in the world’s fifth largest domestic market, has received a US$350 million minority investment from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Startups in ASEAN: Time to look to China, not US, for lessons
If there was one clear message coming out from investors in the tech space at the TechSauce global summit in Bangkok last week, it was – it’s time for startups in Southeast Asia to look to the US for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jetstar’s bets on digital, data 4 years ago paying off
Jayne Hrdlicka, CEO of Jetstar Group, painted a picture as sunny as the weather outside for her airline at this week’s CAPA Aviation Summit in Sydney. Opening the two-day conference, she said, “The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No goosing around for Air New Zealand as it changes the world map
You should take your business seriously but you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously, that was the key message from Christopher Luxon, CEO Air New Zealand, as he shared how the 77-year-old airline had...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On the Rocks, Hoshino talks ryokans, minpaku and recognition
I suppose when you work in travel, you shouldn’t be surprised who you run into so when I heard that Hoshino Resorts was having a media lunch in Sydney the week I happened to be in town, I gatecrashed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Letter from Sydney: Winter’s coming, a battle of Amazonic proportions is looming
Winter in Sydney is very different from the winter portrayed in the Game of Thrones television series but I get the feeling that the competition for online consumers is going to get as brutal and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
People and culture, the one thing you can’t copy, and here’s how Sabine...
Yeoh Siew Hoon catches up with the power woman who runs people and culture at Amadeus IT Group, Sabine Hansen Peck, and talks Asia, diversity, gamification, and even animals and flying. If she wasn’t...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Data the secret sauce behind destination marketing – then it’s what you do...
For Andrew van der Feltz, a 21-year-veteran in destination marketing, his “aha” moment came when he joined Expedia Media Solutions two years ago and he saw the data, as it were. “Getting access to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How “Passion Made Possible” was made possible: The story of the new SG...
A new unified brand for SG was rolled out this evening. “Passion Made Possible” is the combined rallying cry of the Singapore Tourism Board and the Economic Development Board. Here’s the story of how...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The day when Hurricane Dara lashed travel – imagine what he could do with...
Just as Hurricane Harvey was battering Texas and severe tropical storm Pahkar was lashing Hong Kong over the weekend, another kind of storm was being unleashed in the tech and travel industry– the news...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Skyscanner’s Gareth Williams on how its bet on Asia led to its big win, being...
The first thing Gareth Williams, CEO & co-founder of Skyscanner, says to me with a grin when I caught up with him yesterday evening was, “I deny all rumours that I was offered the Uber job.”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Okerstrom steps into Khosrowshahi’s “big” shoes in transition likened to...
In a transition described by chairman Barry Diller “as natural as water flowing down a snow-packed mountain”, Mark Okerstrom, executive vice president of operations and chief financial officer, has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
From Scottish herring to unicorn: 12 lessons from Gareth Williams’ Skyscanner...
Gareth Williams and his two co-founders, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes, built the first prototype for Skyscanner in 2001/2002 in the docks area of Edinburgh and launched it in 2003. That means almost a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Writing about failures taught him, “be a person of character, not a personality”
My first question to Vincent Ng, the co-author of “Why You Should Fail”, was, of course, “have you failed?” To which his eyes lit up with glee and he said, “Yes.” “I’ve been doing entrepreneur things...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fried scorpion may not be his thing but helping travellers have better...
Steve Kaufer, CEO & founder of TripAdvisor, could hardly remember what he ate for dinner the evening before. “It was something interesting,” he said. I was curious because he kept talking about how...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Post-restructure, IHG’s Barr says it’s about brand, scale and tech as it...
It was the Friday of the 10th Formula 1 weekend in Singapore. One assumes all visitors coming to town that weekend are here for the race but no, not the new group CEO of Intercontinental Hotels Group,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Huge incumbents in travel are hard to dislodge but Bao Bean sees...
William Bao Bean, general partner at SOSV, named the world’s most active seed investor by TechCrunch Crunchbase, has his eye on travel but is aware that the potential for new technology to really...
View Article