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 give “a more realistic and focused approach” to building businesses in the region. Disclaimer: This podcast was created with Google's AI platform, NotebookLM. These voices are completely AI-generated.

“When you live in it, you don’t see it.”My friend said this with a wry smile as she navigated the busy streets of Ho Chi Minh City. I sat beside her, wide-eyed, taking in the sweeping changes of a city I hadn't seen since 2018. I was gobsmacked by the transformation – the brand new bridges, highways, skyscrapers – and I couldn’t help exclaiming and repeating myself everytime we turned a corner into a new district, “Wow, it’s changed so much.” Amused, she said, “I suppose you notice it...

Full disclosure - this is not a "real" podcast in the traditional sense of the word. Google has a new Artificial Intelligence tool called Notebook LM that allows users to feed it any type of written data, which it will then turn into a podcast. The voices you hear are completely generated by Notebook's language models.  We decided to experiment with the tool by showing it a recently article we posted on our website featuring Kerry Healy, chief commercial officer, Middle East, Africa, Turkey...

Anti-ageing, as a branch of medicine, has been around a long time. Today, the term anti-ageing is not used much anymore because it suggests that ageing is a process we fight against. Today, the terms, wellness, longevity, regenerative, are preferred because, well, the experts say we should embrace it actively and proactively. It’s definitely a mega, global trend among the wealthy who have more to lose... literally. Retreats like RAKxa, a joint venture between VitalLife, the preventive...

Last week, I entered Singapore sans passport. I had arrived on a flight from Bangkok and at the immigration gates, when I wanted to put my passport on the scanner, I was told, “No need already. Just look at camera.” That’s Singapore for you, clockwork efficiency. It made me think that this is true personalisation – my personal identity verified, recognised and cleared – and it makes my life easier as a traveller.

They put their own money into the business, one of them selling his house. Together, they scraped together $1m. By 2018, their tours and activities platform was valued at around $1b, and the business continues to grow. It’s hard to say who’s more surprised by the achievement – Ethan Lin (CEO) or Eric Gnock Fah (President) or perhaps their parents whom they talk about openly – but one thing is clear, these two co-founders are firm friends and have each other’s backs. It’s uncanny how well...

AI, it seems, is creeping into everything. In a little café in a local neighbourhood in Penang, far from the madding tourist crowd, the young entrepreneurs running it offer “AI Fried Char Koay Teow”.

On this episode, Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) ponders on a new-ish trend that's being called “theme travel”. New-ish because it used to be called special interest travel - people who travelled for specific interests. In this “Next Generation”, let’s call this tribe, “Themers”. This includes runners who travel for marathons, music fans who go from festival to festival, and event-driven folks who fly across continents for experiences.  This trend somewhat overlaps or intersects with the...

This week, Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) reflects on her recent stay in the tranquil village of Sheepstor, West Dartmoor, which also has a surprising connection to Sarawak, Malaysia. The Burrator Cottages, on the estate once owned by Sir James Brooke, the first Rajah of Sarawak, provides an idyllic retreat for travellers seeking a truly authentic experience.

Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) is back in Shanghai for the first time since 2019, for Trip.com's global partner conference, Envision 2024. Experiencing first-hand the resurgence of China's tourism and hospitality scene, Siew Hoon highlights the cities eagerness to embrace tech, it's robust art scene and everything a revitalised Trip.com is doing to cater to fresh demographics. 

Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) returns to the Middle East for the first time since 2019 for WiT Phocuswright Middle East 2024. But what she experiences there upon landing serves as both culture shock and eye-opener to the progress the region has supercharged itself with in the last few years. Yes, there are lots of expected – the masses of cranes; the construction going on everywhere you look; the traffic in Riyadh – but underneath all that, the unexpected open-ness, the overwhelming warmth of...

While standing in a long queue at the café at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre, wondering why it doesn’t have a robotic barista because the human ones were looking rather frazzled, Siew Hoon spotted a man wearing a delegate badge that says “Black Hat Asia”. Intrigued because she associated Black Hat with hackers (Google says “the term black hat has been used to differentiate criminal hackers from white hat and gray hat hackers”) and because she has always wanted to meet a real-life...

Author and travel writer Paul Theroux had a very simple way of describing people who travel. He divided them into tourist and traveller, saying, “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travellers don’t know where they’re going.” Of course, he said this, way before social media turned travel into a mass team sport. One wonders what the scribe, who by the way has just published a new book “Burma Sahib”, would think of the many jargons we in the travel industry have come up with in recent...

This final episode of “Customer Love” fittingly covers tours and activities – the things travellers do in-destination. It’s the most exciting part of travel and it’s coming online at great speed, thanks to companies such as Booking.com which started building out their “connected trip” in 2019 and Klook which has been building up the sector in Asia Pacific for the past nine years. We speak to two product chiefs, Austin Sheppard, Senior Vice President of Booking.com’s Trips Business Unit, and...

It's news to no one that the words 'pain' and 'suffering' have negative connotations, for obvious reasons. However, many modern thinkers believe that these experiences are often intertwined with success and happiness.  Of course, for those of us in Asia, these teachings and sayings aren't new. In fact, they're ingrained in many cultures and religious beliefs in the region.  Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) doesn't think this “pain and suffering” message is new to entrepreneurs as well. During Web...

Aviation veteran and consultant Peter Harbison has many accolades - founder of CAPA, aviation lawyer and commentator, and of course, author. His new book, 'Alan Joyce and Qantas: The Trials and Transformation of an Australian Icon' contains all the ingredients of a corporate thriller, filled with constant shocks to the system and boardroom drama.  But despite all the corporate chaos, Peter's book tells a deeply human story - of a man at the peak of a monumental industry, navigating arguably...

On this episode of WiT Stories, Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) chimes in from beautiful Cape Town, South Africa - the home and host of this year's WiT Africa.  The WiT community has gathered at Innovation City, where we are holding our first WiT Africa on 14-15 March. A heritage building that now houses Cape Town’s most vibrant and diverse community of startups, investors and corporates, it’s brimming with ideas and buzzing with passion. The humans gathered in this space all want to make an...

Travelling is a highly physical activity – those long walks to the gates and immigration, those long queues – not easy when you are not fully mobile. Especially for the elderly - the requests for assistance pre-flight, the waits at check-in for assistance, the arrival process – and the inevitable conclusion that one day it will happen to all of us. For Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT), seeing life through her mother’s eyes made her highly cognizant of the ageing societies of Asia. According to the...

As a student, Adrienne Enggist, Senior Director of Product, Customer Experience and Platforms for Booking.com, had an epiphany, not a hallucination, when she listened to Timothy O’Leary, the late American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. He wasn’t talking about acid but of the future, she said. ““He asked us to imagine a future that’s less than 20 years away, where you can talk to anybody in the world instantly in real time without paying for long...

Taylor Swift has arrived in Singapore for the highly anticipated Eras Tour, which she'll perform for six nights over two weeks. Let’s face it, pop stars are good for business. More than 300,000 tickets have been sold for the concerts in Singapore, with a large number of fans travelling in from Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. All round, it’s been a good news week for travel and tourism, with the top travel companies all reporting healthy fourth quarter 2023 and full year 2024...

Imagine. Fifteen years ago, there was no alternative accommodation category on Booking.com. Today, there are 7.2m short term rental listings and in its Q3 2023 earnings, this sector grew the fastest, 24% year over year, making it about 33% of all bookings. And if you want to be part of this “New Wave of Customer Love”, Nuno Guerreiro, Regional Director South APAC and Chains, Booking.com, says you have to choose to be either green and growing, or ripe and rotting.  The answer is a no...

There’s certainly a lot of practices travel suppliers have to put in place to fulfil and deliver on its responsibility to build a more sustainable industry, and everyone, from the grassroots to giants, must do their part. Danielle D’Silva, Head of Sustainability, Booking.com and Eric Ricaurte, CEO of Greenview, are certainly trying to do their part in their centrestage roles in travel’s delicate and complicated dance with sustainability. It’s interesting the different paths they have each...

What does 'customer love' mean in 2024? For the first time since 2019, travel companies are unanchoring themselves to the events of the last 3 years and embracing the freedom, opportunities, and challenges that come with this new travel landscape. In the pilot episode of our new series, Customer Love, Yeoh Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) speaks to her co-host for all upcoming episodes, Laura Houldsworth (Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Booking.com), about travel trends to look forward to this...

Top Of The WiT is a grab of the trendiest news in travel, tech and Asia - all condensed into a nugget-sized podcast.  For the last couple of weeks, we've featured our year-end series, Goodbye 2023, Hello 2024 on the WiT website, showcasing global travel leaders nutshelling 2023 while anticipating 2024. Many were positive about the last 12 months and are looking forward to 2024, while a few are more trepeditious due to shaky socio-economic conditions worldwide.  In this episode, Siew Hoon...