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...

What happens when as an eight-year-old, you are moved from Okinawa to Indiana, two more contrasting places you couldn’t imagine? Well, for half-Japanese-half-American Michael Dykes, it was definitely “jarring”, but it taught him some valuable life lessons which have stood him in good stead in both his career and life. The Vice President, Market Management of Asia-Pacific for Expedia Group said growing up on a farm in rural America taught him self-sufficiency as well as an appreciation for...

After 15 years at Google's marketing and advertising division, Rob Torres recently returned to his former home at Expedia Group as Senior Vice President of Media Solutions. Like many key figures in travel and hospitality, Rob has seen the industry shift and evolve over time, with technology driving most of the change in the last couple of decades.  In this episode of Expedia Talks, we ask Rob about the lessons he has collected and curated over the years to help him prepare for the future of...

Technology has come a long way in the last 20 years and Expedia has always evolved its tech platforms to stay on the forefront of change. Now, travel and hospitality are at an inflection point driven by decentralised tech like Generative AI. As the Senior Vice President of Product & Technology at Expedia Group, how does Karen Bolda and her team stay on top of all these trends? And how do tech-centric providers sift through the hype without getting distracted by the 'next big thing' that...

As a company, Expedia Group is no stranger to change - the company has been through many shifts in the travel and hospitality industry, from technological booms to slumps in the global economy, to the current AI revolution amidst a worldwide recovery phase. Similarly, two travel veterans, Greg Schulze, SVP of Strategic Travel Partners and Hari Nair, SVP and General Manager, Lodging Marketplace, are no strangers to transformations in the industry either. In this episode of Expedia Talks, we...

Expedia Group rolled out a few partnerships recently – SoFi, Mastercard, and WalmartPlusTravel.com. By enabling giant retailers like these, do they risk losing business on the B2C side of things? Why would consumers continue to use Expedia’s brands if they have other channels they can book on and have the same experience? And lastly, what does it take to form lasting partnerships in today's travel and hospitality scene? On the first episode of Expedia Talks, a special series powered by...

Top Of The WiT is a grab of the trendiest news in travel, tech and Asia - all condensed into a nugget-sized podcast.  In this episode, we're gearing up for WiT's annual flagship event, WiT Singapore. Themed 'The Human Revolution, this year's event gathers the brightest minds and most influential voices in the Asia Pacific travel scene to discuss and debate the rapidly growing role of Artificial Intelligence in travel and hospitality.  We also chat about interesting news and interviews from...

Top Of The WiT is a grab of the trendiest news in travel, tech and Asia - all condensed into a nugget-sized podcast.  In this episode, we're joined by optimists, experimentalists, and innovators Dawn Jeremiah (GoCity), Chan Chee Chong (GlobalTix), and Jason Chan (Cinewav) to discuss the return of indie travel and their key takeaways from WiT Indie 2023, which took place in Penang after a 3-year no-go. After producing and screening content made with AI tools, what does Jason, a filmmaker,...

In this episode, we speak to Ross Veitch, Chief Executive & Co-founder, Wego about adventures past and present, including those before the inception of Wego as a company.  Last year at WiT Singapore, Ross made a number of bold predictions about the future of travel, technology, and the Artificial Intelligence revolution. Trust us, you'll be surprised at how many he got right. Has personalisation happened in the travel scene yet? Ross thinks we have a ways to go before true...

Top Of The WiT is a grab of the trendiest news that happened this week in travel, tech and Asia - all condensed into a quick-and-easy nugget-sized podcast.  In this episode, listen to Juliana Kua's (Assistant Chief Executive, International Group, Singapore Tourism Board) take on the online travel surge in China and her tips about tapping into India, which is now the world’s most populous country.  With the shifting travel scene comes an evolving startup space - Juliana gets insightful...