The first time Morten Lund went bankrupt was when he was 21 years old. He remembers cycling home from the bank. “I was so ashamed and could look no one in the eye.”

That however did not stop the serial entrepreneur from taking more risks. Saying that at least seven out of 10 start-ups fail and that it takes nerves and it takes a toll on your mental health, Lund, who opened the WITovation Entrepreneur Bootcamp this morning, confessed to being a serial entrepreneur.

Risk is key, he said. Do not be afraid to lose. But you learn after every failure. After his last bankruptcy – in which he went from 50 million Euros in the bank to being 20 million in debt after investing in a newspaper – he realised he needed to focus.

He used to invest in anything up to 80 companies but now he only has two. “I had no clue what some of the companies were about and but when I got a telephone call, I wouldn’t know the people nor the problems.”

Today, he’s in travel – he is the CEO of Everbread, the people behind the new Haystack search engine – and in invoicing. “I like to change industries,” he said. He’s invested in industries from music to landmine detection.

Beyond passion, entrepreneurs need stamina. “Business can burn you out.”

His most quotable quotes:

“There is a fine line between vision and hallucination.”

“Network is key.” But beware that networking doesn’t end up being a time killer, as you can get absorbed in the wrong direction. “There is so much distraction.”

“The problem with timing is you can’t time it.”

“In Scandinavia, people have forgotten how to work far, they are too far from the rice fields.”

“Look for good people. Good people can succeed with a bad idea. Bad people can’t succeed with the best idea.”

“Be proud of being in this region but be afraid of the Chinese – they will eat you like sushi.”

“Start-ups need help, and money. But money can’t guarantee success.”

“Money should come from sales, not from continuous stream of investments. This is an easy thing to forget because on the web, everything is free.”

“Don’t design your business to be super disruptive.”

“Don’t forget the basics of business.”

“Don’t over strategise – it’s surprisingly simple what works. Often, it’s the first right turn.”

“I love being in love – people in love fingerfeed each other.”

“Start movements – build communities.”

“It’s all your fault – nobody else is to blame.”

“Filter it (advice), generate your own filters, find your own path.”

* Below, video interview with Morten Lund at Web In Travel



Coffee with Morten Lund, ‘Archangel’ investor & CEO, Everbread from WebInTravel on Vimeo.

I am exhausted but elated. Two days of Web In Travel are over and this morning, we continue with WIT Ideas Lab at ITB Asia.

The last two days have seen personalities shine and points of view emerge – this is the intent behind WIT. Our programming is crafted to allow people to shine and points of views to emerge, that will set the agenda and purpose for the travel space in the year ahead.

And they did. You can see that in all the content that’s been generated by our hardworking team of bloggers and Twitterers – they’ve kept the conversation alive off stage and in the virtual world.

But the reason I am most elated is last night, we raised S$15,000 for children in Myanmar at an auction we held at the Circos Brand Karma party.

I want to thank everyone who made this happen – from Martin Symes of Wego who did such a sterling job in getting the bidding going and raising the bar to Morris Sim and his team at Circos Brand Karma for matching the winning bid, from Kent Zhu of Shangri-La who kept the bids climbing with free stays at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts; and WORLDHOTELS, Indigo Pearl and Small Luxury Hotels of the World who also donated prizes for the bidders.

I also want to thank Don Birch, Timothy O’Neil Dunne and Ric Leutwyler of Pegasus Solutions who contributed towards the bid amount.

In the end, the two paintings created by our artist Alpana Ahuja, which captured the theme of “Love of Travel and The Child In Me”, were bought by Giovanni Angelini of Angelini Hospitality.

O’Neil Dunne of T2 Impact then went round and collected more donations from guests at the party – so by the time I left the party, I had lost count of the collection.

It was an appropriate note to end WIT on. For the last two days, we talked about how the industry was changing and what we needed to do to ride the latest wave of changing customer behaviour.

• Create content that is rich, contextual, timely and relevant. Audio visual is the new grammar and literacy will be redefined in the new world.

• Great content is king – it builds trust and that’s the key to unlocking the new customers

• Creativity is everything – and we need to hire creative people at all fronts, from marketing to customer service. Expectations have been raised through social media – customers know before they arrive.

• Internet is like the toilet; hotels should no longer charge for wifi – a new generation requires new thinking. Likewise with conference venues.

• Smart phones have changed everything – it’s allowing delivery of contextual, personal and timely information; it’s enabling augmented reality to change user experience of destinations; it’s allowing customers to book at the last minute (within 24 days). And the magic number to watch – AirAsia, the leader in ecommerce in Asia, expects 20% of bookings to come from mobile in the next 18 months.

• The Web and the Internet favour the small and the independents – it’s about fast vs slow, not big vs small

• Japan – forget the men, go for the women. Mobile’s big in Japan – 20% of domestic flights are booked on mobile and 20% of search on travel.jp is through mobile. Challenge is getting the young Japanese to travel – 30% said they have not travelled in last 12 months; they prefer video gaming.

• GDS distribution for airlines will become a significantly lower percentage of sales as new technology enables customers to search better and directly for air fares

But even as the travel landscape changes in Asia, one constant remains. Asia may be becoming more developed, and producing more and more millionaires, but there is a whole swathe of children in our region who do not have access to education for social and economic reasons.

NAG is a registered NGO in Myanmar and part of its mission is to help needy children in the country by building schools and libraries. Hopefully, the $15,000 we raised last night will help spread the learning we did at WIT to the children of Myanmar.

From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank everyone for their generosity in enabling this to happen.

  From the bustle of Guangzhou to the factory town of Dongguan, the beautiful beaches of Sanya to the capital of the country, Chinese males overwhelmingly remain the major smokestacks of the traveling pack, and therefore more likely to request a smoking room. To many businessmen out there, this may not come as a surprise as gentlemen naturally need a cigarette to go along with their grain liquor. Indeed, men are also definitively more likely to order alcohol at the hotel restaurant. Beer and Maotai are house favorites.

However, don’t think that all their debauchery means a bigger mess in the morning. Much of the Pullman staff also report that the booze and cigarettes doesn’t necessarily mean that men are harder to pick up after. In fact, the general time it takes to tidy up after male and female guests are purportedly similar, despite ash and alcohol. You’d think the fact that women are more likely to take the hotel shampoo, toothbrushes, tea bags and other amenities would make it easier to clean up after them.

To make up for being left out of the above manly consumption, it seems more common for women hotel-goers to indulge their sweet tooth … and inner health guru. Pullman staff say that women, both foreign and Chinese, are much more likely to specially order health drinks and organic foods, but are willing to counteract their healthful ways with a sweet treat after a meal. As the Buddha says, it’s all about balance. 

But the reported female penchant for specialty indulgences doesn’t translate to their demands at the front desk. In fact, most of the Pullmans throughout China point a finger at their male guest when asked who is the most demanding. Men apparently complain the most, make the most demanding requests and request more services from the concierge. They want special placement of their slippers. They grumble about a noisy lobby during holiday season. They want a bidet in their bathroom…and if there is none, they convert the toilet themselves. Ladies, is this a surprise or just par for the course?

Gender Reunified

Men aren’t apparently all bad though, and are doing their best to reunify the sexes. In many Pullmans, romantic packages are on the rise and hanky-panky isn’t always kept to the bedroom.

It’s the fine fellows in China who are generally the ones to put in a request for a romantic hotel package. They also sometimes use the hotel as a place to seduce, propose or patch things up with a significant other. This certainly keeps the Pullman staff on their toes. One guest at Pullman Beijing West Wanda once put in a call to concierge at midnight, requesting a rose, so he could propose to a girlfriend (a rose was retrieved from a wedding reception, the girl reportedly said yes.) Another guest at the Pullman Shanghai Skyway got in a major tiff with his wife, and requested someone else from the hotel (a more understanding woman) to come upstairs and comfort her.

Even more surprising are the encounters with couples so enamored of each other’s company, they can’t quite make it to their room. Staff stumbles over them everywhere. Patio cafés, restaurants and hotel bars are popular spots. Obviously, Pullman Sanya Yalong Bay see’s couples smooching out on the beach under the stars. But when maids come across couples having it out in their closets and the public toilets in Pullman Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, it’s more difficult to justify. What do you say to a couple snuggled in between your mop and your bucket? “Excuse me, can I get to that?”

 Lessons Learned 

While the survey does uncover some of the Pullman guest’s more hilarious gaffes, it’s also important to remember that the purpose of this survey is to learn about the Pullman guest’s demands and needs, so they can better serve the customer. What happens if a person needs a doctor urgently? Does the buffet run out too early? Do guests have enough options? Do they actually use the hotel swimming pool? What do you do when the guest who has ordered room service is passed out drunk in his underwear on the bed?

It is the hotel staffer’s duty to do everything in their power to ensure that a guest is comfortable, even if it means dealing with some off the cuff and awkward situations. We especially tip our hat to the check-in staff at Pullman Beijing South who was able to answer with a straight face when an irate guest asked him upon arrival – “Am I in Beijing?”

I was booked into the Centara Grand – my third visit to this hotel, same time every year for the same event, the Asia For Asia Summit, a one-day workshop on the meetings industry.

Each time, I am asked to fill in the guest registration form. Which I do dutifully. The staff are so earnest about it I don’t wish to make life difficult for them.

Driving up to the hotel, I saw what used to be the World Trade Centre shopping centre which was razed during those ugly nights when Bangkok burned.

A hoarding covers the ruins – there’s a big word on it. HOPE.

We do.

I am looking forward to a good shower – it’s been a long day. I headed straight to the airport after a day of meetings and I am feeling and looking the worse for wear.

Seeing those immaculately-groomed Singapore Girls on the flight makes me feel slightly worse but at least I know that if I got pregnant, I wouldn’t lose my job.

There’s been a lot of publicity lately about how the Singapore Girl has to quit flying after the first trimester of her pregnancy and she receives no maternity benefits unless she can secure a ground job, which is not that easy.

But change is on the way. Probably due to the publicity and feedback, the airline is now considering giving them a one-time ex-gratia payment when the baby arrives.

Feeling happy for the Singapore Girl, I arrive in Bangkok in a good mood. It got better when I was told that I was being upgraded to a deluxe suite.

The suite is a good size. Well laid-out. Big bed. Big bathroom. It’s the bath that stops me in my tracks. It’s the oddest shape bath I’ve ever seen – more like a giant wash basin.

I look for the shower. There isn’t one. That’s when I realise that basin-bath is it. Your all-in-one device. Bit like the iPad except it doesn’t do the phone thing that well.

I look for steps to get into the bath because the side is rather steep and the bottom of the bath is rather circular and could be slippery when wet. None. I think you’re meant to climb over and into and out of it in one smooth glide which you wouldn’t want to do in a sarong kebaya, pregnant or not.

This is what happens, I think, when a designer is allowed to create his dream bath and it turns into not such a good dream for operators and customers.

I do what I have to do and that night, I went to bed dreaming of Tweety Bird having a bath in his basin.

AirAsia, Asia’s leading low-cost carrier made it possible for “everyone to fly”, when it entered the market with extremely low, unbelievable fares. Now together with Malaysian giant telco, Maxis Bhd, and Swiss-based OnAir, the airline is offering in-flight calls and data.

The three companies will make an initial investment of  US$1.8 million (RM5.6 million) to set up the connectivity systems on six AirAsia aircraft by year-end.

AirAsia non-executive chairman Abdul Aziz Bakar said the airline has equipped four of its 96 fleet of A320 with GSM onboard system. It will install the system on two additional aircraft before the end of the year.

“We will see how it goes during this trial period,” said Abdul Aziz.

He added that installing the connectivity systems on board was “a very heavy investment and we really need to be sure of the results before embarking and expanding the service to the rest of our 96 aircraft in operation currently.”

Abdul Aziz said the service was expected to boost the airline’s ancillary income, which contributes about 15% of its total sales now. The airline is also looking at innovative products to increase its ancillary income to 20%.

Response from customers on the four operating aircraft was promising, he added.

Maxis chief operating officer Jean-Pascal Van Overbeke said the company is targeting 50% of mobile revenue from its non-voice operations from 36.6% currently. “This tie-up will certainly push our data revenue.”

However, AirAsia is not the first Malaysian airline to offer in-flight calls and data. National carrier Malaysia Airlines, also in cooperation with Maxis and UK-based AeroMobile Limited, has been offering voice calls, SMS, emails and GPRS services since early this year on board the Boeing 777-200 aircraft (pictured right) across Europe, Australia and the Asian region including China and Japan.. Launched earlier this year is available to Maxis post-paid customers.

While the airlines assert that in the the in-flight mobile service will enhance their clients’ travel experience and help them keep in touch with loved ones while airborne, other passengers who yearn for some peace and quiet may not agree.

Whatever, there is no stopping the march of technology and social media that is slowly but surely taking over our lives.

A US-based online luxury travel referral service is out in the market in Asia/Pacific looking for retailers who want to focus on selling luxury custom tours, and also for inbound agents and tour operators who are interested in capturing a portion of the large US luxury market.

“We are looking for tour operators who can work with American clients, to partner in South-east Asia. The key considerations to join our network are to have in-country operations, have experience selling to American clients as we need them to interface directly with the clients,” said founder of Zicasso, Brian Tan.

Founded about two and a half years ago by 47-year-old Tan when he could find “no good way to find good reliable agents for authentic trips”, Zicasso recently announced a comprehensive sales and marketing solution aimed at travel agents and retail tour operators who focus on selling luxury custom tours.

“We have been working for the last couple of years to refine our product and now we are ready with a robust system,” said Tan.

The new system gives its travel agent partners a web-based client relationship management application which manages the entire sales workflow – from the traveller’s profile to trip request, email communications, itineraries, sales status as well as alerts to follow up. Customisable response templates are also provided. Travel agents can search, monitor and track client communications with automatic reminders for follow up.

The new solution also provides a set of best practices for selling custom tours and its staff will coach partners based on real-time observations throughout the sales cycle.

Zicasso is a referral system that partners with some 150 retail agents who are “knowledgable experts” and who can create complex trips for luxury travelers who value their time, and whose average spend on a tour booking, minus air fares, is US$8,000.

Zicasso attracts luxury travelers to its site which presents them an interactive way of sourcing for a customized travel itinerary that will result in an “authentic travel experience”, explained Tan. Using matching engines, leads are matched with suitable tour operators who then communicate with the potential customer via email or phone calls to fulfill the request.

Potential customers will have a chance to state what they activities looking for, the services they need, dates of travel, what their budgets are. They can also put in additional comments about their requests – whether it be a less strenuous itinerary, particular types of foods, etc.

In its young life, Zicasso has already been selected as one of the “Best Travel Websites of 2010” by Travel + Leisure magazine. It has also been featured in Wall Street Journal and New York Times in the US.

Working out of the Silicon Valley, the team of 10 has mostly technology backgrounds but are “passionate travellers”. The privately-held company is “cash-flow positive” and not in a hurry to raise additional funding, although Tan admits that he is “looking at different opportunities that will come up”.

“Eventually, being part of a bigger company would be ideal. It would make sense to do that, but not at this point. As a small, independent operation, we are able to work in a fast mode. Maybe in a few years, we will consider it,” said Tan.

Thus far, most of the innovation has taken in the booking space but now the most exciting things are happening in research and pre and post-trips, said Gregg Brockway (above), president and co-founder of TripIt, the itinerary management and sharing service aimed at the corporate travel market.

Speaking at the China Travel Distribution Summit in Beijing, Brockway said that in future, travellers will be super-empowered and hyper-demanding and they will be the winner in the new web frontier.

Saying we were getting to the stage of “relevance and radical personalization”, he sees a day when web-bots will be “the custodian of all the information I have shared and will share that information with my service providers so that when I arrive at my hotel, they will know that I don’t like chocolates but I prefer fruits”.

“Web-bots will ensure that I only see the things I like,” he said, adding that innovation was happening “that will surprise and delight travellers”.

He said that TripIt had been designed from the ground up to solve problems for travellers. “You email us your information and we will add maps, build services and add a social layer.

“We will give you real time alerts, keep track of your frequent flyer miles and let you know if you paid too much for the airfare,” he said.

Currently TripIt earns revenues through three streams – targeted advertising, subscription fees for premium services and licensing its technology.

The question to ask, he told the audience, is “can I make money beyond transactions but in helping people manage information?”

The obstacle to such a product like TripIt in a market like China however is the lack of inter-operatability of websites as William Bao Bean, managing partner of Softbank China & India Holdings pointed out.

In the US, Bao Bean said there was a lot of inter-operability between sites unlike China. “Sina doesn’t integrate with anyone, neither does Tencent.”

Brockway said two pieces had to come together for a product such as TripIt to work. The technology has to be there to support it but that’s the easy bit. The more difficult part is the business mindset and to say, “by opening up my business, I can acquire more customers and make more money”.

“Facebook opening their platform to third party applications three years ago – that was one of the most successful and smartest things they’ve done and now they are the clear dominant leader.”

In opening a hotel these days, it is important to get the timing of the pre-publicity right and in today’s last-minute world, Matthias Roeke believes you’ve got to strike it just right – too early and you lose interest; too late and well, it’s too late.

The trick is to talk about it and have something to show for it almost immediately. Take Apple, says the general manager of the newly-opened China World Summit Wing in Beijing. They don’t talk about any product until it’s in the stores.

Today’s customers have short attention spans and if you start talking about something six months before it is available, people lose interest,” said Roeke. “The way people book these days is so last minute.”

The challenge with his hotel opening was that it had nine opening dates and so timing the pre-publicity was even more difficult. But once he knew it was going to be sometime in August – the hotel opened on August 16 and received its operating licence on August 9 – it started inviting top Chinese bloggers to the hotel and engaged on social networks such as RenRen. Its corporate headquarters in Hong Kong took care of Facebook engagement given that Facebook is not available in China.

The day before it opened, on a Sunday, Roeke sent 2,000 emails to local Beijingers to inform them of the hotel opening and to take advantage of the promotional offer of RMB 1988. “The response was instant.”

As the tallest hotel tower in the world, its views of the city were unrivalled but Roeke didn’t want to sell the obvious, nor did he talk too much about the hotel in pre-publicity materials.

“We did not try to sell the luxury and the physical – we wanted to be low profile and approachable so people wouldn’t be scared off. So we talked about the people – how we hired staff, the art, the food and how we use local produce.”

It focused on personalities such as Charlie, the bartender from the famous Schumann’s American Bar in Munich who would be mixing cocktails at the Atmosphere Bar on the top floor.

It told stories of how it hired its staff and the interview process it put them through. Roeke personally interviewed every single candidate and went through 13,000 interviews.

In the first round of interviews, candidates were given a ring puzzle to figure out. “If the person gave up, we didn’t take them – it showed they had no will to succeed.”

In the last round of 3,500 interviews, he put people in “completely silly situations”. “We would put them in situations and created a lot of havoc in five minutes to see how they dealt with it. The ones that had a natural reaction, these were the ones we hired.”

In total, the hotel hired 600 staff out of the 13,000 interviews he conducted. Their average age – 28 years old.

You do feel the youth, energy and confidence of the staff when you stay in the hotel. All the frontline staff I encountered spoke excellent English and demonstrated confidence in how they dealt with situations.

At the time of check-out, when it was discovered a mistake had been made on my limousine transfer time, the remedial measures they took to address it were excellent.

To talk about the art at the hotel, it launched an art competition with 300 local artists who were asked to paint pictures with 330 insights – 330m being the height of the hotel.

There are a couple of things Roeke’s trying to do differently in this hotel.

In the resident’s lounge, a total of 500 books adorn the shelves – John Grisham and Stephen Ki

ng seem to be favourites – and when you sit in the lounge, no one will come to ask if you need anything.

“I wanted a space where people could just come and sit as though in their home without being bothered, but if they wanted a drink or food, then all they have to do is ask,” said Roeke.

In the room, the minibar is free and it’s a very well-stocked minibar to boot. That, and a constant array of chocolates and goodies everyday ensure you never get to go hungry while in the room.

“I wanted to test it and it turned out as I predicted, very few people take everything,” he said.

During the first week, when it had lots of local guests, the minibars were emptied “because they can go home in a car but the business traveller is not going to take bottles and food in his suitcase”.

On average, the takeout has been RMB90, he said. The selling price of a mini bar, if you consume everything, is 300RMB, he added.

In the room too is a room journal in which guests can leave messages behind for future guests. Quite a nice touch, I thought. Gives the room a personality.

In the bathroom is an embedded television in the bathroom mirror. You wouldn’t know it’s there unless someone points it out to you. I like that – technology that is invisible.

Since it opened, Roeke said the hotel’s been beating its competitive set in RevPAR and is running the highest average rate in town.

“We are not trying to make bad profit out of little things; we are in the room business and we want to make our profit on rooms.”

Wanted: Good staff and better service

China’s travel suppliers face similar issues as their counterparts in the rest of Asia – the lack of quality talent and the need to improve service quality across the entire value chain. When Fan Min, CEO of Ctrip (below), was asked by WIT what was the one thing that concerned him the most, he cited staff and service quality.

All down to great teams

Great teams are the reason why the local OTAs in Asia are such a success, said Brett Henry, vice president marketing of Abacus International, citing MakeMyTrip, Ctrip and Rakuten Travel as examples. “There’s no real secret, they are all run by great teams, that’s why they win market share.”

Call centres work in Japan

In Japan, 24% of Expedia’s business comes through the call centres and that has a 60% conversion rate. It makes sense to invest in call centres in Japan, said Peter Lee, director of market management for North Asia, Expedia Asia Pacific.

Rakuten Travel wants to grow offshore revenues

Up to 99% of bookings for Rakuten Travel still come from Japan and the company is determined to increase its offshore business to 50% in 10-15 years, said Hideaki Yokomizo of the International Business Division of Rakuten Travel. “We definitely want to expand to Asia, it’s an area we can leverage our hotel inventory in Japan, Korea and Taiwan.”

Parental ties help Rakuten

Rakuten Travel hopes to ride on the coat-tails of its parent as it expands. Rakuten has signed a joint venture with Baidu, China’s largest search company, to set up an online shopping mall. “This is a huge thing for us, we can leverage their presence,” said Hideaki Yokomizo.

It’s not all about price

Only 30% of the clicks generated through Qunar are about the lowest price. China is the second largest market in the world for luxury products, said Fritz Demopoulous, CEO of the largest Chinese meta search travel site. “The key challenge is how do you segment the market? The reason for the proliferation of travel brands is different customer interests are emerging.”

Content beyond price

About 80% of Qunar’s users are leisure travellers. And leisure travellers want content – content that’s not just about price but hotel reviews, location, map features, videos, said Fritz Demopoulous, CEO of Qunar.

At this time of the year in Beijing, as summer gives way to autumn and the Chinese offer mooncakes to the Lady of the Moon, there’s a change in the direction of the wind that blows through the city.

From one day to the next, when I was there last week, a hot, humid summer day gave way to cool, blustery autumn winds.  I feel the same change in wind direction taking place in China’s travel market.

Perhaps it all started two years ago with the hosting of the world’s largest sporting event, which it did with spectacular style. Perhaps it’s to do with hosting the world’s largest World Expo which it is doing with spectacular scale. 

Or perhaps it’s just the fact that it’s now the world’s second largest economy in the world and is driving the global economic recovery and what it does with its currency matters so much to the rest of the world.

I sense a new-found confidence in its people. In one generation, I have seen the change from a nation that was looking to learn all it could from the outside world to one that now knows it has much to offer the outside world and that it can pick and choose from those who would teach it.

Within my own family, I see it. My relatives in Haikou, Hainan, no longer depend on their overseas brethren for handouts; they have more – and beyond materialistic goods, they have a deep sense of rootedness which my father gave up in search of a better life abroad. 

This shift in sentiment was clear at the China Travel Distribution Summit in Beijing last week.

The remarks made by Larry Liang, general manager, airline solutions of TravelSky, prompted by the opening comments of PhoCuswright’s Ram Badrinathan, whose presentation was by the way immediately followed by that of David Jones, CEO of Amadeus, was a case in point.

Okay, the comparison to nuclear weapons was unfortunate at a travel conference but there’s a younger generation of Chinese who are more vocal and prepared to speak up and defend their own interests.

Liang’s comments were picked up again by Michael Chen, vice president of Jinling Hotels & Resorts Corporation, during a panel discussion on “Channel distribution versus direct sales” which happened to be moderated by Liang.

Talking about the entry of foreign companies into China, Chen said many found it hard to make it.

China, he said, should have “nuclear weapons”. It’s a big market, bigger than Europe, and if you want to cooperate with the China market, you have to recognize that this is the trend, he said. 

He noted that while China’s hotels were weak in the past when it came to direct distribution – which explains why Ctrip is so successful in online hotel sales – this was changing.

Chinese hotel groups such as Jinling were getting bigger and more advanced, he said.

And he added, do not apply the foreign model to China, we will not play with you.

Listening to a foreign view though was what got Min Fan (below), CEO of Ctrip, started on his road to success. At a market cap of approximately US$5 billion, Ctrip is now the world’s third largest online travel agency, after Expedia and Priceline. 

In an interview session at the conference, Fan recalled his first job working as a management trainee in a hotel. He asked the foreign general manager how he would differentiate the hotel. The answer was, location, location, location.

At that time, he thought it was too simple an answer but now he sees the sense of it and applies a similar concept to what he does at Ctrip – service, service, service.

“If you can guarantee your service level, the customer will look for you and book from you,” he said, adding his key preoccupation was how to improve service.

It sounds like an empty idea, he said, but when you sell on the Internet, service is even more crucial. From the moment the customer books to the time of delivery, there are roughly 20 touch points and the company applies 61 assessment targets to identify areas for improvement.

Even as he works on service improvements internally, Fan is also looking to expand Ctrip’s business outside China. Last year, it acquired ezTravel in Taiwan and Wing On Travel in Hong Kong. 

In choosing companies to acquire, he said it was about “how you can transfer your experience and interface your technology”.

He uses three criteria to evaluate acquisitions – will it effectively expand its product line, will it add value to its core product line and growth potential is not limited to China but Asia and worldwide, and value. “If it’s too expensive, we cannot afford it.”

He said he had a lot to learn from Glenn Fogel, executive vice president, corporate development, of Priceline (who had earlier presented) who he said had been very successful in his acquisitions.

For Chinese companies, going abroad is a challenge, he said, citing limited international experience. This explains why his first acquisitions have been in greater China because of the culture and language. 

He said he has also learnt a lot from Japan although Japanese travel companies tended to invest more in local sites rather than acquire foreign companies. 

It thus appears the wind blows both directions – even as foreign companies are still scrambling to enter China, Chinese companies are now venturing abroad. And both have much to learn from each other.

And it seems what we should do is bury the “nuclear weapons” talk and smoke the peace pipe – that is, after all, what tourism is all about. 

Indeed, a good blend of globalization and localization is just what the Lady of the Moon would approve of – my favourite mooncake, for example, is snow skin mooncake with champagne truffle and ganache.

For a moment there, I thought I was back in my classroom during my primary school days. We had a mathematics teacher, Mr Ong, whose favourite words were “Shame on you.”

He said that a lot because I was terrible at math – still am. I was terrified out of my wits everytime he looked at me and he would say, “Remove that curtain of hair from your face, woman.” If only that hair alone was responsible for my failing math …

But no, it wasn’t Mr Ong in front of me but rather Ian McKee, who runs an agency called Vocanic in Singapore, which calls itself “Asia’s leading Social Media and Word of Mouth Marketing Agency”.

McKee was the keynote speaker at last week’s Asia Connect in Singapore, organized by HSMAI (Hotel Sales & Marketing Associates International) Asia Pacific. He came on right after my opening panel and I could tell he was itching to address a point we had raised about the need for hotels and venues to free Internet access “because the Internet is like the toilet”, as Brett Henry, Abacus International’s vice president of marketing, astutely said just a couple of days at the Asia Connect event in Bangkok.

Yes, it’s that old “free the Internet” revolutionary call and McKee started his address with, “Do you know the difference between bad profit and good profit?”

Bad profit is short-term – you make money, yes, but you lose customers’ goodwill. Good profit is making money while earning advocacy.

“You still want to charge for Internet access?” he challenged, after he had said things like “Bad profits make you fat and lazy as a brand”.

McKee is a speaker who likes to challenge. I like that, but I think there’s a difference between shocking your customers to think and frightening the wits out of them.

Showing data that showed a huge disparity between media consumption and how advertising budgets were being spent in Asia, he said, “Shame on you” and he told the audience they wouldn’t get jobs in Taiwan or Hong Kong because their skill sets were lagging behind their customers’ needs.

Mario Jobbe, who obviously was not raised in the Asian school system, challenged McKee, saying he was basing his remarks on 2006 data. “You better make sure your data is current and accurate before you start telling people they can’t get jobs. I know of marketers in the room (at Asia Connect) who are using the web effectively as a channel.”

McKee, saying he had tried to get more current data, added that in general, the same disparity would still be true – marketing spend, he said, was still lagging behind customer trends in the travel industry.

McKee’s message was that brands today had to earn customer advocacy. He said measuring customer satisfaction scores was old school, telling the audience to throw out those survey forms.

The key and only question that mattered in advocacy marketing was, would you recommend us to your friends and family?

He also said the most stupid question anyone can ask is “what’s the ROI on social media”?

I kind of felt so stupid after that remark because that’s a question I like to ask and so I voiced aloud the belief that “there’s no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers” or something stupid like that.

By which time too, as McKee got to the end of his presentation, I suspected the audience had either been so shamed or felt so stupid that there was just the kind of silence that I recall descended at the end of Mr Ong’s classes.

One thing I will say though is at least McKee has opinions and he dares to voice them – like Mario, he too wasn’t educated in the Asian school system (his bio says he studied in the University of Birmingham).

So my dear industry friends, all of us educated in the Asian school system and who had teachers like Mr Ong, I say to you, it’s okay to have opinions and voice them, never mind if people think you’re stupid or they say, “Shame on you”.

In today’s world of the social web, you need opinions to create unique, differentiated content to get your business to stand out. Otherwise, speakers such as McKee will keep trying to shock you into saying something and if you say nothing, well, “shame on you”.

The first thing I usually do when I arrive in Bangkok is to either order in-room massage or room service, if my arrival is at that awkward time between too late for a proper dinner and “too early for bed but I think I will have a quiet night before a big day tomorrow”.

This trip was no exception. My regular masseur was busy – there are obviously a lot of stressed out Bangkokians who are keeping her busy – and so I decided to order room service.

While waiting, I do what is usual these days for most business travellers – check my email and Facebook, surf the Web and because I was preparing for a presentation the next day, went on YouTube and was happily wandering down the rabbit warren of that alternate universe when the door bell rang.

Twenty minutes. Not bad. I open the door and there’s a smiling young man holding a tray in his hand. I beckon him in. He sets the tray on the table that is, by the way, filled with fruits, flowers and chocolates – all the things designed by hotels to make you feel like you’re at home.

A lovely aroma that always reminds me of Thailand fills my suite at the Dusit Thani Hotel. Fish sauce – that which makes all flavours of Thai cuisine come alive.

I allow the aroma to waft for a while while I continue my explorations down video wonderland. It never ceases to amaze me how much time people have to fill this alternate universe with content.

I find the video that I am looking for – a collaboration between the legendary David Bowie and indie rock band, Arcade Fire, on the song “Wake Up”. It’s from the latter’s album titled “Funeral” and while the video is playing, I go to Curt Ewald’s Facebook page to read the posts about his passing on September 4.

I knew Curt from his Starwood days as regional marketing chief in Singapore and he struck me then as a smart cookie – someone who brought a fresh view to hotel marketing at that time.

I remember a particular conversation we had that resonated with me at the time. He shared with me his life theory. Everytime we start something new – new relationship, new project – the curve goes up. Then it starts to dip. The key is to jump to the next stage before you go too far down that curve, and begin a new curve that you can climb. And so on and so forth.

I thought of him on his final curve upwards. His Facebook status said, “I have seen the final end. It is beautiful, wonderful, peaceful.”

I say a silent goodbye to Curt and leave a comment for his wife, Deborah.

I return to the video which has been viewed almost 2.5 million times. The song is a clarion cry for “children to wake up, hold your mistake up, before they turn your summer into dust”.

The aroma in my room reminds me I should have my dinner before it gets cold. I walk over, lift the lid off the beautiful porcelain bowl and … nothing.

The bowl was empty. Thinking I was seeing things due to over-exposure to YouTube, I closed the lid. I opened it again. Still the same. Empty. I wondered if I had missed something – perhaps the room service attendant had come in with a warmer and left it somewhere. I looked under the table. Chair. Nothing.

I called room service. I said, “You just brought me room service but the bowl you brought me is empty”. There was a moment of silence on the line, after which the staff broke out in a burst of giggles, apologized and said, “We will bring another bowl right away” or something like that. It was hard to decipher amid the laughter.

I like the laughter. It made me see the funny side of things. Laugh, smile, say you’re sorry. As Akapol Sorasuchart, president of the Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau, said later that day at Asia Connect, “That’s the Thai way. We smile, say sorry, and everything’s alright.”

Five minutes later the door bell rings. The same attendant is standing there with a big grin on his face and a bowl in his hand. He opens the bowl this time to prove there’s food inside. He says sorry a few times.

I think Curt would have loved this story. He would probably say, are you sure you didn’t eat that first bowl, wash up and make up the story so you could get a free bowl of noodles?

I must say the noodles were so good I might be tempted to try that trick at my next hotel stay.

Is it my imagination or am I noticing more of a swing back towards traditions in the part of the world where I live?

It seems that even as we in Asia adopt new technology and gadgets at the speed of tweets, we seem to be clinging to our traditions with ever more fervour.

You feel it particularly at this time of the year when the Chinese population around the region celebrate the Hungry Ghosts Festival and the Malay populace observe Ramadan in preparation for the Hari Raya new year next week.

All over Singapore, there has been a revival in Chinese “street operas” being held. These are the traditional street performances held to “entertain” the restless spirits that are said to walk on our earth at this time of the year. And you see altars at every corner of every Housing Board Development estate.

Once a dying art, “getai” is making such a comeback in Singapore that it’s becoming a career of choice for some young girls wanting to become “opera stars”.

When I was in Penang last weekend, I also came across several “street theatres” when once they were disappearing.

The inner city of Georgetown is also seeing a renaissance of traditional arts and trades since being declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Trishaw riders are now back on the streets and seem to be enjoying a brisk business with not only tourists but also locals.

In Singapore, one entrepreneur, Png Yiow Beng, has invested S$500,000 to revive the trishaw business. His new company, Trishaw Uncle, will offer 30- to 45-minute trishaw tours covering Bugis, Little India and the Singapore River areas with commentary in English, Mandarin, Korean and Japanese.

“Trishaws used to be a traditional mode of transport in the old days,” he said. “I want to help manage trishaw riders to retain the local flavour of Singapore.”

According to the Singapore Tourism Board, about 70,000 trishaw tours are conducted each year in the city.

At the same time, there has been a rise in young Chinese professionals joining clan associations in Singapore when once they were shunned as “legacy” institutions. (Clan associations are an important part of the social and economic fabric for Chinese communities around the world. They helped early immigrants assimilate and funded education for their children.)

Said a local news report, “The numbers, although small, are significant because they are the first sign of a turnaround in decades – from young English-educated professionals who were not interested in clan affairs, to many who are now not only interested but also want to take up leadership roles.”

Meanwhile, if you walk around Arab Street or Geylang Serai in Singapore, you will be overwhelmed by the festivities during the break fast period as Malays prepare for their New Year.

In Penang last weekend, I went to a Ramadan market in my neighbourhood. I love the atmosphere in the Ramadan markets  – the anticipation as Muslims prepare to break fast and the colour in the markets, and the scents and spices of the food on offer.

It’s good to see that traditions are living side by side with technology in our neighbourhoods.

I am feeling increasingly redundant these days. First, bloggers took away my livelihood – now, everyone can write. Second, Twitter took away the need for breaking news – now, everyone can report from the trenches. Third, TripAdvisor took away my job of travel writing – now, everyone is a reviewer.

And just when I have just about reinvented myself into a mashup “I can do everything” kind of person, along comes news that I could be replaced as a travel companion for men.

A new dating sim or simulation game called ‘Love Plus’ allows men to bring virtual girlfriends with them on holidays. The game, that is played on handheld Nintendo DS consoles and has “augmented reality” application for iPhones, is apparently very popular with Japanese men.

Seems they’re all heading down to a beach resort called Atami where they go straight for a bronze statue of a couple from an old love story set in the town.

“The focus of the men’s attention – and of their smartphone cameras – was a tiny black and white square, a two-dimensional barcode that, thanks to AR software, brought to life the object of their desire,” said the report.

Virtual girlfriends are nothing new in Japan, the land of the wackiest trends. The creator of Love Plus, Konami Digital Entertainment, has “long thrilled young men obsessed with high-tech, manga and anime, known as “otaku”, by letting them chase virtual girls in the alternate universe of their digital dreams”.

But now they are taking these virtual girls on the road. They have selected 13 romantic locations in Atami which can be overlaid with images of these virtual girls. (I can hear the sound of destinations in Asia queuing up to see how they can cash in on this trend already.)

According to the Konami spokesperson, Kunio Ishihara, Love Plus is an open-ended communication game with basic voice recognition and a screen clock that keeps real time to make players feel like they are really sharing them with a girlfriend.

“That means that the girl can get moody when neglected by a player who is not sufficiently committed or she demands attention when she feels unwell.”

The difference is, “Love Plus is fun because the relationship continues forever.”

Now how can any girl compete with that?

Those of us who have travelled with non-virtual lovers/partners know that even the best of relationships can be broken on the road.

How does he pack? If he’s too organized, could he have OCD? If he’s too sloppy, is he a PIG?

How does he tip? If he is over-generous, is he a show-off? If he tips too little, is he a meanie, meaning he’ll be mean with gifts and love?

How does he treat service staff? If he is over-obsequious, could it mean he is insecure? If he is over-rude, does it mean he’s a PIG?

Virtual girlfriends would never have such doubts. I think I’ll go reinvent myself as a mashup “otaku”.

You could be forgiven for thinking you have walked into a music store. Or is it a funky bar with its eclectic furniture? Or a Peranakan-themed French restaurant? Whatever it is, it’s hard to put Loh Lik Peng’s newest hotel in Singapore, Wanderlust, into any box.

Which is how the hotelier, now with five hotels to his name, wants it. “I thought design hotels were taking themselves too seriously, so I wanted to make this one fun and whimsical,” said Loh, who started his foray into hotels with Hotel 1929 in Chinatown, followed by New Majestic. Wanderlust is his third in the city.

Facing the reception desk is a giant sign that reads, “Giant surface music falling to earth like jewels from the sky”. That’s the title of the debut album from the Portland-based space-drone quartet Yume Bitsu.

Like all his other hotels – this year, he also opened Waterhouse in Shanghai and Town Hall in London – Wanderlust is a conversion. The shophouse sits on Dickson Road, at the edge of Little India, which has seen a boom in budget hotels lately.

When the taxi driver dropped me off, she asked me if I was going to a Peranakan restaurant. The exterior of the building  is decorated with Straits Chinese motifs. I said, “French.”

She laughed, “French in Little India? Crazy.”

The lobby is a little crazy. There’s a wall that’s covered with colourful pop art. There’s a pool table in the middle of the lounge area. Two dentist chairs take centrestage – these are Loh’s signature, he collects them as he does other things which are all displayed in the hotel. It’s a great lobby to spend time in because there are plenty of things to catch the eye.

He gave each floor of the hotel to different local designers to do their thing. His only brief was, make it fun and whimsical.

The lobby level, themed Industrial Glam, is by Asylum. Level 2, called Eccentricity, is by :phunk Studio. Lots of neon lights and colour here, it has the smallest rooms. I was shown the Purple Haze room in honour of Jimi Hendrix. I can imagine singing, “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky”, in my sleep.

Level 3 by DP Architects, themed “is it Black and White”, features Pop-Art works and Origami. The origami rooms, which play on folds, are the most feminine of the lot.

Level 4 is all about “Creature Comforts” by fFurious and the loft rooms are designed to fulfill fantasies. I like the “Tree Monster” room because the ceiling is covered with brown and green leaves and made me feel like I was Little Red Riding Hood without the big bad wolf in tow. There’s also one called “Rusty Typewriter” – there’s a themed sofa that made me feel like I could dance on the keys.

Loh’s favourite is the “Space Room” – it’s got red space ships in it, and the ceiling ha twinkling lights to help you dream of space as you sleep. “It’s for the inner child in me,” the former lawyer-turned-hotelier said.

Its French restaurant, Cocotte, is already getting rave reviews in local blogs. The food is rustic and unpretentious, the setting communal and friendly. The homemade Croque Monsieur was sinfully good, by the way.

At 29 rooms, Wanderlust brings Loh’s total room count in Singapore to a grand 91. “I’d rather do lots of small hotels than a few big ones. I love converting old buildings and creating hotels with character.”

The economics of this third one however is very different from when he first developed Hotel 1929. He got that building for a song. That will never happen again, he said. “The largest limiting factor is cost of land. If you’re rational about it, you wouldn’t do it.”

The higher cost of land, coupled with high construction costs which kept creeping up because it was being built at the same time as the two Integrated Resorts, meant Wanderlust cost “way, way more” than either New Majestic or Hotel 1929. “We cannot afford to make mistakes on this project; that’s why you need to make mistakes on smaller projects,” he said.

More hotels also give him some economies of scale. In his hotels, food & beverage play a large part in positioning them with the local community. Each of his hotels are known for their signature restaurants – Hotel 1929 with Ember, New Majestic with its Chinese restaurant and Wanderlust with Cocotte.

In his hotels, f&b revenues are usually higher than room revenues but GOP, of course, is lower for f&B (about 25-30%) than for rooms (60%). “Food is a critical element if you want to be in the lifestyle space,” said Loh.

And while each of his hotels are different from the other, Loh said what’s interesting is they all appeal to a similar customer segment, “people who want hotels that are different, have a sense of context and story”. (His hotels, with the exception of Hotel 1929, are all part of Design Hotels.)

“No one has really done a design hotel in Little India. There are lots of backpacker places. The Western tourists love it – the streets here are more colourful than in Chinatown. It’s real here, the spices, the smells, the sounds.”

His hotels in Shanghai and London, again different in their own right, also appear to appeal to a similar type of customer. Waterhouse, located on the Bund, is a small hotel (19 rooms) with a huge events space (10,000sqft) and has been doing pretty well given the Shanghai World Expo and Town Hall with 98 rooms, located in London’s East End, attracts mainly corporate clients.

Opening a hotel in Shanghai has been tough. “Finding a good general manager there is like pulling teeth,” he said. “The operating environment is tough especially when you come from a place Singapore. But it’s unavoidable – you have to do the China thing. Just like India in a few years, you have to do it.”

Having now built a collection of eclectic hotels appealing to a similar customer type, Loh now wonders if the time is right for him to create and nurture a community using social media or to create an umbrella brand.

“We’ve always operated the hotels independently, there’s no association between one or the other but maybe at some point, we may think about an umbrella brand – but we are in no hurry.”

His hotels are also talked about in social media but Loh has not actively engaged with the channel. “Virtually nobody books the hotels through Facebook but we do get people who book our restaurants through Facebook.”

Web bookings account for 30% of his hotels’ business. Hotel 1929 gets the higher share of direct web bookings. “The Internet is all about price and Hotel 1929 does well on it, but not so much our higher-priced hotels. It’s hard to sell character and context on the Internet,” said Loh.

First, there was the Hong Kong tour guide rant at a group of Chinese tourists for not shopping enough, which makes you wonder how long these zero-commission tours should be allowed to continue.

Then, we watched in horror as a bungled attempt to rescue a group of tourists from the Hong Thai bus in Manila unfolded before our very eyes this week.

The Philippine police has admitted that mistakes were made by a team that was inadequately trained, armed and led. “We saw some obvious shortcomings in terms of capability and tactics used, or the procedure employed, and we are now going to investigate this,” said Manila’s police commander Leocadio Santiago.

Too late for the eight Hong Kong people who lost their lives.

The image of the Hong Thai bus as it was surrounded, hammered, prodded and shot at by Manila police will last a long time in our mind’s eye. Just as the airplanes flying into the Twin Towers on September 11 changed our image of leisure aircraft, so too will this change the image of a tour bus from pleasure-on-wheels to a sitting duck for mayhem.

You also have to wonder how much the highly public coverage of the hostage crisis as it unfolded had a part to play in the tragic outcome. This was reality TV at its worst.

I watched it for about 20 minutes but found myself unable to continue. It was too much for the imagination to bear – as you watched the police doing goodness knows what and wondered what was happening inside the bus.

It is often said there is safety in numbers but sometimes, travelling in groups can make you obvious targets – and when you are in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong country, well, then you’re extremely unlucky indeed.

Never having been much of a group traveller, I raised the point about tours getting a bad name, citing the Hong Kong tour guide rant, with Nicholas Lim of Contiki Asia recently – this was before the hostage tragedy.

He was talking to me about how well his group tours were selling, particularly to places like Greece and Italy. 

His answer is, there are group tours and then there are group tours. Buy the quality ones and you have a good experience. Buy the cheap ones where everything is subsidized and so someone has to make money somehow and the experience can be a shoddy one. Group tours are cheaper, more convenient and deemed safer for a particular segment of travellers.

Yet in today’s world where everything is more or less accessible – to shop online, to search, to buy and then to move around on the ground – I believe more and more people will opt to travel independently.

It’s in line with how technology is changing customer behaviour, making us more empowered, more independent, more expressive (at least in virtual terms) and now with location-based devices, well, making us more confident about not getting lost in foreign lands.

In the latest Visa-Pacific Asia Travel Association Travel Intentions Survey 2010 released today, it was found that almost half of all those surveyed (47 %) said they arranged their trips themselves by booking directly with hotels and airlines.

According to the survey, based on 6,714 respondents across Asia Pacific, self-organized travel was the top travel style for respondents from the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia. Flexible individual tours which allow travelers to choose their own activities were the next most preferred way to travel (22%). Packaged group tours were most likely to be booked by travelers from Mainland China (33%), Chinese Taipei (29%) and Thailand (28%).

As travel markets in Asia mature and a generational shift in travellers occurs, the trend towards independent travel will surely grow.

Meanwhile, as Hong Kong mourns its dead, the Philippines will have to deal with this latest blow to the country’s image, not just as a destination but as a nation.

The empowerment of the customer in Asia is the biggest change that’s taken hold in the regional travel market in the last decade, said Kathleen Tan, group head of commercial for AirAsia.

“There’s the empowerment to fly and there’s the empowerment to buy. Low cost airlines and the Internet have changed buying behaviour in Asia. There’s more virtual planning – people can do a lot more search – and they book instantly.
 
“When we put Yangon on sale recently (the airline launched Kuala Lumpur-Yangon flights in July), we sold 50,000 seats.”

At the same time, there’s a generational shift happening with travellers in Asia. “As they are empowered to fly and buy, they have also become more empowered as travellers and the smarter travellers now do not need tour guides or buy package tours – they search for information on the web, and they share information with each other on social networks.

“People are more experimental now and are seeking new kinds of travel experiences.”

This is why she believes vendors and operators have to change not only the way they market but also the way they serve these new travellers.

“I urge the industry not to always look to the West, the spending power is in Asia, and we have to change the way we engage with the new Asian customer.

“Younger people are more savvy now, do you still sell them the same packages? Do you still take them to gems stores and get commissions? People know where they want to eat. They can find the best places to get a tattoo in Bali,” said Tan.

“For me, the romance in travel is in the exchange that’s happening between students and young people, something that’s been facilitated by low cost airlines. Mainland Chinese are now coming to Malaysia to study; before it was only Singapore, but the less wealthy Chinese are opting for Malaysia.

“We have Malaysians going abroad to study and search for jobs. There’s labour mobility, medical mobility. In Malaysia, nurses are hard to come by and so we have lots of nurses from south India working in the country. And Malaysians are going to India for beach surfing at half the price they’d pay in Bali.

“In Bandung, Indonesia, there are 20 universities – imagine the opportunities for youth travel from that market.”

As a marketer, Tan is proudest of the airline’s annual “one million free seats” promotion. Having run it for the last five to six years though, the customer is getting smarter at it. “It’s become a game to some now. They know it’s hard to get, and so if they get it, they feel good and tell their friends about it.

“They have become marketers for us. There’s a Chinese customer who managed to book 30 free tickets and apparently, he studied our route map and our website for a month and when the day came, he did it with such speed, got 30 and told all his friends about it.”

Sometimes, promotions can bomb. “Every route has different characteristics – Yangon is different from Taipei for instance. India is what I call a “marathon” market. The purchasing process is much longer, they discuss a lot before they buy. They also like to travel in groups, so they talk a lot among themselves first.

“With Taipei, it explodes but in India, it’s a slow burn – you can’t take your budget and spend it in one go.”

The travel agency channel is not something that excites Tan. “I refuse to pay commissions to travel agents in Singapore; I don’t want to get into legacy business. To service agents, you also need manpower.

“When we first entered China, we depended on travel agents but now our brand is more established, and people know how to book us online. We are also seeing more FIT travel from China.

“India is challenging – people are still reliant on travel agents – but I see a tipping point taking place this year as our brand gets more established.”

Consumers however need a physical presence from time to time to reassure them that the airline is actually run by people and not computers. “We held an AirAsia travel fair in Jakarta recently and we had people coming up to us who thought we were run by computers, so you need to be present physically for people to feel your brand.

“We have a long way to go still in some markets,” said Tan.

Community marketing is a personal passion of Tan. She watches with interest how Zouk Club of Singapore has managed to stay relevant to its customers despite it being probably the oldest club in the city. “They are constantly revamping to stay relevant and has held on to their customers.”

Another company she watches is Apple – “they way it upsells and cross-sells”. She said, “They think out of the box and they keep everything within the community.”

One market that has surprised her is the luxury market and how people are still paying a lot of money for luxury products. “LV has remained so relevant that a mother and her teenage daughter can carry the same brand. It’s an old brand but has engaged hot new designers like Marc Jacobs, brought out limited editions and clearly beaten the pirates.

“There’s a new generation of kids too who don’t buy pirated stuff and get a kick out of it.”

* AirAsia recently released its second quarter results, ending June 30, 2010, which showed a profit after tax of RM199 million. Revenue rose 26% year-on-year from RM748 million to RM941 million. Passenger growth was 11 percent, rising to 3.9 million passengers. Load factor rose to 77 percent in 2Q2010 from 75 percent in 2Q2009.

Armed with a new and bulging war chest following its successful debut on NASDAQ last week, MakeMyTrip is on the lookout for “strategic acquisitions to boost our leadership position”, founder and CEO Deep Kalra told WIT.

India’s biggest OTA launched onto NASDAQ last week, with shares closing at 88.93% above its listing price of $14. It closed at $26.45 per share on the day it made its debut. During the day, its share price went up to $26.81, around 91.5% higher above the listing price. It has continued its strong performance throughout the week.

Not only did it herald a momentous moment for the online travel market in India, and Asia, it was also India’s first IPO on NASDAQ in three years, according to the MakeMyTrip blog.

Asked if the success of the IPO exceeded expectations, Deep said, “Based on the overwhelming interest and demand from the roadshows, we were pretty sure the IPO would be successful. This successful of course was a pleasant bonus.”

Calling the future “future bright” for MakeMyTrip, he said the success underscored investors’ interest in the booming indian consuming class and the belief that MakeMyTrip’s management would retain the lion share in the market.

Asked if going public would change how the company is operated, Deep said, “More focus on quarterly results, actually sharpens the vision.”

Deep started MakeMyTrip in 2000 from a small office in Okhla, New Delhi. Formerly the vice president for business development for GE Capital Land, Deep saw the potential of how the Internet could lend itself to travel.

He decided at the time that the Indian market wasn’t yet ready for an online travel agency and so he concentrated on the US-India travel sector. In 2005, with the emergence of the low cost carriers, Deep turned his attention to India and launched its website for the Indian travel market in September that year.

In its first year of operation, it became India’s largest e-commerce company. According to MakeMyTrip’s Company Profile, “the company is on track to achieve sales of INR 2500 crores (approximately US$ 500 million) in the financial year ending March 2010, making it India’s largest travel company.”

Its Wikipedia page lists financial Investors as SAIF Partners, Helion Venture Partners, and Sierra Ventures. Independent Members comprise Philip C. Wolf, President and CEO of PhoCusWright Inc.), and Frederic Lalonde, Founder and CEO of Openplaces.org.

On debut day, MakeMyTrip also released information about its performance in the first quarter of this fiscal year (the second quarter of the year), ending June 30 2010. 

• The company reported revenue of $33.7 million, up 49.0% over revenue of $22.6 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2009.¨

• MMYT reported a profit of $1.3 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2010, from a loss of $(5.6) million in the quarter ended June 30, 2009.

• Revenue from its air ticketing business increased by 27.8% to $10 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2010 from $7.8 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2009, primarily due to a 63.6% growth in gross bookings to $146.5 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2010 from $89.5 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2009. The increase gross bookings was due to a 68.5% increase in the number of transactions by customers.

• Net revenue margins declined from 7.9% in the quarter ended June 30, 2009 to 6.8% in the quarter ended June 30, 2010. This was due to reduction in service fees MMYT charged on domestic air ticketing business in order to attract more customers.

• MMYT also pre-purchased $0.9 million in air ticket inventory in the quarter ended June 30, 2009.

• Revenue from hotels and packages business increased by 59.5% to $23.2 million in the quarter, up from $14.6 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2009. This was because of a 74.8% increase in hotels and packages gross bookings to $28.2 million, from $16.1 million for the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

• Revenue less service costs from MMYT’s hotels and packages business increased by 52.8% to $3.4 million from $2.2 million in the same quarter the previous fiscal. This was due to an increase in gross bookings, partially offset by a reduction in net revenue margins to 11.9% in the quarter ended June 30, 2010, from 13.6% in the corresponding quarter last year. MMYT reduced margins in domestic hotels and packages business offered through its website in order to increase our sales of such packages.
 

I have a friend who lives in the middle of Montmarte, Paris. When I visit him, I always wonder what it’s like to live in the middle of a tourist attraction.

Each morning, he wakes up to the sounds of footsteps walking up the steps to the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur. He hears the voices and happy laughter of tourists.

He hears different languages and over the years, he’s noticed them change – from European to East European, from Japanese to Chinese – with the socio-economic shifts of the world.

There is no let-up in the tourist traffic – all day, all week, all month, all year. This is, after all, one of the most visited attractions in the world’s most visited city. The Basilica at the top of the hill, art galleries, bars, cafes and nightclubs, the very touristy Place du Tetre where you can get your portraits painted – it all lives up to everything we imagine Paris to be.

What I particularly like about it is the way residential life is interwoven into the tourist areas so that Montmarte is not just a tourist place (like parts of Chinatown, Singapore, or Lijian, in Yunnan, or Luang Prabang, Laos) but an organic, dynamic, lively part of a city that just happens to be highly attractive to tourists.

Often, tourists would peek into his window which overlooks the steps, curious to see how a local Parisian lives out his daily life, little knowing that behind curtains everywhere round the world, probably the same life rituals play out, no matter where.

There are exceptions though. One day, he told me, he was standing at his open window – it was a brisk spring morning – and he was having his first cigarette of the day.

He noticed a group of youths showing particular interest in him. They were laughing and pointing at something behind his back. He then realised that in the mirror on the wall behind him, his bare butt was being reflected in full display.

I can imagine the kids going home and telling their friends, these French men, they are so sexy.

I recall this because last Sunday, I realised that I too am now living in the middle of a tourist attraction.

When I first moved into the Tanjong Rhu neighborhood, the only attraction was the Kallang River/Canal, which was a pretty dirty stretch of water that connects the canals of the east to the Singapore River.

The only things of interest in the water would be the occasional dead rat, cat and, one time, a headless dog.

A couple of years ago, the Marina Barrage was built as part of Singapore’s plans to transform the whole Marina Bay (and the Kallang river basin) into a reservoir. The difference is tangible. Today, the water is cleaner and fresher and even the air smells sweeter.

Last Sunday, I saw boatloads of tourists cruising further down the Kallang river than they’ve ever done. I heard the tour guide commentary on both the Captain Explorer and Duck Tours’ cruises.

I can imagine their commentary.

“This area used to be the sea but now it’s full of over-priced apartments. Local people like to take their wedding photos here on the bridge. A lot of local TV shows use this as a location for their productions and the Bollywood movie, Kriish, was filmed here. The apartment over there was where Bollywood star Hritik Roshan stayed during the filming.

“See the women walking the children and dogs and wheeling the elderly in their wheelchairs. Those are the maids. Nearly 200,000 maids, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia, work in Singapore. They walk the young, look after the old and walk the dogs so that their masters and madams can go to work to make money to pay them to do these things.

“Last month, a 47-year-old Filipino maid inherited a S$6 million apartment after her employer died, as well as S$4 million cash. She had been looking after her employer for years. She called herself the ‘luckiest maid in the world’.

“This area that’s hoarded up now will be the future Gardens by The Bay – it will be the biggest botanical gardens in a city and will link this area to the Marina Bay – which means residents here can walk or kayak to the casinos.”

I know. It’s not quite Montmarte. There is no little floral shop that was featured in the movie “Amelie”. There are no seedy bars that were shown in the movie “La vie en rose” about the life of Edith Piaf.

But thankfully, tourists will not be able to peek into my window to see how “the locals live”. My, what stories they’d be able to share with their friends back home.

It is often said that the best test of friendship is to travel together. It will either make it stronger or break it totally or, at the least, convince each other that you shouldn’t travel together for the sake of friendship.

Well, Contiki Asia, which runs tours for the 18-35 age group, has launched a competition to search for the most adventurous and outstanding pair of best friends (a la Bonnie and Clyde) style in its new “Dynamic Duo Contest”.

Running up to September 30, the competition is open to all 18 to 35 year-old travellers from within Asia – specifically Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan or Korea. The winning prize will be a fully paid nine-day trip to Europe for two persons, comprising a Contiki land tour and flights.

Nicholas Lim (pictured), regional director for Contiki Holidays, said, “In the last two years, we have seen a huge increase in the number of travellers who journey in pairs. They can be either best buds, close girlfriends or even honeymooners, but they all come together for their love of travel.

“With our latest travel campaign we want to celebrate these friendships and with the ‘Dynamic Duo’ promotion, we want to encourage friends to keep travelling together as this not only elevates their level of fun during the trip, but also helps to create a very memorable and timeless experience.”

According to Lim, the company is also seeing an increase in the number of Singaporean women travelling on Contiki tours as single females, comprising up to 30 percent of all bookings. About 45 percent of all bookings are from couples or couples travelling on their honeymoons.

While business volume dropped by 30% last year during the global financial crisis, business has rebounded and is up 75 percent over the same time last year.

Its three biggest markets in Asia are Singapore, Korea and Japan and the most popular destination is Europe, its core product, even though Contiki Asia also offers Australia and Asia package holidays.

“We get a mix of customers – the first half of the year is mainly student traffic and the second half, professionals and honeymooners,” said Lim.

Globally, about 80 percent of its customers are single and 60 percent are females although Lim said that in Asia, women form a bigger chunk of the market – at 70 percent.

Travellers from Asia are also getting more confident. They are no longer buying the see-all-of-Europe in one trip. Rather, they are buying shorter trips in more focused areas – Italy, Greece and Spain are popular spots. “People now want more time to do their own thing,” said Lim, noting that Greece was the current bestseller.

“People are also more informed. They actually realise that to do Europe as a do-it-yourself costs more than doing it with us. What they tell us is, don’t include us in your activities, we will do our own thing.”

Lim is also eyeing other new markets in Asia such as Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. Worldwide, Contiki handles 120,000 passengers a year, of which Asia forms less than 10 percent and of that, Singapore is about half that volume.

“We need to increase our numbers,” said Lim.

Note: To enter, visit Contiki Dynamic Duo Contest and tell Contiki in 100 words or less a story behind your unique friendship with that person, and why Contiki should send you both on an all expenses paid trip to Europe.

View of Marina Bay and Singapore’s skyline.

Sitting at The Landing Point of the Fullerton Bay Hotel, Giovanni Viterale (pictured below with Tina Sim, hotel manager) takes a deep breath and says, “This feels like Hong Kong. The bay, the views, the skyline.”

Viterale, who was with the Conrad Hong Kong before he joined the Fullerton as general manager, has good reason to be proud of the Fullerton Bay Hotel.

Its location is hard to beat – right on the water in the middle of the financial district. Its views are to die for – surrounded by the transformed city skyline of Singapore. Its story is old and new – a modern building built between two slices of Singapore’s history.

Picttured left: Giovanni Viterale and Tina Sim, hotel manager

 The first hotel in Singapore to be built on the waterfront – about 80% of the property juts out into the bay – it is literally located between two old worlds in the middle of a modern, urban landscape.

The Fullerton Bay Hotel is the link between the old Clifford Pier and Customs House, the two historic buildings at the centre of Singapore’s trading in the old days.

Think of it as a modern bridge between two old worlds and as you walk along the lobby, you literally feel you are walking from one part of history to another.

Since its soft opening on July 8, the hotel and its views have got people talking. The Lantern Rooftop Bar, set out into the bay, has a 360 degree view of the bay and city skyline. You feel like you’re on a movie set when you’re sitting up there, sipping your martini.

And it is also there that you realise how much the Singapore skyline has changed – panning from the historic river area with its colonial buildings to the arts and cultural hub symbolized by the spikes of the Esplanade and then swooping up to the Singapore Flyer and the three towers of the Marina Bay Sands.

Staff of the hotel say they have the US$6 billion view.

With views such as these, the hotel doesn’t have to try too hard to be special but I like the minimalist and the Oriental-Mediterranean feel of the hotel. The glass façade allows the views to flow into the building.

The passage to the hotel lobby

The generous-sized rooms (45sqm) have balconies built out onto the waterfront so it does give you a resort-like feeling, yet you’re surrounded by skyscrapers right in the middle of the business and financial district.

The water looks pretty clean. The Marina Barrage has obviously been doing its work and the whole bay area is being turned into a man-made body of water. It’s not quite Bora Bora where from the over-water bungalows, you can see schools of fish.

Here, given the cleaning process that’s taking place, apparently fish are popping up dead. “That’s when you know the water is being cleaned,” someone said to me. A sad fact indeed that you have to kill something to give life to something else.

The 100 rooms at the “glamorous sister” (as the staff are calling it) cost slightly more than at the “grand dame” Fullerton Hotel. Viterale says his aim is to create a place that is “sleek and chic” and offers a “personal experience”.

View from the hotel

That, of course, is the challenge in labour-starved Singapore. All hotels are struggling to maintain service standards and the night I dined there, the service was friendly, attentive but creaky round the edges.

The two hotels indeed complement each other quite nicely. The Fullerton has the more imposing, grander presence while the Fullerton Bay Hotel exudes a gentler, more elegant feel.

Opening at a time when the market is buoyant has also helped of course. Says Viterale, “Singapore is on a very fast track and we are enjoying good business.”

It ran full occupancy during the National Day weekend and will also run full during the Youth Olympic Games’ opening weekend when the opening ceremony will be held in the bay area.

Viterale says he’s got good vibes about the new hotel. “I love water. I lived in Hong Kong for 15 years and I had a fountain in my office at the Conrad. I also grew up on the Amalfi coast and there’s a stone with a word in Arabic that translates into ‘prosperity’.”

And oh yes, by the way, he is a Pisces.

This morning, I woke up from a dream (or thought I did) and stayed within it and with my conscious mind (or thought I did), analysed and organized the task that had been handed to me in the dream.

Here’s the dream. I had been called in by a company which wanted to turn a disused tin mine area into a viable and sustainable business. (And no, the company is not called Banyan Tree or is it Indigo Pearl? I am confused, remember I was only dreaming.)

Their plan was to create something around the history and adventure of tin and they wanted their staff to come up with ideas on how to do this.

And so I was called in and I organised the workshop into three groups. One group would deal with product concepts – tin jewellery, for example; another would work on the marketing plan; and the third would look at community outreach programmes.

I had to almost physically shake myself out from the dream because frankly, it was becoming very hard work. And who wants to work while you sleep – although you could argue many people do that anyway.

I told my dream to a friend who told me it wasn’t about the tin – thank goodness, who wants to obsess about Zn – but it was about my need to orchestrate and control things.

“You’re probably thinking about the events you have to organise,” he says. “The tin is just a metaphor. Perhaps the tin represents the people around you and you wish they could be as malleable as tin.”

I don’t know much about tin but I did some research and found out he’s right. “Metallic tin is soft and malleable. It slowly dissolves in dilute nonoxidizing acids or more readily in hot concentrated HCl.”

I wonder though whether it’s possible that I have been incepted? Has someone like the character played by Leonardo Di Caprio in the movie “Inception” come into my head to plant the idea?

When you think about it though, people are always planting ideas in our heads all the time. These people are called marketers.

They tell us that when you ride a Harley Davidson, you become a rebel. They tell us when you smoke a cigarette, you can ride a horse and not fall. They tell us that even tin can be romantic.

And they embed subliminal messages in our heads so that even when we are asleep, we are thinking of the next item to consume. In my case, obviously Zn.

Which is why the next movie I want to catch is “The Joneses”. It’s supposed to be a dark satire about a perfect family that moves into a neighbourhood.

Only thing is, they aren’t actually a real family, but a “corporate selling unit, put together by a company looking to have a family sell to the richest yuppies, young and middle-aged or old, in the area, by creating envy and, ultimately, mass consumption”.

Now where’s that bottle of HCl I bought right after lunch? Man, the sashimi I had was sure soft and malleable.