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Emirates and Huawei reaffirm cooperation

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TTR WEEKLY
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DUBAI, UAE, 3 October 2022: Emirates welcomed Eric Tan, Vice President, Consumer BG Global Ecosystem Development and Operations Department, Huawei, at the group’s headquarters, received by Boutros Boutros, Divisional Senior Vice President Corporate Communications, Marketing and Brand, and Orhan Abbas, Senior Vice President Commercial Operations (Far East) at Emirates.

During the meeting last week, both global brands explored ways to develop their partnership and initiatives further to improve customer experiences in the ever-evolving tech sector. Emirates and Huawei also discussed the latest innovations and future trends in travel and technology, reaffirming their commitment to mutually beneficial projects in the MENA region and mainland China.

The Emirates App is currently available on Appgallery in all Huawei smart devices, including Huawei’s smartwatches. Earlier this year, Emirates and Huawei enhanced their partnership by signing another Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai to establish further mutual activities that increase user reach and brand awareness. The airline has also been able to provide customer-centric initiatives that elevate the user experience of the Emirates app for Huawei smart device users through this partnership.

For more information, visit www.emirates.com.

(Your Stories: Emirates)

Klook doubles down on inspiring travel

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TTR WEEKLY
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SINGAPORE, 3 October 2022: Travel and experiences platform, Klook reports accelerated 300% quarter-on-quarter cross-border travel growth in the Asia Pacific as it celebrates its eighth anniversary.

Claiming the pandemic is now in the rearview mirror, Klook records a more than 140% yearly increase in searches on the platform. Destinations such as Singapore, Korea, Australia, and Malaysia are recovering strongly, with Klook exceeding its pre-Covid-19 cross-border revenue by 40% for its best-performing markets.

Klook has seen a surge in interest since Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan reopened their doors to tourists, indicating high travel demand. Since Japan’s reopening announcement, the company has seen a 10-fold increase in searches for Japan, with Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore travellers driving this demand.

Rail passes and car rentals are in high demand as travellers plan their main travel routes and transportation options. Revenge travel is in full swing in Japan, with Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Hokkaido and Okinawa being popular searches for cities.

“Aside from exceeding pre-pandemic revenue in many of our markets, our strong 2Q demonstrates the strength of the brand and the industry in which we operate,” said Klook co-founder and chief executive officer Ethan Lin.

Klook is collaborating with tourism boards on multi-faceted partnerships to rebuild travel confidence and accelerate tourism recovery. These collaborations include creating engaging content to rekindle wanderlust, co-curating new experiences to cater to changing consumer behaviours, and creative regional marketing campaigns to encourage consumers to travel again. It has announced partnerships with the Singapore Tourism Board, the Tourism Authority of Thailand, the Korea Tourism Organization, and Tourism Australia.

“After more than two years of the pandemic, the future of travel looks promising as we seize this opportunity to empower the next generation of travellers and bookable experiences,” said Kook co-founder & chief operating officer Eric Gnock Fah.

To cater to evolving consumer habits and make discovering and booking experiences more seamless, Klook will introduce several platform upgrades.

One is re-engineering the destination discovery feed powered by user-generated content (UGC) from Klook’s repository of over 7 million verified user reviews. Klook will also introduce a new trip feature, which allows users to automatically generate personalised trip itineraries that they can share easily with friends and family.

Klook is partnering with its merchants to introduce prizes and the best travel deals for consumers. The first round of deals came into play on 30 September and remain open for bookings until 14 October. Consumers can participate in activities such as the Klook Joy Roulette, 8 pm Flash Deals and Daily Destination Deals. The Klook Travel Fest is also back in full force, and travellers can expect an extended week of deals and offline events across Southeast Asia featuring fun games, special deals, entertainment and destination booths to inspire consumers to re-discover the joy of travel.

One keystroke taps cheap fares

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TTR WEEKLY
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SINGAPORE, 3 October 2022: Flightsfinder.com has launched a new global flight search platform that enables consumers to search the world’s best flight aggregators from one dashboard, promising to save up to 20% on airfares.

FlightFinder.com’s CEO Shahab Siddiqui explains: “Not many people know you can have vastly different prices between the flight aggregators for the same flight route. To ensure the best deal, you must compare multiple flight aggregators, which the new FlightsFinder platform allows consumers to do effortlessly.”

The new site (previously cheapflightsfinder.com) now ‘flashes’ the cheapest options in the upgraded dashboard, making it convenient to see the cheapest flight prices sourced from more than 10 leading metasearch engines.

Vast price differences can exist on a single flight route – For example, a week’s return flight from London to Doha, Qatar leaving on 20 November and returning on 27 November 2022 (Fifa World Cup), garnered the following different flight results:

KAYAK – cheapest: UKP772 – direct/nonstop: UKP833
Skyscanner – cheapest: UKP854 – direct/nonstop: UKP854
Kiwi.com – cheapest: UKP638 – direct/nonstop: UKP1031
Jetradar – cheapest UKP854: direct/nonstop: UKP854
Google flights – cheapest: UKP850, direct/nonstop: UKP850
Skiplagged – cheapest: UKP608 – direct/nonstop: UKP750

As you can see, there are vast differences in price for the cheapest and direct/nonstop flight options, which exist on almost every different flight route.

It is unpredictable which search engine will deliver the best value for a particular route. That is why searching multiple aggregator sites is imperative to know the best deal.

About FlightsFinder

FlightsFinder’s Meta-Meta Flight Search allows consumers to compare prices from top online aggregators, including KAYAK, Skyscanner, Kiwi.com, Jetradar, momondo, Skiplagged, Google Flights and others.

FlightsFinder (previously CheapFlightsFinder) was established in 2008 by web developer Shahab Siddiqui who has been featured in numerous news outlets, offering expert advice on how consumers can save money on their trips. He has appeared in The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Mirror, Tnooz, Travolution, The Huffington Post and This is Money.

(Source: FlightsFinder)

Cathay coaches chatbots

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TTR WEEKLY
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HONG KONG, 3 October 2022: Cathay is improving its customers’ digital experience by launching an advanced conversational artificial intelligence (AI) in partnership with Fano Labs, a Hong Kong-based language AI company.

The new conversational AI developed in partnership with Fano Labs will improve the efficiency and productivity of the airline’s AI chatbots, enabling them to provide more accurate responses to customers’ queries.

Photo Credit: Cathay Pacific.

As demand for travel returns, Cathay is anticipating an increase in call and chat traffic volume, with post-Covid travel enquiries growing rapidly in the past few months. The airline has also seen a shift in customer behaviours, turning from traditional hotlines to digital channels such as WhatsApp and WeChat for more instant responses. Digital channel usage has experienced monthly growth of 10-20% over recent months as Cathay continues to add back more flight capacity.

The most challenging task is to find large volumes of high-quality data to train the chatbot to understand what people are asking and why to provide proper responses. Such chatbot training is often time-consuming and expensive, requiring human “AI Trainers” to look at historical data to see how customers interacted with the chatbot, manually extract, clean, and annotate useful portions of this historical data, and then feed it back into the chatbot for learning.

To address these challenges, Cathay and Fano Labs have become one of the first in the market to have successfully developed and launched the Conversational AI Training Excellence platform that uses AI technologies to train AI chatbots. The “Trainer AI” leverages Fano Labs’ Callinter product to analyse interactions with customers, including voice calls, live chats, WeChat messages, and WhatsApp messages, and automatically group these data into different categories for further processing before presenting the results to a human supervisor for review and approval. The AI chatbot then learns from the data extracted by the trainer AI.

With this system in place, Cathay expects to reduce the time needed to train chatbots by 50%, meaning a regular four to six-week learning cycle will be shortened to just one or two weeks.

Cathay Director Digital and IT Lawrence Fong said: “As a company with more than seven decades in Hong Kong, we are committed to supporting local tech startups such as Fano Labs and innovating together to build our digital leadership – a pillar for achieving our vision of becoming one of the world’s greatest service brands. This collaborative effort in Conversational AI technology is the latest example of how we can collaborate with startups to develop mutually beneficial partnerships and ultimately bring benefits and enhanced service to our customers.”

Hong Kong Sevens tickets on sale

By
Don Ross
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HONG KONG, 30 September 2022: Ticket sales opened Thursday for the Hong Kong Sevens that resumes 4 to 6 November in the Hong Kong Stadium after a pause of over three years.

Early bird tickets were available through digital and online channels on Wednesday, with sales going public a day later. Tickets to the event sell at HKD1,195 (Games Friday to Sunday 4 to 6 November)

Last July, The Hong Kong Rugby Union confirmed it had gained approval from the Hong Kong Government to proceed with the Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens scheduling the event for 4 to 6 November 2022.

Since then, the government has eased entry rules step by step, with the latest allowing travellers to enter Hong Kong without having to quarantine in a hotel for three days.

HKRU Chairman Patrick Donovan said: “After 3 ½ years without a Sevens, I am confident this will be a very special event, albeit there lies plenty of hard work ahead for our dedicated events team.”

Teams from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Fiji, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, New Zealand, Samoa, South Africa, Spain, USA, Uruguay and Hong Kong have confirmed their participation.

Latest entry rules

Last week, the Hong Kong government introduced its “0+3” programme. Travellers can enter the territory without undergoing a pre-flight PCR test or a three-night hotel quarantine.

However, all inbound passengers must undergo a PCR test on arrival in Hong Kong to receive an amber health pass, followed by medical surveillance at the hotel they booked for three days.

On day 1 and day 2 of their hotel stay, they can leave the hotel but cannot enter places such as restaurants, bars, fitness centres, nightclubs, swimming pools, barber shops or “high risk” venues that require a vaccine pass.

On day 2, travellers take a PCR test, and if a negative, a blue health pass is issued that allows them full access to Hong Kong as of day 3.

It’s far from perfect and costly as it requires travellers to book a hotel for two nights before they can embark on serious travel activities. In the case of the Hong Kong Sevens, the event requires a three-night stay for the duration of the games. However, travellers will have to book a hotel for two additional nights to cover the two days of medical surveillance before being free to attend the opening games on Friday.

Last day to grab AirAsia App bargain

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TTR WEEKLY
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BANGKOK, 30 September 2022: Today is the last day to grab a discount of up to 50%  on airline tickets sold on the AirAsia Super App.

The three-day sale on tickets cuts out at midnight on 30 September, although travel validity remains open through to 30 June 2023,

The digital travel and lifestyle platform run by AirAsia sells tickets on flights offered by 700 leading airlines to over 3,000 destinations worldwide.

AirAsia’s Super Flash Sale offers up to 50% discounts capped at THB1620 THB with no minimum spending required for all routes from all airlines when booked through the AirAsia Super App.

AirAsia Super App Thailand, country head Nattinee Tawanchulee said: “More and more countries are reopening their borders, and the announcement by the Japanese government lifting the travel restrictions and granting free tourist visas for Thais is a welcome move.

“We have been observing a steady increase in air travel demand as many have eagerly anticipated the opportunity to travel again. This trend is clear from the 185% surge in AirAsia Super App searches for Japan, a favourite destination for many Thai travellers. A similar trend is evident for other international and domestic routes, becoming even more apparent as we approach the end-of-year travel season.

“Everyone can now plan their trips near and far with over 700 airlines on our platform, from budget to full-service carriers, and make it better with discounts to meet the demands of avid travellers of every lifestyle.”

She was referring to Japan’s recent announcement to reopen its border starting on 11 October 2022 for independent travellers. It also includes the resumption of unlimited free tourist visas for Thais who can travel independently once more to the Land of the Rising Sun.

Tokyo remains the most sought-after destination in Japan for AirAsia Super App users in Thailand, with flights landing at Tokyo-Narita getting the most number of searches, followed by Osaka, Fukuoka, Tokyo-Haneda and Sapporo. The search data also shows December is the most popular vacation month, followed by November and October. Despite the surge in demand for international travel, domestic bookings remain robust in Thailand for Q4 2022, with Bangkok ranking as the top destination, followed by Samui, Udon Thani, Chiang Mai, and Ubon Ratchathani.

PATA Nepal Chapter honours its trailblazers

By
Don Ross
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KATHMANDU, 30 September 2022: Pacific Asia Travel Association Nepal Chapter celebrated its 47th anniversary on World Tourism Day, 27 September, by officially announcing details of the 4th Himalayan Travel Mart (HTM) scheduled for mid-2023. 

Established on 26 September 1975, the PATA Nepal Chapter is just three years short of celebrating its 50 anniversary.

As part of World Tourism Day celebrations, PATA Nepal Chapter launched a promotional video to announce the 4th Himalayan Travel Mart (HTM) to be held in Nepal from 6 to 9 June 2023. PATA Nepal Chapter organised three highly successful editions of HTM in 2017, 2018 and 2019, before the global Covid-19 pandemic shut down tourism.

At the World Tourism Day event, the chapter posthumously bestowed the prestigious PATA Lifetime Achievement Award on the late Joti Lai Khanna, founder of Yeti Travels, “with great respect, honour and heartfelt appreciation for his invaluable contribution to the association, and his lifelong dedication of more than 45 Years promoting tourism in Nepal.”

The chapter also presented the ‘PATA Personality of the Year 2021 Award’ to Deepak Raj Joshi in recognition of his “advocacy, engagement, and tireless contributions toward the promotion, sustainable development, and revival of Nepal’s tourism sector during the global Covid-19 pandemic.”

Meet and greet with a football legend

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TTR WEEKLY
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BANGKOK, 30 September 2022: Centara Hotels & Resorts, in partnership with World Football Legends, hosted former England, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur legend Teddy Sheringham at an exclusive meet-and-greet event for more than 50 lucky CentaraThe1 members, guests and followers on Wednesday, at Uno Mas restaurant, Centara Grand at CentralWorld Bangkok.

‘An Audience with Teddy Sheringham’ began with an engaging Q&A session where Sheringham answered questions from eager fans and was followed with drinks and tapas from one of Bangkok’s most renowned Spanish restaurants during an exclusive autograph and photograph session. The night ended with laughter and memories that will stay with Sheringham’s fans forever.

Sheringham is known as one of England’s finest forwards of modern times. In a professional career spanning almost 25 years, Sheringham played for six different clubs and scored nearly 300 goals, with a trophy-laden period at Manchester United sandwiched between two spells at Tottenham. At Old Trafford, Sheringham was part of the treble-winning side of 1998-1999, memorably scoring the equaliser and setting up the winner as United beat Bayern Munich 2-1 in the Champions League final on a magical night in Barcelona.

Sheringham also scored 11 times in 51 appearances for his country as an England international player. He finished his career at Colchester United, making his final professional appearance on 26 April 2008 at age 42, after more than 700 career league appearances. Sheringham was inducted into the National Football Museum Hall of Fame at a ceremony in London in 2009.

(Your Stories: Centara Hotels & Resorts)

Martial arts take a cruise

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TTR WEEKLY
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SINGAPORE, 30 September 2022: Princess Cruises has formed an exclusive martial arts partnership with FUJI Sports and FUJI Mats, the worldwide leading supplier of premium mats and facility equipment.

The partnership will offer martial arts competitions, seminars and events at sea, including one themed cruise.

The “Princess and FUJI Adventures Cruise” will depart from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a seven-night Caribbean cruise onboard Sky Princess, 7 to 14 January 2023. It will visit Princess Cays in the Bahamas, San Juan & Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic and Grand Turk.

The themed cruise will feature martial arts experts and Olympians to engage families and enthusiasts with seminars, networking opportunities, family competitions, co-branded gear and culinary demonstrations with celebrity chefs, and shoreside martial arts events in ports of call.

As the outfitter and equipment provider for more than 18 million martial arts competitors and academies worldwide, FUJI Sports will now become an exclusive partner to Princess Cruises, alongside its sister brand, FUJI Mats.

“Princess connects people, places and cultures around the world with amazing experiences, and we’re confident this Princess and the FUJI Adventures Cruise will be an unforgettable week at sea with fantastic food, beverage and entertainment,” said Princess Cruises president John Padgett.

“Princess welcomes the leading brand in martial arts with millions of enthusiasts worldwide on special event cruises and to enjoy Princess cruises going forward for all their leisure travel vacations. It is a privilege to host a multi-generational multi-cultural global community focused on health, discipline, learning and wisdom.”

FUJI Sports and FUJI Mats is co-owned by Lia Hatashita and two-time Olympic Bronze Medalist and judo world champion Jimmy Pedro.

“Martial Arts is one of my life’s passions, and I share this bond across friends, families and professional engagements,” said Pedro, a two-time Olympic Bronze Medalist, judo world champion and co-owner of FUJI Sports and FUJI Mats. “This partnership with Princess recognises the significance and multi-generational reach of the martial arts community and elevates our ability to progress our mission to share martial arts experiences in fun and unique ways.”

“Today, over 50 years after FUJI Sports was founded, the company has expanded from a small mom-and-pop shop into a company reaching all parts of the globe,” said FUJI Sports co-owner Lia Hatashita. “What I love about the company is the passion and enthusiasm from our staff members who have deep knowledge and understanding of martial arts. And in January 2023, FUJI will take this passion to the open seas for the first time.”

Visit: www.princess.com

(Your Stories: Princess Cruises)

Creative Travel wins tourism award

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TTR WEEKLY
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NEW DELHI, 30 September 2022: Creative Travel wins a national tourism award from the Government of India presented at a ceremony on 27 September, World Tourism Day.

Creative Travel CEO Rohit Kohli and senior executive Dimple Singh received the accolade on behalf of the Creative family of brands.

Photo credit: Creative Travel.

Commenting on the prestigious award, Kohli said: “A company is not made of brick & mortar, but of the people working there. Words are not enough to express our gratitude for the men and women who have stayed with us over the past two difficult years. They make us what we are.”

The National Tourism Award for Excellence in Tourism covering the period 2018 to 2019 recognised the travel firm for its inspiring work in experiential incentive travel programmes.

On his Facebook page, Kohli dedicated the award to the memory of “our dearest departed colleague, Sanjay Bhatt, whom we lost in the early pandemic. He led his team to achieve this accolade for the Creative Family.”

Besides its pioneering role in India’s tourism industry, Creative Travel is a highly respected Pacific Asia Travel Association member.

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