Sofianos: expansion focus on ownership rather than joint ventures or partnerships
London-based Wings Travel Management is acquiring a 70 per cent stake in Singapore’s Olympia Travels & Tours for an undisclosed sum, a move that will give the former its first operational capabilities in Asia.
While the acquisition is expected to be completed by January 1, 2018, Wings said it has with immediate effect gained a better position to serve its existing customers in Asia from Singapore.
Sofianos: expansion focus on ownership rather than joint ventures or partnerships
The move gives Wings the platform not only to grow its business in Asia-Paific, but also the operational capabilities to fully service clients across the region via a hub and spoke model, the company said in a statement.
Tony Sofianos, CEO of Wings, commented: “As Wings continues to expand globally, our focus remains on wholly owned and controlled operations versus partner agencies or joint ventures so that we can ensure consistency of service, quality and data integrity.”
Nicole Liang has been appointed to the newly created position of vice president, Asia-Pacific, Wings, based in Singapore. She brings 27 years of corporate travel experience in the Asia-Pacific market, with specific strengths in the energy and marine sectors. For the last four years she has held the post of director of operations SEA at FCM Travel Solutions where she founded the TMC’s marine and energy brand. Her career has also included operational roles at Corporate Travel Singapore, CWT Singapore and Instone International.
Liang previously director of operations SEA at FCM Travel Solutions
Established in 1992, Wings has clients in the corporate, oil, gas and marine industries – and a reach that spans North America, South America, UK/Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It has 16 wholly owned and managed regional operations in key locations worldwide including Aberdeen, Cape Town, Dammam, Dubai, Houston, Johannesburg, Lagos, Luanda, London, Maputo, Stavanger and Rio de Janeiro. Wings said it employs over 400 people around the world and has a global turnover of around US$325 million.
Olympia is a medium-sized corporate travel company servicing clients in the energy, marine and corporate sectors. The company employs 30 travel management professionals, according to the statement.
Shoppers at the Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport
Philippine tourism secretary Wanda Teo is optimistic that more global premium brands would increase their duty-free retail presence in the country in anticipation of steady growth in Chinese arrivals.
“The Philippines is in a position to join the ranks of countries whose duty-free industry is expected to grow by an average of 40 per cent in the next decade,” said Teo at the recently-concluded 2017 Duty Free & Travel Retail Global Summit held at Cannes, France.
Shoppers at the Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport
During a meeting at the summit, Clarins general manager for travel retail for the Asia-Pacific region, Alexandre Callens, told secretary Teo that with the recent approval and implementation of the Visa Upon Arrival (VUA) for Chinese tourists in the country, the brand will be expanding their presence in the Duty-Free Philippines (DFP) stores, according to a statement.
Callens added Clarins would also be deploying Mandarin-speaking sellers knowing that beauty products need explaining when being sold.
And in a meeting with Chanel managing director for travel retail for the Asia-Pacific region Herve Ducros, Teo was told the brand is set to open a section in DFP in 1Q2018.
Ducros is confident the Chanel brand will attract high-spenders, especially Chinese tourists, said the statement.
“Bringing in (more) global premium brands would be an additional incentive to attract more Chinese tourists, particularly the luxury segment,” Teo added.
In July this year, China outranked the US to become the Philippines’ second top tourist source market, next to South Korea.
Some key tourist spots lie safe outside the affected zone
Tourism stakeholders in Indonesia are downplaying what some say to be unwarranted fears over volcanic activity in the country.
Amid concern surrounding activity at Mount Agung in Bali, another volcano in Karo district, North Sumatra, erupted last Thursday, spewing a column of volcanic ashes 2,000m high, followed by tremors and ashes scattered 1,500m down to the south and 2,000m to the east and southeast of the mountain slopes.
Some key tourist spots lie safe outside the affected zone
No casualty was reported during the eruption which took at 02.45 local time.
Further downplaying the situation, spokesperson of the National Disaster Management Agency, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, said: “The (local) people are used to witnessing Mount Sinabung’s eruptions since the mountain was declared high alert in June 2015. It has erupted since then.”
Sutopo however advised locals and travellers to refrain from any activities within a three-kilometre radius from the top, and also warned people living and having activities around the rivers with the headwaters at the mountain to watch out for lava floods in rainy weather.
Mount Sinabung had been dormant for 1,200 years before starting to erupt in the 2010 to 2011 period, and again in 2013.
Meanwhile, on the situation in Bali, Herman Hoven, general manager of Khiri Travel Indonesia, said reports and social media comments have “created an unwarranted fear factor while the situation on the ground in Bali remains calm and tourism operators remain fully open for business”.
“There has been no explosion. There may never be. And the vast majority of Bali’s tourism activities take place between 30 and 60km from Mount Agung, at a safe distance,” he said.
Ubud is 30km from Mount Agung and 55km from Denpasar – both comfortably beyond the Balinese government’s current 12km exclusion radius around the volcano, according to a Khiri statement.
And while travel advisories admit that volcanic ash clouds may cause aviation disruption if Mount Agung erupts, Hoven said “that remains a distant and hypothetical scenario”.
Hoven shared that there had been at least a 20 per cent drop in tourism bookings in the Bali tourism sector at large, since Mount Agung volcano started to show increased signs of activity in the third week of September.
A spike in technology adoption rates in the trade sees not just millennials but consumers across all ages using the services.
Industry players that have adopted technology in recent months include Flight Centre with its new mobile-augmented services, Dynasty Travel offering Samsung Pay as a mode of payment, Singapore Tourism Board’s collaboration with Alipay, and KLM enabling bookings via Facebook Messenger.
Mobile users seen as lucrative market in travel
In Singapore, daily mobile usage time clocks in more than 12 hours, said Callum Brown, general manager, Flight Centre Asia, quoting a study by The New Paper.
Flight Centre recently introduced mobile consulting, which enables customers to arrange for a meet-up with a consultant at a location of their choice via WhatsApp, live chat, email and more.
The agency’s digital strategy aims to cast a wide net over “all generations (which) have become increasingly mobile savvy, including the baby boomers”, said Brown.
Since launching WhatsApp and live chat, Flight Centre has seen a five-fold and a year-on-year 155 per cent growth in enquiries for each respective medium.
Similarly, Dynasty Travel sees mobile users as a “highly lucrative market”, and has begun channelling more funds into digital advertising and platforms, said Alicia Seah, its director of public relations & communications.
She said the agency is increasing its digital social media budget from 10 per cent to 25 per cent of its overall 2018 budget.
In this move “to evolve from a single channel of interaction (in-store) to omni-channel” interaction, Dynasty aims to bring more products and services onto mobile platforms, said Seah.
The shift into mobile technology is not without its challenges. Brown shared: “There was an initial concern (about) real-time replies, as consumers expect to have their queries addressed almost immediately.”
However, employee adoption and training proved easier than anticipated, and Flight Centre’s staff was “able to quickly adapt to such technological changes”, said Brown.
For companies facing employee inertia, government-led initiatives and on-going training should be prioritised, opined Andrew Chan, founder and CEO of ACI HR Solutions.
He added: “Ideally, with widespread access to mobile technology, training could also be implemented digitally, thereby allowing the organisation’s employees access to new and relevant information.”
He also cautioned that “should a company be reluctant to invest in digital training for their employees, the organisation can expect to face a high turnover rate and the possibility of losing its staff to competitors”.
Singapore well-suited to families and baby boomers
Singapore and Tokyo placed among weekenGO’s top 10 cities for baby boomers to visit for the weekend, but Asian destinations were absent from the ranking of best cities for millennial travel.
Singapore ranked sixth best city for baby boomers to spend a weekend in. With an overall ranking of 27th, the city placed well (11th) for families too, but is much less favoured for millennial travel (31st).
Singapore well-suited to families and baby boomers
The Lion City fared best in mobility (ranked second, scoring 96.13), security (ranked 14th, scoring 96.06) and dining (ranked 17th, scoring 95.15).
It did not do so well, however, on measures of walkability (84th, 81.72), concerts (74th, 77.88) and LGBT-friendliness (71st, 80.30).
With top marks (100) for dining is Tokyo, placing it close behind Singapore in eighth spot for baby boomer travel. Japan’s capital also did well on measures of mobility (89.3), cultural events (94.24) and security (98.49).
Meanwhile, weekenGO’s 10 best cities for millennial travel are (in order) Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Paris, Toronto, Zurich, Dublin, Munich and Edinburgh.
To determine best cities for millennials, factors such as LGBT-friendliness, women safety, concerts, clubs, bars, accommodation, green spaces, walkability and mobility were considered.
While Asian cities did not make the top 10 for millennial travel, Shanghai snatched the winning score for the best club options.
AirAsia Group chief executive Tony Fernandes last Saturday wedded his South Korean girlfriend, known to the media only as Chloe, in the French Riviera or Cote d’Azur.
Fernandes and his wife had been dating for over two years, reported the New Straits Times.
Wedding bells a-ringing: Fernandes sporting a three-piece suit and his beautiful wife in an off-shoulder, mermaid-cut number
CIMB Group chairman and brother of Malaysian prime minister, Nazir Razak, was the best man at the wedding.
Congratulations Tony & Chloe from all of us at TTG Asia.
Having completed the GTA acquisition on October 4, Hotelbeds Group’s executive chairman Joan Vilà envisions “a whole new company” and one that will help hoteliers and the trade to reduce dependency on the two unicorns, Priceline and Expedia groups.
It is undecided yet if the GTA and Tourico brands – acquisition of the latter was completed in June – will be kept, with Vilà saying that’s a “secondary” concern to be decided later, while the primary “big” task is to integrate “three specific companies into one new company with a new culture that will make it a great place to work”.
Hotelbeds’ acquisition of GTA completed, now on to integration
“You know, the price is too big too fail,” he told TTG Asia in a phone interview from Palma, Spain, adding that he guarantees the birth of a new organisation whose consolidation is driven by growth, not cost cuts.
To understand the scale of the integration, a source tipped that the combined value of the GTA and Tourico acquisitions is some 1.3 billion euros (US$1.5 billion), with GTA being “the bigger buy, but not much bigger”.
That’s about as much as what Cinven and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board paid to TUI for Hotelbeds Group itself in September 2016, tipped to be around 1.2 billion euros.
Combined, the new group will have 8,300 employees, around 1,600 from GTA and 800 from Tourico.
Its marketshare shoots up to 15 per cent, from seven to eight per cent currently, observed the source, reflecting a sector that is highly fragmented, which means plenty of growth opportunities still for Hotelbeds Group.
According to Vilà, a new management team is already taking shape and leading the integration, and it includes leaders from GTA and Tourico.
“At the top of company, we have myself, Carlos Munoz (MD, Bedbanks) and Andres Garcia-Tenorio (Finance & Strategy). Yes we come from Hotelbeds (Group) but below that we have plenty of leaders from the three companies and people are pleased about this,” said Vilà.
He pointed to CEO of Tourico, Asi Ginio, as having taken an important responsibility (for Commercial & Strategic Partnerships), while CEO of GTA, Ivan Walter, “is going to take an important role in the integration”.
“His knowledge of the business is deep, and he’s had this critical position at GTA, so he will help us a lot in the coming months,” said Vilà.
Asked what results he would like to see for a year after integration, Vilà said: “I’d like to see two things, one internal related and one external.
“Internally, in a year’s time, we are almost there working as a single company, with many of the functions completed and integrated, and we are much better as three (combined) than standalone.
“Externally, we are big enough to be the true alternative for hoteliers who want to reduce dependency on the two big players (referring to Priceline and Expedia groups). You’ve seen how some hoteliers, though mainly in the US, talk of an oligopoly situation, so this increase in size and scale will make us more attractive to hoteliers. They see that we can be a very good, independent distribution channel because we don’t want to steal their clients, we don’t compete with them.
“For all the OTAs, tour operators and travel agencies, we will improve a lot in the number of hotels we have, and many of these hotels will have special agreements and conditions with us. So they (the trade) will think we are big enough, they don’t have to work with our competitors the big two as they have a choice, one that offers them excellent rates and portfolio of products for their customers.”
This is why Vilà believes a successful integration will result in a lot of growth for the group. “The primary driver of consolidation is growth. Hotelbeds was market leader but its market share was not big enough. Now there’s plenty of business and we should capture the growth.
“Being bigger, we can invest more in technology, systems and best practices to satisfy our clients and deliver the service they expect. Of course when you consolidate, there will be some duplications, for example, instead of three technology platforms, there will be just one in the future, but we will spend more on technology. (Manpower) costs may reduce (as a result of duplicated roles), but growth will favour hiring new people.”
Winding Tree to launch a token sale of its cryptocurrency "Líf"
A Swiss-based startup is dedicating itself to “the reorganisation of travel distribution”, starting by building the first public blockchain-based marketplace for travel content with the Lufthansa Group on board as content partner.
With a decentralised B2B marketplace system powering blockchain-based travel booking transactions, startups and companies will be able to gain direct access to travel service providers’ offerings without the need for many intermediaries, according to the startup, Winding Tree.
Winding Tree to launch a token sale of its cryptocurrency “Líf”
Winding Tree envisions that in the future, airlines, hotels and other travel service providers will offer their services on its platform, and companies interested in content will only connect to its B2B marketplace to present specific offers, which will result in a large number of new apps for travellers.
“Lufthansa Group has engaged in the development of APIs, for instance supporting IATA NDC standard, to offer a direct access to its offers to customers and distribution partners”, said Markus Binkert, senior vice president distribution & revenue management Lufthansa Group Airlines.
“By integrating these APIs with Winding Tree’s public blockchain Lufthansa Group enables all innovative partners who develop cutting-edge travel applications to access these offers via a decentralised and intermediate-free travel marketplace.”
In order to finance the initial development and facilitate acceptance by suppliers, Winding Tree will on November 1 launch a token sale of its cryptocurrency “Líf”. Lufthansa Group will participate in the presale upon regulatory clearance from Swiss authorities.
The contact with Winding Tree was established via the Lufthansa Innovation Hub.
Malaysia Airports Holdings will introduce airside transfer check-in service at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and LCC terminal klia2 from next year.
The new service is expected to provide greater convenience to passengers with onward international destinations as they will not be required to check out their baggage at the point of transit, explained Malaysia Airports Holdings managing director, Badlisham Ghazali, in a Bernama report.
Part of the company’s larger modernisation plans, the transfer will be introduced at both KLIA and klia2. Badlisham also announced that both passengers and their baggage will be transferred free between both terminals.
Ally Bhoonee, executive director of World Avenues, said: “While it is a good improvement in services, there is an operational issue that needs to be addressed. There must also be interlining baggage between different airlines which do not have codeshare agreements. For example, if someone were to travel by Emirates from Dubai to KLIA, then proceeds on to Laos on AirAsia departing from klia2, their bags must be tagged correctly all the way through so that he collects it in the final destination.”
Agreeing, Adam Kamal, manager, Aidil Travel, said: “More international passengers will use airlines flying into Kuala Lumpur if Malaysia Airports can resolve the issue of interlining baggage between two different PNR numbers. The airlines that will benefit are the local carriers. Providing free shuttle services between the two airport terminals makes it very convenient and (saves cost) for passengers.”
