Newsmaker

Angie Stephen, Royal Caribbean Cruises’ new managing director for Asia-Pacific, compares and contrasts the western cruise market with this region, and finds that digital media proliferation here is shortening the cruise adoption process. Asians are taking quickly to cruising and there’s still plenty for her to learn, she tells Karen Yue

Numerous changes are afoot at Pan Pacific Hotels Group (PPHG), led by Lothar Nessmann who took over the reins as CEO in February 2017. He talks to Karen Yue about pushing for changes that take the organisation forward, adopting technology applications that make sense and keeping the critical dance with travel agents going

Sean Treacy, before leaving the Royal Caribbean Asia-Pacific office for a bigger role as associate vice president strategic planning for international in the Miami headquarters, sat down with Karen Yue for a look back at his three years steering the region's fast-growing cruise market.

Orlando-based Associated Luxury Hotels has morphed into a full service independent hotel chain with its purchase of WorldHotels 18 months ago. Its chief commercial officer Tom Santora, also executive chairman of WorldHotels, shares more about the acquisition synergies

Virtuoso, a global network of travel designers, has existed for more than 30 years – way before the Internet forced travel agents to stop acting as order takers and start being real advisors. Founder Matthew Upchurch never stops exhorting that message to agents. The CEO of Virtuoso talks about how to get more Asian travel experts into its fold.

When she joined then Carlson-Rezidor Hotel Group last September as president Asia-Pacific, she inherited what was largely seen as an unstable regional office while the whole chain was seen as lacking direction. Katerina Giannouka tells Raini Hamdi why that’s old news

Singapore’s Sentosa island is full of big plans – 2030 masterplan, short- and medium-term plans, new marketing plan – CEO Quek Swee Kuan talks about bringing an old favourite into the future

The founder of Country Holidays Singapore discusses why he sold to Scott Dunn. One, their philosophies clicked. Two, he loves his staff. Three, his baby will be stronger faster. To each his own.

Alison Gilmore, director, ILTM Portfolio, discusses carving out the former ILTM Asia into two events, ILTM Asia-Pacific (incorporating ILTM Japan) and ILTM China

By its very meaning, disruption is a disarrangement. Hard to think of it as being ‘constructive’. But Blacklane’s co-founder & CEO Jens Wohltorf tells Raini Hamdi otherwise. Plus, he isn’t worried about autonomous cars disrupting Blacklane