TTG Asia
Asia/Singapore Friday, 19th December 2025
Page 1351

Wild on service

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Marcus Heng

To inspire an appreciation of wildlife among the five million guests that spend a day in our immersive wildlife parks – Jurong Bird Park, Night Safari, River Safari, and Singapore Zoo – we go beyond providing a beautifully landscaped physical environment and curating a diverse living collection.

Marcus Heng

We look within ourselves and believe that the heartware would add a Midas touch to transform a fun day out for our guests into a truly memorable wildlife experience.
Over the last few years, WRS has focused on three areas:

Guest-centricity
The guest is at the core of everything we do, and the key is active listening: feedback forms, focus groups, surveys, social media, phone interactions and face-to-face engagements. Listening helps us identify key strengths and map out areas of improvement.
Guest satisfaction at our parks is a shared responsibility across the organisation, thus multidisciplinary teams are engaged to look into service enhancements.

Heart campaign
We believe in serving from the heart; a warm greeting as guests walk through our gates, a zookeeper personally explaining more about the animals to guests, or a caring operations executive offering an ice-cream to a distressed child who temporarily lost sight of her parents.

Such service takes time and effort to cultivate, and it must begin with a motivated team.
That is what we sought to spark with the Heart service campaign. Over several months, we inspired and imbued staff across various levels of the organisation with the values of Heart: happy, empathetic, attentive, reliable and timely.

An affable zookeeper will foster meaningful interaction with visitors

The Heart service campaign stretches beyond service skills and focuses on the core of why we do what we do in a wildlife park – to inspire our guests to love and appreciate wildlife – and thereby go the extra mile to engage our guests.

The organisation also holds internal service awards to recognise and appreciate staff who display excellent service attitudes and actions, as well as those who have gone above and beyond for our guests, embodying all the Heart values.

Empowerment
Extending a degree of responsibility to guest-facing staff is the organisation’s way of showing that they are trusted with the on-the-ground decisions they make. In return, this trust would create a sense of accountability towards our common goal, and empowers and motivates staff to deliver service excellence.

With motivated and dedicated employees, it will inevitably lead to better guest experience and satisfaction.

Our efforts at service excellence were recently recognised at the Singapore Tourism Awards 2018, where Night Safari was awarded Best Attraction Experience, and one of our stellar team members from Night Safari, Emmey Mohamed bin Nenpari, won the Best Customer Service for Attractions.

Such success does not come overnight, and certainly is the culmination of
many people, processes and culture. We will continue to strive for service excellence.

New hotels: W Xi’an, Best Western Senayan Hotel and more

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W Xi’an, China
Billed as the largest W in the Asia-Pacific, W Hotels’ flagship in north-western China has opened with 385 guestrooms and suites each boasting its own balcony. The hotel’s decor has been inspired by the Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui and Tang dynasties, five ancient dynasties that once called Xi’an home.

Aside from four F&B venues, recreational facilities include an indoor swimming pool, 24-hour gym and Away Spa with five treatment rooms. Event planners can avail the 4,000m2 of versatile function spaces, including the 2,330m2 Great Room which can accommodate up to 1,000 guests. In addition, a digital screen at the end of the pool allows for projected graphics and the ability to host on-water fashion shows.

Best Western Senayan Hotel, Indonesia
Best Western Hotels & Resorts has opened a new property in downtown Jakarta. The modern midscale hotel features 137 contemporary rooms, all equipped with complimentary Wi-Fi. The hotel’s restaurant serves daily buffet breakfast, followed by a choice of local, pan-Asian and international cuisine throughout the day. For corporate travellers, there is a business corner and six meeting rooms. The new-build is also located near to the Jakarta Convention Center and the 76,000-pax capacity Gelora Bung Karno Stadium.

Photo credit: Hoshino Resorts

Hoshino Resorts KAI Sengokuhara, Japan
The 15th KAI-branded property is a Japanese-style hot spring ryokan inn built at an elevation of 700m on the Sengokuhara plateau in the Hakone district. The property features 16 guestrooms in either Japanese- or Western-style, and an outdoor hotspring in every room.

Facilities on-site include a dining space, several larger shared gender-separated hotsprings, a travel library and shop. Kaiseki meals can also be arranged to be had in-room. An annex building, scheduled for completion in November 2018, will be a secluded retreat with only three rooms, surrounded by a grove of trees.

Four Points by Sheraton Sydney, Central Park, Australia
The downtown Sydney hotel, designed by award-winning British architectural firm Foster + Partners, is situated in the Eastern Tower of the Central Park Development on the corner of Abercrombie and Broadway. It offers 297 guestrooms, including two luxury suites. Amenities include the Malt Bar, Central Quarter restaurant, a fitness centre, and 553m2 of function space comprising flexible rooms and an elevated outdoor terrace.

Dual roles for Robert Hauck at Louis T Collection

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Louis T Collection has named Robert C Hauck general manager of the 156-room Galle Face Hotel and area vice president for South Asia.

A hospitality leader with over 25 years of hotel experience across Asia, Europe, South America and the Caribbean, Hauck was most recently general manager of Kanuhura in the Maldives.

The German was previously director of Asian operations for International Group Management, Shanghai, a five-star hotel and private member club at Zhejiang Circuit; and president of Thanyapura in Phuket, Asia’s first sports resort, directing the launch of the mixed-use project.

Hauck was earlier general manager at Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor in Siem Reap; held executive roles at Shangri-La hotels in Taipei, Hong Kong and Pudong; and had assumed other executive positions at Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur; the Fairmont Hamilton Princess, Bermuda; Hotel Oro Verde, Guayaquil, Ecuador; and Kempinski Hotel Furstenhof, Leipzig, Germany.

Airbnb pushes into Sri Lanka’s Experiences scene with tourism board

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Galle Fort Walks, one of the experiences on the platform

Potentially paving the way for regulation in the non-hotel accommodation space in Sri Lanka, Airbnb and the state-owned Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) have announced a strategic partnership to launch Airbnb Experiences in the country.

Airbnb previously partnered the Tourism Authority of Thailand on a similar initiative for local accommodation, but the collaboration in Sri Lanka is the first in Asia where the homesharing giant is working with a NTO to onboard local experience hosts, officials said.

Galle Fort Walks, one of the experiences on the platform

Simran Kodesia, spokesperson for Airbnb in India, told TTG Asia: “We have (rolled out) Experiences in almost 800 cities globally but this is the first time in Asia we have partnered with a tourism authority (rather than) launch Experiences on our own,” she said.

Travellers can now choose from more than 40 Airbnb Experiences in Sri Lanka designed and led by local experts. The experiences range from heritage trails in southern Galle to surfing experiences in southern Mirissa, and adventure walks in Sri Lanka’s national parks (across the island) to discovering the best local food spots in Colombo.

Kavan Ratnayaka, chairman, SLTDA, believes the move “would be of great value to the tourism industry of Sri Lanka”.

Other experiences include tuk-tuk (three-wheel ride) and possibly cricket lessons, said Kodesia.

In the local trade, where lack of regulation of Airbnb-type suppliers is a common grouse, the move is seen as a possible step towards “proper regulation”, said Harith Perera, President – Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators.

Harith added that this bodes well for an outcome where all suppliers on Airbnb register with tourism authorities and pay taxes like formal accommodation providers.

Almost 40 per cent of visitors to Sri Lanka prefer to stay in non-formal accommodation including homestays.

SIA goes full throttle with Alibaba tie-up, launches mileage points sharing with Fliggy

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SIA’s A350-900ULR

Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Alibaba Group have entered a partnership covering flight ticket sales, loyalty programmes, marketing initiatives, cloud services, payments and logistics.

The tie-up represents an extension of a partnership between SIA and Alibaba Group’s affiliate, Alipay, which was introduced as a payment option on SIA’s website in 2013. In 2016, an official SIA flagship store was also launched on what was then known as Alitrip (later rebranded Fliggy), Alibaba’s travel service platform, for direct purchase of SIA flight tickets by consumers in China.

KrisFlyer and Fliggy members will soon be able to convert points both ways

There are over 600 million monthly active mobile users on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces alone, and SIA and Alibaba Group expect to gain actionable customer insights through the new deal, the partners said in a joint statement.

The extended partnership will kick in later this year, when KrisFlyer and Fliggy introduce two-way points conversion, allowing members to enjoy membership perks from both loyalty programmes. SIA and Fliggy also intend to explore further opportunities to sync their respective loyalty programmes and to drive cross-promotion of membership services.

In addition, eligible Fliggy members at certain loyalty programme tiers will be able to earn KrisFlyer Elite Silver or Gold status. Accompanying privileges could include tier bonuses on miles flown, priority reservation waitlist, seat selection privileges and priority baggage handling. Fliggy members who achieve KrisFlyer Elite Gold status can also receive benefits from the entire Star Alliance network, the world’s largest airline alliance.

SIA and Alipay will also work on extending Alipay acceptance beyond flight purchases to also cover in-flight products and services, airport services, retail merchandise and ancillary touchpoints.

In addition, together with Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, SIA will explore how its IT ecosystem – from web hosting to apps and membership systems – can benefit from Alibaba Cloud’s global network. This includes the strong coverage of Alibaba Cloud’s data centres and its capabilities in managing aviation-related resourcing needs through ET Brain, Alibaba Cloud’s proprietary AI programme.

SIA will also work closely with Cainiao Network, the logistics arm of Alibaba Group, to enhance international air cargo services.

“Amid structural changes in our industry, we have been making significant steps to ensure we meet new competitive challenges and deliver on our brand promise to customers. Enhancing our digital capabilities is one of our priorities, and our partnership with Alibaba Group will be an important element in our drive to be a digital aviation leader,” Mak Swee Wah, Singapore Airlines executive vice president commercial.

“Through Alibaba Group’s digital assets and keen insights of Chinese consumer behaviour, we will be able to better understand the needs of our customers and develop more innovative travel solutions to help them explore the world.”

Six Senses picks mixed-used development to plant first Bangkok hotel

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Front row from left: MQDC's Chris Ow, and Visit Malaisira sign with Six Senses' Neil Jacobs, Bernhard Bohnenberger; back row from left: Six Senses' Omar Romero and Gordon Drake

Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas’ first Bangkok property will open in The Forestias, an upcoming 48ha mixed-use development located in the city’s Bangna district.

“Six Senses has chosen The Forestias, its first location in Bangkok, for a 60-room hotel, 36 residences and the group’s first membership club in Asia,” said the company’s CEO Neil Jacobs.

Front row, from left: MQDC’s Chris Ow, and Visit Malaisira with Six Senses’ Neil Jacobs, Bernhard Bohnenberger; back row, from left: Six Senses’ Omar Romero and Gordon Drake

The wide variety of on-site facilities and services, including health and wellness amenities provided by Six Senses’ first membership club in Asia, will enhance the lifestyles of guests and residential owners at Six Senses Forestias, said Jacobs.

The Forestias is spearheaded by Bangkok-based property developer Magnolia Quality Development Corporation (MQDC), which in a statement said the mixed-use project will be built under its ‘sustainnovation’ principle featuring extensive woodlands and green spaces.

Other on-site features will include a medical complex, office building, community centre, condos and residences, a check on The Forestias website revealed.

MQDC’s president for hotels & hospitality, Chris Ow, said the developer would contribute expertise in design and management. “MQDC’s increasing success as a mixed-used property developer is confirmed by this agreement, which follows similar associations with other high-end hotel brands,” he said.

Hotelbeds makes inroads in travel concierge services

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Hotelbeds will make a 24/7 personal assistance hotline available to customers of its travel intermediaries

Hotelbeds Group’s Ancillary Bank has launched a concierge service for use by end consumers of travel intermediaries, following its earlier foray into hotel concierge service with City Expert.

Its first FIT-focused offering, the service is now available in Bangkok and Phuket in Thailand; Punta Cana, Cancun and Riviera Maya in Latin America; as well as Malta and Bodrum in the Mediterranean.

Hotelbeds will make a 24/7 personal assistance hotline available to customers of its travel intermediaries

Javier Arévalo, Ancillary Bank director, Hotelbeds Group, commented: “This allows us to offer the first service focused on FITs, with the goal to offer advice and personalised attention by local experts from the beginning of their stay.”

The new offering will be made available on Hotelbeds Group booking platforms – aimed at FITs – as well as in its wholesale and retail channels – including the Hotelbeds, Tourico Holidays, GTA and Bedsonline brands.

Travellers will be able to access a 24/7 personal assistance hotline operated by local people conversant in both English and Spanish.

The feature is expected to enrich in-destination local experiences for travellers through the expertise of local assistants offering interpretation/translation services, information on local infrastructure, services and transport, arranging and booking tours, tickets, attractions, events, transfers and car rentals, and offering information on culture, lifestyle, sports and local traditions.

A face-to-face meeting with the concierge will also be available on request.

Princess Cruises continues expansion with Enchanted Princess

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Enchanted Princess will be in Europe for her maiden season

Princess Cruises has announced another upcoming member of its expanding fleet, the Enchanted Princess, set for launch in 2020.

Enchanted Princess is expected to make its maiden sail in Europe on June 15, 2020. Bookings for the maiden season, Summer 2020, will open on November 8, 2018.

Enchanted Princess will be in Europe for her maiden season

Construction of the 143,700-ton, 3,660-passenger Enchanted Princess will take place in the Fincantieri Monfalcone shipyard with the ship set to feature an evolution of the design platform used for the cruise line’s previous Royal-Class ships.

Jan Swartz, president of Princess Cruises, said Princess has the strongest pipeline of premium new ship builds in the world. The arrival of Enchanted Princess will be followed by the debut of the sixth Royal-Class vessel for Princess Cruises in 2022.

The cruise line also has two new Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) powered ships on order, bringing its new ship order to five ships in six years.

Princess Cruises currently operates a fleet of 17 cruise ships, sailing voyages around the globe. Enchanted Princess is a sister ship to four other Royal-Class ships in the cruise line’s fleet – Royal Princess, Regal Princess, Majestic Princess and Sky Princess (joining the fleet in October 2019).

Aviareps named Tourism Fiji rep in Singapore and Malaysia

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Dive sites along the Rainbow Reef in Fiji include Fish Factory, Annies Bommies, Nuku Reef and Jerry’s Jelly

Aviareps has been appointed Tourism Fiji’s representative in Singapore and Malaysia.

Tourism Fiji made the appointment with the aim of establishing and strengthening brand awareness and engagement among Singaporean and Malaysian travellers through a mix of trade partnerships and marketing communications activities.

Dive sites along the Rainbow Reef in Fiji include Fish Factory, Annies Bommies, Nuku Reef and Jerry’s Jelly

Aviareps will be responsible for Tourism Fiji’s travel trade development and marketing, as well as marketing communication and public relations efforts through its regional office based in Singapore.

Director for Singapore and Malaysia, Charlene Eng, said: “The team is looking forward to driving more visitation to Fiji and also position Fiji as the preferred destination for leisure and MICE by showcasing Fiji’s exciting offerings through experiential content, thereby driving deeper interest and engagement across the different segments.”

Royal Brunei Airlines gets new country manager for Singapore

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Royal Brunei Airlines (RBA) has appointed Nick Naung Naung as country manager Singapore.

Nick has over 18 years of experience covering various portfolios in commercial and marketing, with seven years in senior level roles.

His past roles includes general manager Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia at Finnair, trade account manager at Air France- KLM and marketing executive at Jetabout-Qantas Holidays.