The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) has appointed Gloria Guevara Manzo as its new president & CEO, replacing David Scowsill who left the London-based organisation after six years at the helm.

Guevara served as secretary of tourism for Mexico and CEO of the Mexican Tourism Board from 2010 to 2012, minister in the cabinet of President Calderón.

Prior to that she worked for global distribution system Sabre where she was most recently CEO of Sabre Mexico, reporting to the board of directors of a joint venture between Aeroméxico, Mexicana and Sabre Holdings.

She is currently special advisor on government affairs for the Centre on Health and the Global Environment at the School of Public Health, Harvard.

Guevara, a Mexican national, is married with a son and a daughter.

Pan Pacific Hotels Group (PPHG) has announced its first serviced suites property in Indonesia, slated to open in the capital city by 2020.

Located along Jalan Thamrin in the CBD, Pan Pacific Serviced Suites Jakarta will offer 161 units across levels 47 to 58 in the North Tower of Indonesia 1. The tower is part of a 19,000m² mixed-development, which comprises offices, commercial spaces, and entertainment and retail offerings.

PPHG’s openings this year include Pan Pacific Melbourne, which just opened last week, while Pan Pacific Beijing and Pan Pacific Yangon will debut in their respective cities in September.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Tourism and AirAsia will jointly promote Indonesian destinations in Malaysia in a newly launched collaboration.

The collaboration will see both parties focusing on marketing efforts in terms of brand advertising, promotional activities and activations across various areas including digital, print, radio, in-flight branding and consumer travel fairs.

Aireen Omar, CEO of AirAsia, said: “This partnership could not be more timely as we have been seeing robust demand for Malaysia and Indonesia. In 2016, we (flew) over four million guests between both countries to contribute significantly to the tourist arrivals last year and this is only a fraction of the potential we can achieve.”

AirAsia connects Malaysia with Indonesia through more than 350 weekly flights to 15 different cities such as Banda Aceh, Bandung, Bali, Jakarta, Lombok, Medan, Pekanbaru, Palembang, Padang, Pontianak, Semarang, Solo, Surabaya, Makassar and Yogyakarta.

The airline also recently upped frequencies on several Indonesia routes and launched Kuching-Pontianak flights to meet the growing travel demand.

RCI, a division of Wyndham Worldwide, has acquired London-based Love Home Swap to broaden its appeal to a new base of holidaymakers and strengthen its position in the global alternative holiday accommodation sector.

Gordon Gurnik, president of RCI, said: “Through this acquisition we expand the exchange options we offer travellers and strengthen our footprint in key growth markets across the globe.”

Building on a previous investment in the company in 2015, the acquisition will see Love Home Swap come under the RCI family of brands and benefit from the core competencies RCI has developed over the past four decades, including inventory management, member marketing and analytics.

The company is also expected to enjoy additional resources that come with being part of an established hospitality player, along with potential access to Wyndham’s global portfolio.

While Love Home Swap will continue to run as an independent brand marketed separately from RCI, their similarities allow for greater collaboration to foster growth and provide future travel benefits to their respective members.

Love Home Swap founder, Debbie Wosskow, will stay on as an advisor to ensure a smooth transition into the RCI family, while former chief commercial officer Ben Wosskow will oversee the daily operations of the business in his new role as managing director.

Melbourne’s city centre will see the rise of a vertical dual hotel development combining a Novotel and ibis in late 2018, after AccorHotels struck a deal with Singapore-based Well Smart Group.

The ibis Melbourne Little Lonsdale Street, taking up the lower tier of a 36-storey tower, will comprise 270 premium economy guestrooms, while Novotel Melbourne Little Lonsdale Street will offer 213 rooms in the upper tier.

Floors in between the two hotels will house the shared facilities including the lobby, two F&B venues, gym, as well as 10 meeting and event spaces. The hotel will also share back of house facilities from kitchen to engineering, common areas, and even staff in housekeeping and finance.

AccorHotels’ COO Pacific, Simon McGrath, said: “With development real estate in CBD locations becoming increasingly sparse and construction costs soaring, it makes perfect sense to literally scale up and maximise the investment across a number of brands and price points.”

Novotel and ibis Melbourne Little Lonsdale Street will expand AccorHotels’ presence in central Melbourne to more than 25 hotels and 3,600 rooms.

B2B travel distributor FIT Ruums has struck a partnership deal with China Airlines to provide exclusive dynamic packages for travellers in Taiwan.

Under the new agreement, a tailored collection of 15,000 hotels from FIT Ruums’ global inventory will be packaged together with China Airlines’ exclusive airfares, which are then provided to an appointed group of Taiwan’s top travel agencies for offer to their customers. More properties are expected to be added to the partnership in future.

These packages, which will be available from early August on the appointed agencies’ websites, will offer travellers savings of up to 25 per cent than if they book hotels and flights separately, according to FIT Ruums.

Building on Taiwanese travellers’ strong demand for intra-Asian travel, the majority of the destinations featured in the partnership are located in the Asia-Pacific region. These include Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul and Bangkok, which are expected to account for 85 per cent of the partnership’s sales.

All of the hotel content supplied by FIT Ruums will be provided in traditional Chinese language to support the local Taiwanese market. China Airlines’ platform will also provide a real-time booking option that packages the best airfares and hotel options.

The FIT Ruums-China Airlines travel packages will be sold by the following appointed travel agencies: YesTrip (a subsidiary of China Airlines), Lion Travel

Richmond Tours, FTSTour, Life Tour, EZ Travel, Star Travel, Cola Tour, Set Tour, DTS Group and Fuller Tour – the latter two will be available soon.

FIT Ruums also plans to develop dynamic packaging with more airline partners in future, it said in a statement.