BEST Western International (BWI) will launch a series of new hotels in Malaysia this year, including its first in the capital.

The chain already operates three hotels in Malaysia – Best Western Kinabalu Daya, Best Western Sandakan Hotel & Residence and Best Western Marina Island Resort Pangkor.

In 2012, BWI will add two more hotels: the Best Western Premier Dua Sentral in Kuala Lumpur and Best Western Wana Riverside Hotel in Malacca. A further six properties will join the portfolio between 2013 and 2015. BWI will operate 15 properties in Malaysia by the first quarter of 2015 across nine destinations, including Ipoh, Klang, Shah Alam and Petaling Jaya.

Its newest, the Best Western Premier Dua Sentral, is a 364-room property located within the capital’s new business and transport hub. Opening in the second quarter, the hotel will have several restaurants, a spa and swimming pool, and eight function rooms.

“With excellent air connections, especially via low-cost carriers, a strong economy and a diverse range of visitor attractions – from idyllic beaches to high-tech cities – the future of Malaysian tourism looks incredibly bright,” said Glenn de Souza, Best Western International’s vice president, international operations – Asia & the Middle East.

WITH a new CEO on-board, Singapore-based travel search engine Wego.com yesterday announced its plans to go global with the launch of 34 new country sites in 20 different languages, targeting both developed and emerging markets worldwide.

All sites were soft-launched in December, along with a radical design and new search features. Initial reactions have been positive, with traffic up 22 per cent from December 2011 to January 2012.

CEO Ross Veitch – who took over from Martin Symes, now non-executive chairman – said: “The user data that we’ve compiled over the years identified a host of opportunities outside of Asia. Users from Europe, the Middle East and North America have discovered Wego, and now use us to search for flights and hotels.”

Veitch added that Wego was poised to seal strategic deals with travel distribution companies based in Indonesia and Malaysia by the second quarter, although he declined to reveal more.

According to Wego’s COO, Craig Hewett, Europe and the US have been the main generators of growth.

Both Veitch and Hewett are co-founders of Wego, with the former the company’s previous chief product officer.

Hewett said: “Martin Symes decided to leave his position as CEO due to personal commitments back home in the UK. He will still play an active role in the company as non-executive chairman, but will be making decisions at the board level, steering the direction of the company. Ross and I will handle all day-to-day operations.”

Speaking to TTG Asia e-Daily from the UK, Symes said: “Having been involved in Wego for nearly six years, I decided to step down from the day-to-day CEO role to give me the flexibility I need for my travel schedule. In the last 18 months, I’ve had to commute to Europe for family reasons.”

When asked if his departure as CEO would put a damper on growth for the company, Symes said: “Not at all. We’ve got a good team in place now, and I felt it was the right time. I’m still actively involved on the board level. Ross is perfectly capable, and I speak to them on a daily basis.”

Added Symes: “There are also a couple of other things I want to get involved in.” Queried if this would involve an online business again, he would only say: “Travel is my forte, whether it’s offline or online. I’ve got a few ideas.”

Additional reporting by Grace Chiang

LOSSES at SriLankan Airlines are expected to rise sharply this year, and the country’s national carrier intends to reduce flights to London and divert most of them to China, beginning April.

The state-owned airline is also considering leasing some of its 13 slots at London’s Heathrow airport to recoup part of its losses, the Colombo-based Sunday Times reported last week.

Losses for the year ending March 31, 2012 are expected to exceed the budgeted loss of Rs8.3 billion (about US$70 million), the paper quoted chairman Nishantha Wickremesinghe as saying. He explained that much of it was due to high fuel prices – 60 per cent of the airline’s operational costs are spent on fuel.

Fuel prices rose by as much as 49 per cent in Sri Lanka last week on a range of products, triggering countrywide protests.

Although the airline had increased flights to India, South-east Asia and Europe in recent months, Wickremesinghe said this did not lead to a jump in revenue, due to the financial crisis in Europe.

An airline official could not be reached by TTG Asia e-Daily at press time.

TAIWAN-based TransAsia Airways has set its sights on becoming one of Asia’s foremost carriers by growing its network beyond North Asia. Having already launched services to Singapore, Bangkok and Jakarta are next.

Speaking to TTG Asia e-Daily in an exclusive interview, Andrew Stephen, TransAsia’s general manager for South-east Asia, said: “As a relatively new player in the international arena, our key goal now is to build brand awareness, not just as a Taiwanese airline but as pan-Asian airline that’s based in Taiwan. That’s the distinction we want to create.”

Presently, TransAsia offers flights to Singapore from Taipei and Hanoi from Kaohsiung. Load factors on the Singapore-Taipei flight launched last July now stand at 80 per cent. “Demand for flights between Taipei and Singapore has been so robust we had to add on 15 to 16 extra flights in November and December.” Stephen said the airline was looking to add another daily service to the Singapore-Taipei route to cater to the Taiwanese market. Currently, the route draws a mix of group tours, and FITs who form the core group of customers, as well as corporates, which is “becoming an increasingly important segment for TransAsia”.

When queried about the airline’s expansion plans, Stephen said Bangkok and Jakarta were under the microscope. “We should begin operations to at least one of these by the end of 2012.”

With two A330s on order, one scheduled to be delivered in November and the other in January 2013, Stephen revealed that midhaul and longhaul destinations in Australia, India, Hawaii and the US west coast might even be on the cards. Ultimately, TransAsia hopes to create a comprehensive network, linking South-east Asia’s capitals and regional cities to points in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

However, the airline’s status as a non-ASEAN airline could work against it. “Our plans are limited by the permissions granted by respective (ASEAN) governments to fly into their airspace, putting us at a slight disadvantage when compared to ASEAN-based carriers, particularly when the ASEAN open skies agreement comes into being in 2015. We are banking on the Taiwanese government, which is undergoing bilateral discussions with various ASEAN nations at the moment, to have negotiated open skies agreement with most ASEAN countries by then, giving us the green light to put our vision into action,” explained Stephen.

TAIWAN received a boost as a medical tourism hub last month when China began issuing medical visas for travellers heading to the island to avail of its healthcare facilities and services.

Typically, Taiwanese hospitals rely on travel consultants for visa processing and travel arrangements, as well as any add-on leisure activities, according to Sandy Chu, spokesperson for Lionmedi, Taiwan’s largest supplier of medical tourism-related services.

The medical visas are good for stays of up to 15 days, include the arrival day, a specified number of days for visits to the hospital and an additional three days for sightseeing.

“We are getting enquiries, both directly here in Taiwan and through our China offices,” said Chu, adding that most enquiries received were for non-invasive, low-risk procedures.

The new wave of Chinese coming to Taiwan for medical services are FITs – and could theoretically organise their own visits – but Chu believes most will continue to rely on Taiwan travel companies for assistance.

“First of all, (medical tourism in Taiwan) is new,” she explained, so few prospective travellers would know how to organise such a trip. “And secondly, the hospitals prefer to work with travel consultants rather than on their own.”

Medical tourism has been on the Taiwan government’s radar as early as 2008, according to Jane Chen, section chief, medical affairs, Department of Health (DOH), The Executive Yuan. Last year, 13,914 overseas visitors were served at Taiwanese medical facilities, compared to 5,157 in 2008, the first year the DOH began keeping records.

Unlike Singapore or Thailand, both of which have created single agencies for the management of medical tourism, Taiwan divides responsibilities among several bodies, with the DOH managing medical affairs, and promotion handled primarily by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau and Government Information Office.

An example of a collaborative promotion is a mobile application, available on iTunes since last month, providing a searchable directory of Taiwan healthcare providers serving medical tourists. The app is being promoted by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, which claims 2,000 downloads to date.

Reporting by Glenn Smith

STARTING next month, Chinese nationals will be able to avail of visas for independent travel to Taiwan from 11 mainland cities, up from three. However, Taiwanese travel consultants are not hopeful of a big boost in business just as yet.

As it stands, neither the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association nor its mainland Chinese counterpart, the Cross-Strait Tourism Association, have revealed which eight cities will be added to the list approved for FIT travel, which currently includes Shanghai, Beijing and Xiamen.

“This is a big story in the media because it is political, but we won’t see an impact for months or a year. It is going to need time,” said Jean Chang, president, Golden Foundation Tours Taiwan, who added that Chinese FITs don’t require much help except in applying for an entry permit or obtaining a guarantor letter.

“It will help hotels, restaurants and other travel-related businesses, but not travel agencies,” said Vincent Lin, CEO, Star Travel Corporation Taiwan.

Phoenix Tours Taiwan president, Antonio Liao, said his company had seen little business from the first wave of Chinese FITs to Taiwan, and estimates that “less than 20 per cent use Taiwan travel agencies to book hotels or arrange airport pick-ups”.

He observed that they were looking for mid-priced rather than five-star hotels, and most were not keen on package tours.

Liao believes that the Taiwan Tourism Bureau, which administers star ratings for local hotels, may eventually try to steer Chinese FITs towards higher-priced accommodations by restricting them to officially-approved hotels.

Reporting by Glenn Smith

STARWOOD Asia Pacific Hotels & Resorts today announced its newly-launched StarwoodMeetings.com, while also reiterating its aggressive growth plan in Asia-Pacific with 50 hotel openings this year.

Developed to make MICE bookings more user-friendly, StarwoodMeetings.com allows access to more than 1,000 properties worldwide. Meeting planners can view full property details, integrated maps with points of interest, photos and floor plans, on-site meeting services, special offers, as well as utilise a Compare View tool and meeting management tools.

The new site also includes information on signature services including the Starwood Preferred Planner, Starwood Convention Collection and On-Site Specialty Events.

“StarwoodMeetings.com was designed to increase the ease of doing business with Starwood,” said Christie Hicks, senior vice president, Starwood Sales Organization.

Meanwhile, Starwood is scheduled to open 50 new hotels in 2012, including the Sheraton Macao Hotel, Cotai Central in September. Featuring 3,863 rooms and suites and 20,000m2 of meeting space, it will be the largest hotel in the company’s portfolio.

Other hotels scheduled to open this year include three properties in Bali – The Westin Ubud Resort and Spa, Sheraton Bali Kuta Resort and Le Méridien Bali Jimbaran – as well as W hotels in Singapore, Bangkok and Guangzhou.