It's news to no one that the words 'pain' and 'suffering' have negative connotations, for obvious reasons. However, many modern thinkers believe that these experiences are often intertwined with success and happiness. 

Of course, for those of us in Asia, these teachings and sayings aren't new. In fact, they're ingrained in many cultures and religious beliefs in the region. 

Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) doesn't think this “pain and suffering” message is new to entrepreneurs as well. During Web in Travel Africa last week, she interviewed three travel founders to find out their tales from the edge.

One of them said, “If you’re not at one point about to go bankrupt then you can’t say you really had a startup! What’s really difficult is to hire good people, so you have to appear motivated and positive in front of them to keep them on board, while suffering quietly in the back.”

Want to find out what the other entrepreneurs had to say? Have a listen.

In this episode, Siew Hoon delves into what it means to be a happy entrepreneur, warts and all.

Aviation veteran and consultant Peter Harbison has many accolades - founder of CAPA, aviation lawyer and commentator, and of course, author. His new book, 'Alan Joyce and Qantas: The Trials and Transformation of an Australian Icon' contains all the ingredients of a corporate thriller, filled with constant shocks to the system and boardroom drama. 

But despite all the corporate chaos, Peter's book tells a deeply human story - of a man at the peak of a monumental industry, navigating arguably the most turbulent years in aviation history. 

In this episode, Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) chats with Peter, whom she calls a mentor, about not only the professional trials of Alan Joyce, but the often-ignored emotional element of people in high places. As the saying goes - it's lonely at the top. 

Siew Hoon also asks the serious question - why are there so few women in aviation, to which Peter responds with some honest albeit harsh truths. The two also talk about life Down Under and yet another book that Peter is currently working on. 

It's all here in this special whopper of an episode.

On this episode of WiT Stories, Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) chimes in from beautiful Cape Town, South Africa - the home and host of this year's WiT Africa. 

The WiT community has gathered at Innovation City, where we are holding our first WiT Africa on 14-15 March. A heritage building that now houses Cape Town’s most vibrant and diverse community of startups, investors and corporates, it’s brimming with ideas and buzzing with passion.

The humans gathered in this space all want to make an impact – from startups working on digital identity to AI services for education and businesses, fintech and health care. It’s interesting how no matter where you are, you have humans innovating and using tech to solve similar issues.

Besides the event, Siew Hoon also chronicles the sights, sounds, people and unique wildlife that she encounters on her trip there.

Travelling is a highly physical activity – those long walks to the gates and immigration, those long queues – not easy when you are not fully mobile. Especially for the elderly - the requests for assistance pre-flight, the waits at check-in for assistance, the arrival process – and the inevitable conclusion that one day it will happen to all of us.

For Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT), seeing life through her mother’s eyes made her highly cognizant of the ageing societies of Asia. According to the Singapore government's 2023 population report, citizens aged 65 and above make up almost one-fifth of Singapore's population, up 11.7% from a decade ago.

As much fuss as there is about the Gen Z and Millennials and their current and future spending power, there’s a silent and strong undercurrent going on in the silver generation.

So how can technology address the ageing population worldwide? And is the solution, as psychologists suggest, to simply travel inside our own minds?

Narrator: Yeoh Siew Hoon

As a student, Adrienne Enggist, Senior Director of Product, Customer Experience and Platforms for Booking.com, had an epiphany, not a hallucination, when she listened to Timothy O’Leary, the late American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs.

He wasn’t talking about acid but of the future, she said. ““He asked us to imagine a future that’s less than 20 years away, where you can talk to anybody in the world instantly in real time without paying for long distance … and he spoke of how you could create content like Arnold Schwarzenegger with Loni Anderson's head …”

That’s when she decided “that’s the world I want to work in”. Fast forward to now and Adrienne says all the things O’Leary spoke about – it was around 1987 – have come to pass – deep fakes that you can generate with an app, for instance.

In this episode of Customer Love, hosts Yeoh Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) and Laura Houldsworth (Managing Director & Vice President for Asia Pacific, Booking.com) speak with Enggist about her views on AI taking over travel and hospitality and the role of tech in creating better products for customers.

For starters, Enggist's advice to developers is “you've got to make your mistakes differently”.

As for how she thinks AI will impact travel and how you can cook up “AI and Product Love” into your business to win “Customer Love”, have a listen. 

Taylor Swift has arrived in Singapore for the highly anticipated Eras Tour, which she'll perform for six nights over two weeks. Let’s face it, pop stars are good for business. More than 300,000 tickets have been sold for the concerts in Singapore, with a large number of fans travelling in from Southeast Asia and the rest of the world.

All round, it’s been a good news week for travel and tourism, with the top travel companies all reporting healthy fourth quarter 2023 and full year 2024 results – from Airbnb, Booking Holdings, Expedia Group, Trip.com Group, Amadeus. 

Also, why does AI get blamed for everything these days?

It's all on this week's WiT Stories. You can read the article version of this podcast here. 

Narrator: Yeoh Siew Hoon

Imagine. Fifteen years ago, there was no alternative accommodation category on Booking.com. Today, there are 7.2m short term rental listings and in its Q3 2023 earnings, this sector grew the fastest, 24% year over year, making it about 33% of all bookings.

And if you want to be part of this “New Wave of Customer Love”, Nuno Guerreiro, Regional Director South APAC and Chains, Booking.com, says you have to choose to be either green and growing, or ripe and rotting. 

The answer is a no brainer, so you simply must listen to this episode, focused on the fast-growing alternative accommodation sector, featuring Nuno and his colleague, Inas Abdella, Director of Product, Booking Home.

This episode contains lots of nuggets of insights about the reasons behind the growth, what travellers are looking for as well as what suppliers can do to ride on this new wave of accommodation, and understand what different travellers want.

As for their recommendations of their favourite short term rental places, well, have a listen.

Stay tuned for more episodes, in which Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) and Laura Houldsworth ( interview a host of voices from Booking.com, as well as a few surprises from industry friends.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

There’s certainly a lot of practices travel suppliers have to put in place to fulfil and deliver on its responsibility to build a more sustainable industry, and everyone, from the grassroots to giants, must do their part.

Danielle D’Silva, Head of Sustainability, Booking.com and Eric Ricaurte, CEO of Greenview, are certainly trying to do their part in their centrestage roles in travel’s delicate and complicated dance with sustainability.

It’s interesting the different paths they have each taken to arrive at this common junction – Danielle through a scholarly path and deep research into highly niche topics such as an ethnography on the Muslim community who cares for elephants used for Hindu processions in Varanasi, and the role social enterprises play in preserving cultural heritage in Cambodia, and Eric who got an early introduction to urban farming during his childhood in rural Ohio, and an odd job stint in “a random lodge in the northeast corner of Costa Rica”, which opened his eyes to the kind of experiences travellers were willing to travel for.

Both agree the next wave in sustainability is biodiversity which is positive in the sense in that it will get the industry out of its carbon tunnel vision, says Danielle, into areas that travellers can relate to. As for the books they recommend if you want to dig deeper into this super important topic in travel, and how we can all move from Customer Love to Planet Love, have a listen to the podcast.

Stay tuned for more episodes, in which Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) and Laura Houldsworth ( interview a host of voices from Booking.com, as well as a few surprises from industry friends. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

What does 'customer love' mean in 2024?

For the first time since 2019, travel companies are unanchoring themselves to the events of the last 3 years and embracing the freedom, opportunities, and challenges that come with this new travel landscape.

In the pilot episode of our new series, Customer Love, Yeoh Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) speaks to her co-host for all upcoming episodes, Laura Houldsworth (Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Booking.com), about travel trends to look forward to this year. With a background in financial services, writing, communications and marketing, Laura gets candid about seeking Booking.com thanks to her passion for travel. She also talks about what kind of traveller she is based on Booking.com's research data. 

The duo then talk about rising trends in Asia Pacific, and what mega-platforms like Booking.com are doing to not only retain customer loyalty in a crowded marketplace, but attract new travellers with exciting new demands. 

Stay tuned for future episodes, in which Siew Hoon and Laura interview a host of voices from Booking.com, as well as a few surprises from industry friends. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Top Of The WiT is a grab of the trendiest news in travel, tech and Asia - all condensed into a nugget-sized podcast. 

For the last couple of weeks, we've featured our year-end series, Goodbye 2023, Hello 2024 on the WiT website, showcasing global travel leaders nutshelling 2023 while anticipating 2024. Many were positive about the last 12 months and are looking forward to 2024, while a few are more trepeditious due to shaky socio-economic conditions worldwide. 

In this episode, Siew Hoon and Arvindh discuss some of those answers - from Expedia's Michael Dykes elaborating on robust demographics in Asia, specifically Gen Z, to Wego's Ross Veitch pointing out “the long-term impact of demographic changes as a result of declining birth rates” which he says is off most people's radar but is going to massively impact economies worldwide.

We also go over some less hefty questions, like the most interesting things our featured travel leaders have read or watched this year, and one word they'd use to describe the year that was and the year that will be. 

Stream the episode to join the discussion.