Well, the advice from Brett Henry, vice president of marketing and India operations for Abacus International, is “conquer the post-booking space first”.

The value to travel agents is in this area, he says – delivering information after a client buys a ticket, such as late flight changes, and a mobile itinerary.

“Conquer this space first, then think of transactions,” says Henry.

Nevertheless, mobile travel bookings are becoming a significant part of the consumer journey ecosystem and Asia is leading the way.

The largest OTAs in Asia are ahead in mobile transactions than their global counterparts, Henry says, citing Cleartrip and Ctrip as companies to benchmark.

Among the airlines, AirAsia is ahead of the other main contenders in the region and was expecting to take US$200 million in sales through the mobile channel during 2010.

Abacus, of course, is getting in on the act, producing products such as Abacus Mobile and Abacus WebStart for Mobile.

But on the question of whether a company should go for a mobile website or app (a common question these days), Henry says: “Have a great mobile website first, then go for the App.”

The ground is certainly ripe for travel to go mobile in a big way in Asia, the world’s largest mobile phone market. Asia-Pacific accounts for 30% penetration of smartphones worldwide, and 54% of all devices sold in Asia are expected to be smartphones by 2015, up from 5% in 2009, most of it driven by social networking.

Seven out of ten mobile users are members of online social networks and a third of them are influenced by comments by people in their online social network when making travel purchase decisions.

In 2012, it is expected there will be around 123 million mobile payment users in APAC.

The number of apps has also taken off recently, with all the major app providers including Apple, Android, Blackberry and Nokia Ovi Store, increasing by triple digit percentages from just a year ago.

When pressed by WIT to pick which would be the dominant platform over the long term, Henry opts for Android.

“Airlines and travel providers see the value in mobile. They are setting up mobile websites and developing apps.

“With its vast population and mobile usage, Asians will pave the way in determining the future face of travel through mobile, especially with the dominance of smartphones in the region, serving as a one-stop repository and access to all the touchpoints travellers need when on the go.”

Prime Minister Julia Gillard (a dead ringer for Jodie Foster, by the way) has cleared the first political hurdle to make her government’s AUS $35 billion National Broadband Network (NBN) a reality.

I have been watching the political debate unfold with fascination. Australian politics is so feisty compared to back hone in Singapore – think Africa’s game parks versus the night safari.

Gillard calls it “a win” for everyone and she’s now able to take the bill for a final vote. “This is a reform literally 30 years in the making,” Gillard told reporters earlier this week.

The NBN business plan is simple – it expects to deliver a fibre network to 8.3 million of Australia’s 10.9 million homes, with 12 million business and residential properties to have access to wireless or satellite when the network is completed.

As a regular leisure and business traveller to Australia, this is good news. I am staying at the Grand Hyatt, where the internet is provided by DOCOMO interTouch.

If you are not part of the inner circle, you have a choice of paying AUS 55 cents per minute, or up to a maximum of AUS $29 per day, per computer – no multiple devices allowed.

Which doesn’t give you much choice really. Plus, connection is slow compared to either Singapore or Luang Prabang, Laos.

I recall a session at the Hong Kong Hotel Investment Conference Asia Pacific (HICAP) last month. The subject of internet and hotels was brought up and a hotel owner from Australia said it was difficult for hotels to offer guests free internet access because it was a cost to them. “You pay for internet at home, don’t you?” he asked.

Michael Issenberg, chairman and chief operating officer of Accor Asia-Pacific, offered a similar argument when I asked him the same question at ITB Asia in October this year.

This argument no longers holds much water I’m afraid. At home, I also pay for my utilities – electricity, water, etc. In a hotel, these utilities are part of the room rate and I don’t expect to be charged by usage (although perhaps this could be a new business model).

And that is the fundamental question: are hotels in the utilities sector or the hospitality business? In the old days, hotels charged for gym use – now a gym is standard in a business hotel room rate.

Hospitality is sometimes defined as “kindness in welcoming guests or strangers”, although my personal favourite is “hospitality is the art of making guests feel at home when you wish they were”.

Nevertheless, also at HICAP, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts was cited as a hotel group that had decided to invest in making internet available throughout all its hotels to all its guests, a decision it made during the global financial crisis. It cost the company about $20 million, we were told.

Taking the hospitality argument further and since we supposedly live in the age of customisation, imagine if Grand Hyatt had recognised me as a media person and had said, because we know what you do, we are happy to offer you free connectivity throughout your stay? Imagine what I’d have tweeted.

Incidentally, I also checked out the new AUS $350 million Melbourne Exhibition & Convention Centre. It’s a great looking venue, in a fabulous location, and it’s touted to be environmentally-friendly and super high-tech. The rooms are well designed – minimalist, with great use of space.

Internet access? There’s also a payment wall.

Now, I am not asking for free wi-fi everywhere (although that’d be nice), but there needs to be a fresh approach to how hotels and venues package the entire customer experience, which happens to include all the utilities needed for a comfortable stay or a successful event.

Anyway, this morning, I had to wake up at 8am to have a hot shower because, since the hotel is undergoing maintenance, the hot water utility will be unavailable between 9am and 7pm.

Glenn Fogel, executive vice president of corporate development of Priceline, is here for coffee.

We look at each other and laugh at the surreality of it. It’s what I love about travel – moments like this that make you chuckle and store away in the hard disk that’s your brain.

I take out my iPad to take notes. “Have you tried Evernote?” Fogel asks, before going on about how great it is.

Fogel has an almost evangelical air about him when he speaks about something he is passionate about.

But equally, he’s highly cautious when speaking about matters related to Priceline because it’s publicly traded.

“Do you make it a point to keep up with everything new on the web?” I ask.

“It’s hard to do that, there’s so much stuff, a flood of information coming down. Can you imagine our customers also managing that information?”

So how important is it to be at the leading edge doing what you do?

“I call it bleeding edge. We stay away from that. We are rarely the first to anything. There’s a great cartoon of the American West a long time ago – a man face down in the dust with an arrow in his back. He was the first mover. We look at what we think are the best opportunities for us.”

“There was a time in the industry when everyone said dynamic packaging was the way to go. We discussed that but we didn’t invest a lot of time in it – we stuck to hotels. It’s good to stick to your knitting.

“People talk about the fox and the hedgehog – the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows one thing. We know one thing – hotels – and that’s not changing in the foreseeable future.”

It’s an obsession that has obviously worked. Priceline sold almost 80 million room nights for the four quarters that ended in June 2010, and has a market capitalization of US$15 billion.

For Fogel, price is paramount, then comes content, speed and ease of use.

“Price is everything from beginning to end.”

And while others may talk about how search is going beyond price to information and how social networks will change the way people search, Fogel says: “After they decide where to do and where to stay, they look for the cheapest price, right?”

Ask Fogel about Priceline’s plans for the Asia region though and you literally feel his spine bristle and he curls into a ball like a hedgehog.

“Never talk about what you’re going to do next,” he says.

So I move the conversation back to more comfortable territory. What is he proudest of?

“There was a time when people said Priceline was going to disappear, it was going to be a dot-bomb. Today we are the leader and I am proud of the people that we have, to have achieved what they’ve done.

“What we did correctly was to let local people decide what is the best thing to do and not bring or have an American-centric viewpoint and push it downwards. We have seen the failures when a headquarters of anything tries to dominate a local organization thousands of kilometers away.”

Thus, for him, identifying the teams rather than the business models is often more important.

“We met with many, many companies but the reason we acquired what we did was for the people.”

Getting to know people versus just looking at the numbers may be a longer process but, as Fogel says: “Love at first sight happens but I think chances are a longer engagement ends up as the more successful marriage.”

With Booking.com, he knew the team less than a year before acquisition. “That’s shorter than usual for us.”

With Agoda, it took a longer courtship. He bought the Thailand-based company at the end of 2007 but he met the team leadership in 2002-2003.

“The company was in an earlier stage and we weren’t ready,” he says.

Of all his acquisitions, including Active Hotels and car rental firm, Travel Jigsaw, which one has paid off the best?

Fogel tells a story.

“When Dr Henry Kissinger first met Premier Chou En Lai, and knowing the Chinese head of state was a great scholar of French history, he asked the question: what do you think of the impact of the French Revolution on the world? The premier’s answer was, too soon to know.”

Enough said.

When evaluating teams or individuals, Fogel says the questions he asks are, has the person achieved things in the past and has he executed well? Past successes, he says, are the best evidence of how someone will act in the future.

How about people who’ve had failures – do we write them off?

“There have been instances of people who’ve previously failed but went on to succeed, like Abraham Lincoln,” he says. “But it’s a longer shot than someone who’s got a track record of success.”

Have you made any mistakes?

“Many,” he says. “One of the good things about failures and mistakes is you do learn from them.

And, finally, he quotes George Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Representing a range of business ideas in the digital travel space, they comprise start-ups such as ComeSingapore, Forget Boundaries, Yoplr, Tourz and Eco Travel.

Each company will have the opportunity to be mentored by a panel of experts and advisors before pitching for the right to present their ideas at the Grand Final during the WIT Conference the following day on October 19.

The WITovation Entrepreneur Bootcamp, aimed at driving innovation and inspiring entrepreneurs in the digital travel space, will be held at the Singapore Tourism Board Auditorium, Level 2 of the STB’s head office located at Orchard Spring Lane.

All WIT delegates are entitled to attend the Bootcamp.

Non-WIT delegates pay an entrance fee of S$180 to attend the day’s programme, which features a keynote talk by archangel investor and serial entrepreneur Morten Lund, one of the first investors in Skype as well as 50 other start-ups including flight data startup Everbead.

Other sessions will discuss entrepreneurship from successful travel startups across the region and innovation to come within the online travel industry.

Following the Bootcamp, Tnooz will hold #tcamp6 at a nearby venue between 6 and 8pm, free entry for all Bootcampers and WIT delegates.

From one day to the next, when I was there last week, a hot, humid summer day gave way to cool, blustery autumn winds.

I feel the same change in wind direction taking place in China’s travel market.

Perhaps it all started two years ago with the hosting of the world’s largest sporting event which it did with spectacular style.

Perhaps it’s to do with hosting the world’s largest World Expo which it is doing with spectacular scale.

Or perhaps it’s just the fact that it’s now the world’s second largest economy in the world and is driving the global economic recovery and what it does with its currency matters so much to the rest of the world.

I sense a new-found confidence in its people. In one generation, I have seen the change from a nation that was looking to learn all it could from the outside world to one that now knows it has much to offer the outside world and that it can pick and choose from those who would teach it.

Within my own family, I see it. My relatives in Haikou, Hainan, no longer depend on their overseas brethren for handouts; they have more – and beyond materialistic goods, they have a deep sense of rootedness which my father gave up in search of a better life abroad.

This shift in sentiment was clear at the China Travel Distribution Summit in Beijing last week.

The unscheduled “nuclear” remarks made by Larry Liang, general manager, airline solutions of TravelSky, prompted by the opening comments of PhoCuswright’s Ram Badrinathan, whose presentation was by the way immediately followed by that of David Jones, CEO of Amadeus, was a case in point.

Okay, the comparison to nuclear weapons was unfortunate at a travel conference but there’s a younger generation of Chinese who are more vocal and prepared to speak up and defend their own interests.

Liang’s comments were picked up again by Michael Chen, vice president of Jinling Hotels & Resorts Corporation, during a panel discussion on channel distribution versus direct sales, a session which happened to be moderated by Liang.

Talking about the entry of foreign companies into China, Chen said many found it hard to make it.

China, he says, should have “nuclear weapons”. It’s a big market, bigger than Europe, and if you want to cooperate with the China market, you have to recognize that this is the trend, he said.

He notes that while China’s hotels were weak in the past when it came to direct distribution – which explains why Ctrip is so successful in online hotel sales – this was changing.

Chinese hotel groups such as Jinling were getting bigger and more advanced, he says. And, he adds, do not apply the foreign model to China – we will not play with you.

Listening to a foreign view, however, was what got Min Fan, CEO of Ctrip, started on his road to success.

At a market cap of approximately US$5 billion, Ctrip is now the world’s third largest online travel agency, after Expedia and Priceline.

In an interview session at the conference, Fan recalls his first job working as a management trainee in a hotel. He asked the foreign general manager how he would differentiate the hotel.

The answer was, location, location, location.

At that time, he thought it was too simple an answer but now he sees the sense of it and applies a similar concept to what he does at Ctrip – service, service, service.

“If you can guarantee your service level, the customer will look for you and book from you,” he says, adding his key preoccupation was how to improve service.

It sounds like an empty idea, he says, but when you sell on the Internet, service is even more crucial. From the moment the customer books to the time of delivery, there are roughly 20 touch points and the company applies 61 assessment targets to identify areas for improvement.

Even as he works on service improvements internally, Fan is also looking to expand Ctrip’s business outside China.

Last year, it acquired ezTravel in Taiwan and Wing On Travel in Hong Kong.

In choosing companies to acquire, he says it was about “how you can transfer your experience and interface your technology”.

He uses three criteria to evaluate acquisitions – will it effectively expand its product line, will it add value to its core product line and growth potential is not limited to China but Asia and worldwide, and value. “If it’s too expensive, we cannot afford it.”

He says he had a lot to learn from Glenn Fogel, executive vice president, corporate development, of Priceline (who had presented earlier) who he says had been very successful in his acquisitions.

For Chinese companies, going abroad is a challenge, he said, citing limited international experience. This explains why his first acquisitions have been in greater China because of the culture and language.

He says he has also learnt a lot from Japan, although the country’s travel companies tend to invest more in local sites rather than acquire foreign companies.

It thus appears the wind blows both directions – even as foreign companies are still scrambling to enter China, Chinese companies are now venturing abroad. And both have much to learn from each other.

And it seems that what we should do is bury the “nuclear weapons” talk and smoke the peace pipe – that is, after all, what tourism is all about.

Indeed, a good blend of globalization and localization is just what the Lady of the Moon would approve of – my favourite mooncake, for example, is snow skin mooncake with champagne truffle and ganache.

In fact, the opening session of the Travel Distribution Summit in China held in Beijing this week saw comparisons being drawn between GDSs and nuclear weapons and the contrasts between the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and Confucius.

It all started with the opening keynote by Ram Badrinathan, general manager in Asia-Pacific for PhoCusWright, who in calling for a freeing of the travel market to allow technological innovation particularly in travel retailing, quoted Gandhi:

“I do not want my house to be walled on all sides and my windows to be stuffed, I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible but to refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”

Badrinathan says that while travel and tourism in China had grown by leaps and bounds in all aspects, there was still one aspect where it lagged behind other markets, in particular, India – innovation in travel retailing – and he attributed this to the closed GDS market which was restricting travel agents’ ability to meet changing customer needs.

He adds that the GDS environment had evolved considerably globally to meet the changing needs of customers such as airlines and travel agents.

In a benchmarking survey conducted by PhoCusWright in China, the company found that gaps such as efficiency tools, fare transparency and integrity, reporting tools, merchandising capabilities and relationships tools and attributes existed in the current GDS environment in China.

The Chinese GDS lacked certain functionalities for example service fee management module, automated ticket refunds and reissuing, PNR quality checks and unused ticket reports.

“Fare guarantee policy is not available for international fares in China – 40% of agents said they have to check with global GDS – and in terms of integrity of fare quote engine, agents said they have to check with individual airlines,” says Badrinathan.

This, he says, created a lack of trust in agents.

Drawing comparisons between India and China, he said that while China outstripped India in terms of physical infrastructure, it lagged behind in terms of soft infrastructure.

In India, global GDSs are allowed to operate, there is private ownership of airlines, the travel retailing chain is deregulated and low cost airlines have a 50% penetration. All this encourages invesments and innovations by entrepreneurs.

In the online travel agency markets, touchless bookings dominate – close to 90% of MakeMyTrip bookings are totally automated in contrast to 80% of Ctrip’s transactions that are done offline.

While he says that not all globalization is good – for example, McDonald’s – Badrinathan says that China is sitting on the sidelines as the world of travel retailing passes by. It is time, he believes, for key stakeholders in China’s retail travel industry to take their place alongside other global players.

His remarks prompts an unscheduled response from Larry Liang, general manager for airline solutions of TravelSky.

First, he explains that there were two types of GDSs – one was run by investors and shareholders who set profitability targets and the other was run by airline shareholders whose aim was to provide services to customers. “Both are different business models and have different performance criteria and cannot be compared in the same breath.”

He then compares GDSs to nuclear weapons, saying there were some countries that chose to have GDS or nuclear weapons and those that did not.

“China is a big country; we have to choose what we want to do.” He says that while the situation was not ideal – and no one wants to sell their core technology (ie nuclear weapon) – “we are ready to learn”.

“Are we going to become competitive or go into war without nuclear weapons?”

The China travel transactions market, in any case, is huge with figures scaling from $800 million to $1.5 billion to $3.5 billion. Global transactions by GDSs worldwide only come up to $1 billion.

“Who will be capable of handling the huge travel market in China. I don’t think any system in Europe or US can handle it.”

He says a different solution was needed to solve the Chinese problem and concluded that perhaps instead of turning to a philosopher who believed in starving himself, we should look to Confucius for the answer.

I was curious to find out if all the competition for our leisure time had affected attendance at the many live performances that are held in his venue, a leading tourist and local attraction in Singapore.

After all, there’s never been such a grab for our leisure time and never has our leisure time been as fragmented as it is now.

I read an article last week that said we were even trying to fill our downtime with “micro-moments”.

In gyms, as we cycle away, we play Scrabble on the iPad. Or as we run, we listen to music and watch television. We use our gadgets as tools to stave off boredom so that every little bit of downtime we have, we look for something to do.

“Mobile phones … let people relieve the tedium of exercising the grocery store line, stoplights or dulls in the telephone conversation,” says Matt Richtel, author of the article.

“The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining and potentially productive.”

So these days we don’t only multi-task… we hyper-task. And Attention Deficit Disorder is no longer a condition but the order of the day.

I find myself doing just that with the iPad. I’ve found it very difficult to read any article or book at length on the device because my mind is constantly wandering and wondering if someone has just emailed me, if I should update my Facebook or if I should check out this word or that or, how about a game of Scrabble?

“But don’t you do that anyway even with a real book?” asks a friend.

“Yes, but with the iPad because everything is in one place, it’s so easy to be distracted,” I reply.

So with all these weapons of mass distraction before us, it is very easy to be, well, distracted.

So where was I? Oh yes, Benson Puah and the Esplanade.

The good news is, attendance for live events at his venue has been rising. Since its opening in October 2002, he tells me, more than 10 million people have attended concerts and performances in the centre.

About 3,000 performances will be held this year, out of which 85% are presented by Esplanade. The annual Mosaic Music Festival in March, started by Esplanade in 2005, has grown from 65,000 attendees to 100,000 this year. A 2010 survey estimates that 14% of the attendees were tourists.

Benson sees digital media as an ally of the performing arts, rather than a competitor for our leisure time. He cites a survey by the National Endowment of the Arts in the US which debunks the myth that new media will replace live performances.

“In fact, if you are into new media, you are more likely to go to a live performance and the more active you are in all forms of media, the more experimental you are with discovering and trying new acts. Humans are social beings. There is no replacement for engagement in a social setting.”

There is also no replacement, I think, for real downtime.

The article mentioned earlier points to one side effect of constantly filling our time with “micro-moments”.

“When people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas,” Richtel says.

It contihnues that scientists at the University of California found that “when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration, do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience”.

They suspect these findings may also apply to how humans learn.

So next time you get some downtime, remember – go out and do something new, catch a live act or something, and not be like a hamster in a cage… with an iPad.

Or so says Kathleen Tan, group head of commercial for leading low-cost airline in the region, AirAsia.

“There’s the empowerment to fly and there’s the empowerment to buy. Low cost airlines and the internet have changed buying behaviour in Asia. There’s more virtual planning – people can do a lot more search – and they book instantly.

For example, Tan says: “When we put Yangon on sale recently (the airline launched Kuala Lumpur-Yangon flights in July), we sold 50,000 seats.”

At the same time, there’s a generational shift happening with travellers in Asia.

“As they are empowered to fly and buy, they have also become more empowered as travellers and the smarter travellers now do not need tour guides or buy package tours – they search for information on the web, and they share information with each other on social networks.

“People are more experimental now and are seeking new kinds of travel experiences.”

This is why she believes vendors and operators have to change not only the way they market but also the way they serve these new travellers.

“I urge the industry not to always look to the West, the spending power is in Asia, and we have to change the way we engage with the new Asian customer.”

“Younger people are more savvy now, do you still sell them the same packages? Do you still take them to gems stores and get commissions? People know where they want to eat. They can find the best places to get a tattoo in Bali,” says Tan.

“For me, the romance in travel is in the exchange that’s happening between students and young people, something that’s been facilitated by low cost airlines. Mainland Chinese are now coming to Malaysia to study; before it was only Singapore, but the less wealthy Chinese are opting for Malaysia.

“We have Malaysians going abroad to study and search for jobs. There’s labour mobility, medical mobility. In Malaysia, nurses are hard to come by and so we have lots of nurses from south India working in the country. And Malaysians are going to India for beach surfing at half the price they’d pay in Bali.

“In Bandung, Indonesia, there are 20 universities – imagine the opportunities for youth travel from that market.”

As a marketer, Tan is proudest of the airline’s annual “one million free seats” promotion. Having run it for the last five to six years though, the customer is getting smarter at it.

“It’s become a game to some now. They know it’s hard to get, and so if they get it, they feel good and tell their friends about it.

“They have become marketers for us. There’s a Chinese customer who managed to book 30 free tickets and, apparently, he studied our route map and our website for a month and when the day came, he did it with such speed, got 30 and told all his friends about it.”

Sometimes, promotions can bomb. “Every route has different characteristics – Yangon is different from Taipei for instance. India is what I call a “marathon” market. The purchasing process is much longer, they discuss a lot before they buy. They also like to travel in groups, so they talk a lot among themselves first.

“With Taipei, it explodes but in India, it’s a slow burn – you can’t take your budget and spend it in one go.”

The travel agency channel is not something that excites Tan. “I refuse to pay commissions to travel agents in Singapore; I don’t want to get into legacy business. To service agents, you also need manpower.

“When we first entered China, we depended on travel agents but now our brand is more established, and people know how to book us online. We are also seeing more FIT travel from China.

“India is challenging – people are still reliant on travel agents – but I see a tipping point taking place this year as our brand gets more established.”

Consumers however need a physical presence from time to time to reassure them that the airline is actually run by people and not computers.

“We held an AirAsia travel fair in Jakarta recently and we had people coming up to us who thought we were run by computers, so you need to be present physically for people to feel your brand.

“We have a long way to go still in some markets,” says Tan.

Community marketing is a personal passion of Tan. She watches with interest how Zouk Club of Singapore has managed to stay relevant to its customers despite it being probably the oldest club in the city.

“They are constantly revamping to stay relevant and has held on to their customers,” she says.

Another company she watches is Apple – “they way it upsells and cross-sells”. She said, “They think out of the box and they keep everything within the community.”

One market that has surprised her is the luxury market and how people are still paying a lot of money for luxury products.

“LV has remained so relevant that a mother and her teenage daughter can carry the same brand. It’s an old brand but has engaged hot new designers like Marc Jacobs, brought out limited editions and clearly beaten the pirates.

“There’s a new generation of kids too who don’t buy pirated stuff and get a kick out of it.”

AirAsia recently released its second quarter results, ending June 30 2010, which showed a profit after tax of RM199 million.

Revenue rose 26% year-on-year from RM748 million to RM941 million. Passenger growth was 11%, rising to 3.9 million passengers. Load factor rose to 77% in 2Q2010 from 75% in 2Q2009.

See, the biggest lament in the Asian travel space is the slow adoption of technology by traditional travel agents.

Most of these family-run businesses are quite content to run their agencies the way they have always done – after all, “if the wheel ain’t broken, why fix it” would be the old Chinese saying.

Talk to any of the major GDSs in the region and they will tell you their biggest headache – they can’t get agents to adopt as fast as they can come up with tools and solutions.

So the problem is not the lack of tools, products and services, the hurdle is the mindset.

And as we know, that which we cannot see takes longer to be fixed – another old Chinese saying.

The times, they may be changing though – although Bob Dylan sang that in 1963 and the times, they still are a-changing – but ever so slowly, and all the while advancement in technology is outpacing even those who make it or create it.

Reading an interview by Don Tapscott, the author of Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business And The World, he says: “It’s not that we have information overload; it’s that we have an under-capacity to filter information better.”

Over the past few years, some travel agents have been coming round to the idea that technology may benefit them – it could cut costs, improve productivity and improve revenues – but where do you begin? Could it become a money pit?

I remember an argument surfacing around this time that perhaps to get travel agents to adopt, you not only have to produce a solution, you also have to implement it for them.

After all, in Asia, we do not have a DIY culture like in the US or Europe.

Here we have maids to look after our kids, walk our dogs and feed our elderly, and so we don’t know how to do things for ourselves.

So for adoption to occur, implementation had to happen first – but we all know how hard it is to implement on behalf of others because eventually we have to remove ourselves from the situation and then what happens? Who carries on?

I was talking to a distribution system provider and the challenges her staff are facing to help a client implement a project.

The staff turnover was just so high that by the time she finished training someone, that person was off to another agency.

In Singapore, to encourage innovation and/or adoption, the government has all sorts of carrots.

There’s the Media Development Authority with its iJAMS, giving digital media companies S$50,000 to start up.

There’s the Singapore Tourism Board with its S$10 million Tourism Technology Fund and the recently-launched S$5 million iDigital scheme.

The former is more aimed at automation and the latter, at enabling ecommerce because the STB, given its new branding and digital strategy, needs to get its travel industry partners onboard the digital train.

The TTF’s been there for a while but I understand few grants have been handed out, although I am told there have been more enquiries of late.

Thing is, if you are a small travel company, you can’t afford the staff or the time to submit the kind of paperwork that’s needed to access such a grant. And if you are a big company, well, you don’t need the grant.

And so iDigital was set up and that’s supposed to be easier to access. But again, I’ve had lots of questions about it from budding entrepreneurs who are keen to “innovate”.

Thing is, most of them don’t come from within the travel space and because of that, they don’t qualify for the fund because that scheme is only meant for travel and tourism companies.

To qualify, they have to get a travel agency licence. This limits the possibility of innovation because, as Kevin noted, true innovation, defined as disruption, in any industry has rarely come from within.

Next month, the STB, together with the National Association of Travel Agents and a few government agencies keen to push the “adoption” agenda, are holding an IT Solution Fair for travel agents.

To be held September 4, the fair will showcase selected IT solutions vendors to the travel agency community.

The idea behind this is to try “take the pain out of the evaluation process for travel agents and to aggregate customer demand for the vendors” so that it will facilitate adoption.

In other words, if the vendors manage to find customers who like them enough, the travel agents can apply for the grants and the vendors can then “innovate” so that travel agents can adopt.

Still with me?

Point is, all these schemes have good intentions but I fear they have too many limitations for them to truly encourage innovation, let alone adoption.

Innovation cannot happen within silos, it requires the oxygen of collaboration.

As another old Chinese saying goes, you can lead the horse to water but you can’t make it drink it, no matter how many carrots you dangle in front it.

Or is it apples? I get my cultures so mixed up in this global world we live in.

But when it comes to sales, it still relies on the human touch of the traditional travel agent.

Nicholas Lim, director of sales and marketing in Asia for the 18 to 35-focused tour operator, says: “Our customers are very fickle in where they are on the internet so we reach out to them at every point – YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. Then when they’re ready to buy, we direct them to the travel agent.”

“We are not built to be a travel agent – it’s a lot of work, airline booking, insurance, special services and requests. Travel agents are convenient and add value to us.”

In Asia, almost 100% of Contiki’s sales are fulfilled by travel agents. In the US the mix has changed, says Lim.

After September 11 2001, when a lot of travel agents in the US went out of business, the company went direct-to-consumer to sell its tours.

Currently around 80% of its sales are made directly through the web or call centres. Will the business model move this way too in Asia as mobile and broadband penetration increases in the region?

Lim says: “At some point in time, perhaps yes. In certain markets where we don’t get the travel agent support, we will embark on direct sales. In China, for example, we are poorly represented, but that’s a market we need to be in.”

For now, its three biggest markets in Asia are Singapore, Korea and Japan, and the most popular destination is Europe, its core product, even though Contiki Asia also offers Australia and Asia package holidays.

“We get a mix of customers – the first half of the year is mainly student traffic and the second half are professionals and honeymooners,” says Lim.

Globally, about 80% of its customers are single and 60% are females, although Lim says that in Asia, women form a bigger chunk of the market, with 70%.

Travellers from Asia are also getting more confident. They are no longer buying the see-all-of-Europe in one trip. Rather, they are buying shorter trips in more focused areas – Italy, Greece and Spain are popular spots, for example.

“People now want more time to do their own thing,” says Lim, noting that Greece is the current bestseller. “People are also more informed. They actually realise that to do Europe as a do-it-yourself costs more than doing it with us. What they tell us is, don’t include us in your activities, we will do our own thing.”

And while its young customers may be fickle in where they are on the web, they are surprisingly loyal.

“If they buy something they like, they will champion it. They will tell their friends. This is where social media works well for us – they put their videos on YouTube or they share it with their friends on Facebook.”

Thus far, the company hasn’t come across negative reviews of their Contiki Asia experiences. “Usually they complain about the hotel and the food and we give feedback to the hotel,” says Lim.

Lim is also eyeing other new markets in Asia, such as Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia. Contiki handles around 120,000 passengers a year worldwide, of which Asia forms less than 10%, a figure Lim admits needs boosting.

But the key to Contiki Asia’s success remains the human touch – particularly that of its tour leaders. “It doesn’t matter how we sell or promote, if they don’t deliver, that whole trip has gone.

Out of 100 tour managers that we train, only five will make it. We invest Euro 1.2 million a year to train our 200 tour managers.

“The human touch is very important. In today’s society, we are over-communicating and sometimes, we need to switch off.”

Nevertheless, by 2011 and 2012, Contiki’s coaches in Australia and New Zealand will all be equipped with wifi.

As happened with the Hong Kong tour guide who got caught red-handed when she blew off steam at a group of mainland Chinese tourists for not spending enough and calling them “cheapskates”.

Her rant, captured in a video, has been making the rounds and the YouTube version has had over 96,000 views.

[Full English transcript of her rant]

It’s nothing new really – tour guides taking tourists for shopping and getting commissions. They’ve been doing it since, I am sure, the times of Marco Polo.

I remember my trip to Istanbul this March when I decided to do a day tour with a guide and, despite my insistence that I didn’t want the usual tourist trap experience, I was still taken to antique and carpet shops where he said “there were no obligations, just look”.

You could easily sense the pressure to buy.

I find such experiences distasteful for the customer – it puts me in an awkward situation and for someone who finds it hard to say no, it’s practically like being held hostage.

The tour guide, meanwhile, hangs around the shop and pretends he doesn’t care, but you know he’s watching your every move and hoping the next one will be for your wallet.

It was only after I requested that he changed his itinerary and that I really didn’t want to shop that he then proceeded to show me the non-tourist side of Istanbul.

The business of commissions though has been taken to a whole new level with mainland Chinese groups – perhaps it’s the sheer volume combined with the infancy of the market, and I am sure it happens with other markets as well.

The practice is called “zero-based” tourism – which is a euphemism for “you pay zero for everything but you pay back in some form or other”. Everybody knows it’s done, everyone “winks, winks, nods, nods” and everyone looks the other way.

Except this time it’s quite difficult for the Hong Kong travel industry officials to look the other way when something is as public as this. The guide has apologized and the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong has berated her.

But will it mean the practice going away? No, sadly. And let’s face it, it happens not only in Hong Kong, but also Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan.

Coincidentally, I was recently having a discussion with a tour operator in Taiwan on how the China market was going to impact the destination. With direct cross-Straits flights, China now accounts for a quarter of all arrivals to Taiwan and tour operators are scrambling for a slice of the market.

What he said were the most candid and realistic words I’ve ever heard uttered about the China market.

Calling it a “fatal attraction” for most foreigners, he recalled a joke somebody made about the difference between Japan and China. “In Japan we speak different languages but think similarly. In China, we speak same language but think differently.”

While he said that nobody could afford to neglect China, “everybody understands China just like the blind touches the single part of the elephant. It is not the full elephant”.

Guess the tour guide ended with the full elephant in her face.

It shows the importance of food in our culture. Even as we are eating, we are discussing the next meal.

And everything revolves around food – weddings, funerals and temple ceremonies. We eat when we are happy, we eat when we are sad and we eat when we hope to be happy.

Now a new obsession has taken over in the region: gadgets.

Ever since the iPad hit Asian shores this month, the greeting has changed to: “Have you got your iPad yet?”

I was at a private sale of jewellery and watches last week at the Singapore Recreation Club – you can’t get more status-conscious than that, my friends – when I whipped out my iPad.

• “Wow, so sexy.”
• “Do they make Louis Vuitton covers for it?”
• “Are you getting the iPhone 4? I want mine with bling-bling.”
• “It’s so light. Can it replace my laptop? So I can carry it in my handbag?”

Hate to say it – but my accessory attracted more attention than the Chopard watches and Cartier jewellery on display. And even the food was ignored for a while.

In Singapore, queues formed early at Apple stores on the day of the launch. A week after the launch, I was at my telco provider to get my micro SIM card and already, there was a queue of people wanting exactly the same thing.

It’s no surprise really that Asians are mad about our gadgets. We make them here, we might as well consume them here.

I read that the huge demand for the iPad and other devices is causing problems for a company in Taichung, Taiwan, maker high-tech components.

“The strong demand exceeds our expectations,” says an official from touchscreen maker, Wintek. “Our clients keep pushing us to increase supplies.”

The numbers tell the story. Apple is expecting to sell 8.13 million iPad units worldwide by the end of this year with Asia expected to account for a high percentage of sales. Its outlet in Shanghai opened earlier this month.

According to Apple, Mac sales in Asia Pacific have grown year on year by 73%.

Chief operating officer Tim Cook, announcing Apple’s third quarter results this month, said growth in China was 144%, Korea 184% and in Hong Kong, it doubled.

More gadgets also mean more time being spent online. The region is already home to nearly half of the world’s online population and according to ComScore, the average Internet user in Asia Pacific spends nearly 17 hours a month online.

And increasingly, in less developed markets, the first exposure to the web is not through the laptop anymore but through smartphones.

So next time when you visit me in Singapore, don’t be surprised if I ask you first to show off your gadgets and after that, of course, I will treat you to the best meal ever.

Just be careful though, chilli crabs can get a bit messy and you wouldn’t want it on your iPad.

But perhaps when you run a classic Long Tail product like Temple Safari, the most powerful tool of distribution is inspiration and people you know. Or so says Nick Ray of Hanuman Tourism, Cambodia.

“If you can inspire travel companies and travel journalists to believe in your ideas, then the product will take off.”

As such, Ray has been cultivating contacts and connections that can help them spread the word.

“Hanuman has been very fortunate in this respect. We partner a number of market leaders in the UK, US and France and their growth has helped fuel our growth over the years. We also have a very good relationship with journalists and travel writers in general as we are used to VIP hosting through our work with Hanuman Films.”

One of its most recent guests was the feisty celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

According to the Hanuman blog, executive director Kulikar Sotho, whose family is behind Hanuman Tourism, was the Cambodian Fixer for Ramsey’s television series Gordon’s Great Escape – in which he travels all over the world learning about and cooking local cuisines.

Other celebrities it’s hosted include Angelina Jolie, Daniel Craig and Jeremy Clarkson, “so we get the word out through our partner travel agents and international journalists who are inspired by the original concepts we are promoting”, reckons Ray.

In its Temple Safaris, it takes visitors out to the jungle temples of Northern Cambodia where luxury tents are pitched close to ancient cultural sites and guests can enjoy the quiet of the wilderness away from mass tourism. The product is the company’s signature trip was conceived on a trip to Uganda and Rwanda by Kulikar.

Currently, most of its customers come from the UK with some from the US. One of its strongest promoters has been Audley Travel, in the UK. Other supporters include Cox & Kings, Indochina Travel and Bamboo Travel.

In a good year, the company takes about 250-500 people a year on safari. Ray estimates the price to be about US$300 per day per person, covering four-wheel drives, tour guide and all meals. “It is not a budget product due to the mobile nature of the camps and the support team this requires.”

Because it works through partners, it does limited direct marketing other than the public relations work it does with journalists and celebrities. However it is giving its website a massive overhaul. Currently, 70% of its business come through its partners and 30% through the website.

I wish I had more time to travel to experience all the wonderful things I learnt about and how does one, as a traveller, find all these products in the crowded, cluttered, confusing web?

From zip lining, tiger spotting and communing with gibbons in Laos, to temple safaris in Cambodia and sleeping in Tibetan-style tents in Yunnan, these are the products that make the Mekong region such a tourism jewel – but unless you are a traveller with very specific interests, and you go searching for them, how do you find these products?

Often, they are created by people who are passionate about authenticity and committed to conservation but don’t have the budgets to stand out in the crowded marketplace and they also don’t have the ability to scale – nor do they necessarily want to.

As Jef Reumaux who founded The Gibbon Experience in Bokeo, Northern Laos, says proudly: “We have no potential to be replicated.”

[In The Gibbon Experience, customers sleep in tree houses 40 metres high and there’s a network of cable bridges to help scout the canopy for the gibbons whose distinct calls are heard throughout the forest every morning]

The theory is that the internet is able to help guys in the Long Tail reach customers they wouldn’t normally be able to – but what if the Long Tail is extremely long and awesomely big as it is in tourism, where the heartbeat and lifeblood of the industry is often not in the big brands in the big cities but in the small parts that make the whole?

Talking to the more experienced operators in the Mekong, there is the acknowledgement that they know how to create authentic experiences to delight customers – the missing piece of the puzzle is often how to get these customers in the first place.

In a region where the mix of travellers is also changing – the share of arrivals from the ASEAN region to the Greater Mekong Subregion has grown from 24% to 56% in the last eight years – it’s become even more critical for these operators to seek out new segments of customers that will continue to want to pay for these experiences.

Social media is cited as one of the new tools that could help these small operators.

Passionate travellers tend to be passionate about sharing as well although there may be some customers who don’t wish to share because it’s getting harder and harder to find places where you can get away from the mainstream.

Jia Liming of Wild China, acknowledged as China’s leading cultural and sustainable tour operator, says her company is directing more efforts towards its website and social media to spread the company’s message.

The website has a TripAdvisor recommendation and tools by which customers can connect with through Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.

At Green Discovery Laos, managing director Vianney Catteau says walk-in sales through its seven offices in Laos account for 70% of its business but 15% comes through the internet, an increasingly important channel for the company.

It’s a channel small operators know is their future. But for as long as they are reliant on tour operators, their margins will always be restricted.

At the other end of the value chain are the traditional tour operators whose margins are being squeezed on all fronts and who may see the potential to own such Long Tail supply in destinations.

The challenge is in aggregration, physically and virtually. Several Asian operators have tried to combine forces under alliances and marketing partnerships – they have had limited success. The intent may be noble but the challenge is always human – often these companies are run by independent-minded entrepreneurs who find it hard to see a greater purpose beyond their own ego.

Then there are companies who have tried to do it on their own – Asian Oasis in Thailand, for example, builds, owns and operates its own products under one brand. But again, hard to scale and difficult to bring in like-minded players who may not want to go under another company’s brand, especially if they see it as a competitor.

Then there’s the thought that perhaps they could all band together and come under an Expedia-like umbrella and then I say, perish the thought.

Unlike books that can all be bought under Amazon, the idea somehow doesn’t work as well in tourism – surely, unique, authentic experiences cannot be commoditised?

And then I wonder if a Worldhotels-like organisation can exist for unique, independent hotels, why not for these small adventure and ecotourism operators?

And again, I abandon the thought because as Reumaux of The Gibbon Experience says, when asked to share the secrets of his project’s success:

“Stay free-minded and passionate. Postpone marketing when possible. Respect local culture. Renounce excessive conformism. Question the industry’s mainstreams. Enforce your dreams.”

Yes, perhaps the answer to finding the Long Tail in travel is allowing it to swing free and wild as with the gibbons, and only those who seek shall find.

NB: The Bokeo Nature Reserve consists of 123,000 hectares of mix-deciduous forest in a mountainous terrain ranging from 500m to 1500m in elevation.

It was established by the Lao Forestry Authorities and Animo, the company that runs The Gibbon Experience, with a practical approach and no external funds.

In 2004, Animo was given a government mandate to protect this rich asset of Northern Laos that borders the Nam Ha Protected Area.

Landmark because it’s the first for the European traditional full-service carrier to sign such an agreement with Asia-Pacific’s fastest growing low cost airline group and, for Jetstar, it’s the first signed with a full service carrier outside its parent company Qantas.

The deal brings together the old and the new on a major scale and will feed the entire Air France-KLM network from its Paris and Amsterdam hubs into Jetstar’s centre in Singapore, covering up to 60 routes across the region.

Acknowledging that “the walls are crumbling”, Marnix Fruitema, senior vice president, Asia Pacific for Air France-KLM, adds:

“We have a joint vision to connect two worlds – the world of Air France-KLM, the largest European airline group in the world, with the largest low cost operator in Asia-Pacific, Jetstar.”

That such an agreement can be signed between a full service carrier and a low cost airline group is driven by changes in customer behaviour driven by both technology and a more open airline environment, argues Chong Phit Lian, CEO of Jetstar Asia.

“Customers now have a lot of choices and they can make their bookings online. Tying up with a reputable partner in Europe makes sense for us and benefits our customers.”

Both airlines acknowledge that this agreement was more about choice, convenience and connections for their customers than it is about costs. “Increasingly, there is a growing need by passengers to connect,” says Fruitema.

For Jetstar, it represents a means to plug into the Air France KLM’s corporate travel customer base.

Fruitema sees an upside, too, in the leisure travel segment – as well as business travel – with Jetstar’s customers wanting to connect to Europe and the airline would work closely with the travel trade to maximize this interline agreement.

However the agreement, at this stage, does not cover Air France KLM’s frequent flyer programme.

Under the agreement, a customer booking on the Air France-KLM website will be able to book flights going on to Cairns or any other destination in the Jetstar network.

The same, however, will not be true on the Jetstar website at the moment – again, this is something both airlines say could be added later in the partnership.

In Singapore, close to 90% of Jetstar’s bookings come direct through its website, says head of commercial, Leslie Ng.

According to Paul Rombeek, general manager for Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand at Air France-KLM, the airlines gets about 25% of bookings in Singapore online, “a high figure for a traditional carrier”.

The possibility of an agreement was first raised in Melbourne almost a year ago during a meeting between Air France-KLM and Qantas.

“We talked about an interline agreement and then somehow, someone said, ‘What about Jetstar?’, and our discussions grew from that. It was a organic process,” says Fruitema.

The European airline works with several partners in Asia-Pacific, including Korean Air, China Eastern. Vietnam Airlines will also be joining the SkyTeam next week.

Fruitema sadds:

“Asia Pacific is too diverse, too large, to have just one partner. Our agreement with Jetstar is to drive business out of Singapore, South-East Asia and Australia and New Zealand, where we see tremendous growth potential.”

It also operates code-share flights with Qantas to five destinations in Australia and transfers 100 passengers each way, each day on these flights, adds Rombeek.

Fruitema says he is optimistic about the outlook from Asia this year.

Last year, the Asia-Pacific market held up for Air France-KLM in terms of volume, but not yield.

However in the year to date, the region is making a strong recovery and officials are optimistic about the next 12 months.

Hans Lerch, vice chairman of the Migros Group of Switzerland, which owns Hotelplan, who was recently appointed caretaker global CEO of Hotelplan, says this is a logical step.

“Just look at yourself when you buy something – you may not buy at the cheapest price, what you want is the best value for money. And when you go to a destination, it does not matter if you spend $20 or $30 for a meal – what you want is the experience. People, when they are in-destination, will not bargain as hard and tend to spend more.”

Lerch reckons disintermediation has taken out the margins in all parts of the value chain, adding:

“Tour operators give less margin to the travel agent, and you are earning less and less as you bring the product to the client.”

This was why tour operating groups like Hotelplan are looking at buying suppliers of in-destination products such as ski operators or dive companies.

Lerch says:

“These kind of services add to the experience of a destination and customers will pay on the ground for these services.”

Owning such Long Tail supply also means more control over destination services given stricter legislation makes tour operators like Hotelplan liable for accidents that happen to customers when using sub-contracted suppliers.

It’s a model that has been tried before, with tour operators starting up their own hotel operations. But Lerch says this is difficult, claiming that running a hotel “is a different business” from running a tour operator.

But niche, specialty products and services are different, he says, and these cannot be copied by online travel agencies, adding: “Virtuality stops somewhere.”

As caretaker CEO, Lerch aims to reposition Hotelplan. He says: “In 1965, it [Hotelplan] was substantially bigger than Kuoni, but Kuoni is now two-and-half times bigger.”

Indeed, it was Lerch who was responsible for building up Kuoni’s global operations.

Asked if he intends to do with Hotelplan what he did with Kuoni, Lerch says: “That took over 40 years to build. That train has left the station.”

Instead, Lerch sees four ways traditional tour operator can grow in the new marketplace:

1. Continuing to grow the legacy model “which still pays the salaries”.
2. Invest in the online channel. Every tour operator has to take part in this. “The good news is that Expedia did not knock out the legacy tour operators within two years like they said they would and was feared. Many legacy tour operators have made good investments in the online channel and have built good businesses.”
3. Through companies that cannot be copied in their content and brand or the way it is packaged. For example, Abercrombie & Kent in UK or Intrepid Travel in Australia. “These continue to enjoy good organic growth.”
4. Expansion by geographic markets. “Where is business going to grow quicker and how can you attack these markets?”

As it gears up to fly its 100 millionth passenger by the third quarter this year, Asia’s first low cost airline, AirAsia, is working on how to turn price-sensitive customers into loyal ones.

The airline will be launching a frequent flyer programme soon and Kathleen Tan, regional head of commercial, is quick to add to that “to us, it will be a business unit to earn ancillary revenues”.

It is also investing in CRM. Tan says:

“As an eight-year-old airline, our tools are not so sophisticated yet but we are investing in this area so that we can understand how you as an individual book with us, what you buy when you fly with us and if there is a flight delay, recognize someone who is a key customer a priority seat on the next flight”.

The most powerful area of building customer relationships however is through social networking platforms such as Facebook “which has helped us build a community of “people who love AirAsia and people who love to travel”.

“We can now engage with this community and offer them not only flights but hotels, tours and destination experiences from spas to romance and promote to niches such as families and gays.”

Through its AirAsiaGo portal, which was recently re-launched with a new booking engine, the airline will work with inbound tour operators to create customized tours for its customers. “We are going to give people what they want instead of giving them what the market wants to sell to them,” Tan says.

Another area of investment is in mobile. By May, customers will no longer have to type www.mobile.airasia.com to access a mobile-enabled site but go through the main URL.

Currently, mobile is only 1% of transactions but Tan sees it growing.

“We will have to offer special mobile fares to increase adoption just as we did with web exclusive fares. Money is the only language that works.”

It is also investing in more self check-in kiosks to offer customers convenience and of course, also to keep costs down.

“We have to pay for every counter at check-in which is manned by people not in our uniform. It costs a lot and this doesn’t make sense,” says Tan. “Technology and innovation helps us keep our costs down.”

On the investment it’s made in introducing flatbed Premium seats on AirAsia X, Tan says that being the first low cost longhaul airline, it had to learn as it went along.

“Longhaul travel behaviour is very different from shorthaul and we got feedback that our XL seats weren’t comfortable and people were prepared to pay for a better seat. It was also a good time to order good seats at a good price last year when the airline industry was in crisis.”

AirAsia X CEO, Azran Osman-Rani, admits:

“We concede that the old seats were neither suitable nor comfortable for long-haul flights. But true to AirAsia tradition, we change and adapt. We are always on our toes to seek for constant improvements, providing the best products and services to our guests.”

Major hotel chains and independent properties around the world continue to charge guests for using the internet – an irritation for those who consider it as important as free room towels.

Despite his belief that technology should be treated as an extension of the guest experience, Mark Kendall, vice president of the Hospitality Financial & Technology Professionals Asia Pacific, is against the idea that hotels should provide free internet access to guests.

“The challenge with broadband is the cost of service. If it’s a three star hotel and it offers unsecured bandwidth, then user beware. But if a CEO is staying in a five star hotel, then he expects some level of security and the level of infrastructure that is required to support these services costs the hotel.”

He says some hotels were considering the wireless.sg model (the free wireless service found in prime locations in Singapore) whereby you get a minimum service – say a bandwidth of 128K – for free and if you want extra, you pay.

“Business travellers form 75% of the business for hotels in Singapore, and their RFPs with corporates have to include broadband, so that’s already being added.”

Kendall says people also tend to download more when they travel – be it pornography or illegal downloads.

[NB: See recent moves by Radisson to crack down on illegal web browsing]

More and more though, customers are demanding free internet as a right of travel.

Not Kendall though. He says:

“As a business traveller, I don’t demand it. Most business travellers expense it anyway so they don’t care –  as long as it’s not coming out of my pocket?”

But what about entrepreneurs and SMEs who may not be able to expense it to someone else’s pockets – people such as Carl Griffth, a design consultant living in Singapore.

“For me, I expect internet and I expect it to be free. It’s like towels, I use one everyday but I don’t pay for it. So if I don’t pay, will they give me used towels instead? Now if I ordered dancing girls – which may not be considered normal service – then yes, I expect to pay for it.”

AirAsia charts another milestone in its efforts on the social media front when its Facebook Fan Page exceeded the 200,000-fan base last week.

The company even claims reaching such heady heights now positions it as the leader in social media marketing.

Kathleen Tan, regional head of commercial, says that its Facebook Fan Page has enabled the airline to steer away from the usual limitations of conventional marketing, “which consumers are no longer reacting to”.

The forum-like nature of Facebook has been a catalyst for AirAsia to move into new media and digital marketing, further enhancing its e-commerce nature, she adds.

“Lifestyle changes on the digital front as news and information are now made available real-time via the social media platform. This has prompted AirAsia to engage in social media to connect with our guests, and the response has proven to be encouraging through AirAsia’s Facebook Fan page.”

She says the airline started building and investing in social media marketing two years ago. Today, it has its own blog and a presence on Twitter through @airasiadotcom, a Flickr page as well as a YouTube channel.

“This is a movement not just at the corporate level but generally our staff also embrace it and use as tools to communicate and share experiences. It is driven at top level as most of our CEOs and senior management tweet, including me.”

While social media has generated a lot of buzz and is seen as the latest corporate tools, she says that it “really needs huge commitment and resources to manage 24/7 or it may backfire”.

“We interact, listen, have some fun, engage and action if we encounter complaints and not hide.  Transparency is crucial.  Of course we are also learning lessons on how to improve.”

Through its Facebook page, Tan says: “we can now be more relevant in providing content, based on feedback or requests from our guests, instead of just sending out a one way marketing push or product updates.

“With Facebook, we are able to optimize our engagement and interaction with our guests, apart from creating a fun and creative platform among the social media community. ”

In addition, she says the airline’s Facebook page has enabled guests to share their travel experiences, create travel networks, as well as receive real-time information updates on its flight operations and local airport conditions, such as the recent snowstorm in London.

“You can say that AirAsia’s Facebook Fan Page has become a one-stop service centre for guests travel needs,” she adds.

Marking the 200,000-fan milestone, the airline is offering an exclusive low fare deal for its fans. Tan says: “With an average of 6,500 fans and over 33,000 visits to our fan page weekly, we know that they are taking us seriously on the social media front.”

AirAsia’s Facebook Fan Page was created in April 2009 and hit the 100,000 mark in December last year, where it rewarded its fans with a 20% discount on selected routes. It has grown steadily to 205,280 total fans in the span of three months.

So Google makes the news for two reasons: its pull-out of China (it has shut down its mainland portal and diverted searches to its uncensored Hong Kong-based site) and moving into travel metasearch.

Both developments are not that unexpected. It hasn’t been a happy relationship between Google and China, politically and economically.

Yes, there’s the censorship issue that Google is taking exception to – but it did accept and lived with the Chinese rules for a long time, when it suited it.

According to the Wall Street Journal [reg required], Google founder Sergey Brin says the decision was partly motivated by his own memories of repression in the Soviet Union.

He says that China’s web censorship and suppression of dissidents reminded him of the “totalitarianism” of his youth.

“In some aspects of their policy, particularly with respect to censorship, with respect to surveillance of dissidents, I see the same earmarks of totalitarianism, and I find that personally quite troubling,” he says.

Business-wise, it’s a fact that similar to the internet giants that went before it (eBay and Yahoo) Google has found it hard to gain traction in China against the market leader Baidu.

But there is no doubt that its partial departure (as described by some) could impact all sorts of publishers and websites that rely upon search for obtaining customers, says Fritz Demopoulos, chief executive of Chinese travel search site, Qunar.

“With one less acquisition channel, Baidu would have more bargaining power – i.e. TAC would increase,” he says.

“On the other hand, for companies selling contextual advertising, Qunar, other MSEs across all sorts of verticals not just travel, [they] would have more opportunities to sell.”

For online travel specifically, Demopoulos says Google’s share in China was probably at a marginal 4-5% compared to 15-20% for Baidu.

“In other words, Google didn’t have much scale within china’s travel space, and as such, their partial departure probably won’t have a big impact.”

The impact, I reckon, will be more social. When I was in China recently, I asked a few young Chinese how they would feel if they wouldn’t be able to access “Gu Ge” and most of them shrugged. The Chinese are, at best, a pragmatic people and I suspect that most know their way round the system.

One though says that if he were not able to access Google, Facebook or YouTube, “I think our life would not be so quick, convenient and interesting”.

“Our work will be more unpleasant and burdensome. Moreover, the weekends will be as dry as dust. It’s terrible.”

He is right. As international travellers, we are used to logging onto our Facebook anytime, anywhere to post pictures or updates or to YouTube to post our videos so it’s a bit strange when you find yourself unable to do so when you are travelling in China. Yes, social media has become a rite of travel, in my book.

On my recent trip to Haikou, I kept forgetting I was in China and tried logging onto Facebook or YouTube – even Vimeo – and failed every time. At first I thought it was the slow net access, but then I was told simply that these sites are blocked.

This week, someone who was travelling in China even pinged me to say he felt rather lonely because he couldn’t get onto Facebook.

This, I think, is not very friendly or welcoming behaviour for a country that’s due to welcome more travellers than anywhere else in the world by 2015.

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), China, now the world’s fourth largest destination for incoming tourists, will rise to the top spot by then, knocking France with its current 80 million per year off its perch.

So for the sake of hospitality in this new digital age, I think China should lighten up a little bit.

As for Google’s entry into travel metasearch and its implications for companies in this space, well, the move’s been tipped for so long that I am sure no one, least of all Steve Hafner of Kayak or Martin Symes of Wego are saying: “OMG, we are dead!”

There’s one thing I do know though – the search space was getting stale and dull. Some were already condemning it to an early grave. Social media became the new sexy and was hogging all the attention.

Well, search just got sexy again, as a result of Google’s stance in China and its foray into new areas. Perhaps this could give rise to all sorts of mergers and acquisitions, but then again, maybe not.

It has, let’s face it, been rather difficult to second-guess the precise timing of Google’s moves over the years.

But in the meantime, Gu Ge, we media people love you.