New Asian customer in spotlight at Web in Travel 2010

The new Asian customer and the way she plans, books and buys travel will be in the spotlight at this year’s Web In Travel conference taking place in Singapore in October.

“There is a new customer emerging in Asia,” said Yeoh Siew Hoon, owner of the conference.

“She is extremely value-conscious and tech-savvy in the way she seeks and accesses information on the web, comparing not only prices but also what other people are saying about a product or service.

“Game-changing gadgets such as the iPhone or the iPad, social networks such as Facebook and travel review sites such as TripAdvisor are just some of the factors that are influencing traveller behaviour across the region.

“We also have a very Internet-savvy and mobile-connected generation of customers emerging in Asia. In July, Asia became the largest producer of tweets on Twitter and some of Facebook’s biggest growth markets are found in the region.”

This, she said, explains why TripAdvisor, the biggest travel review site in the world, and Facebook are setting up regional headquarters in Singapore.

Social networking activity is on the rise in Asia, as tracked by comScore, the global company that gathers digital media intelligence, showing that 50.8 percent of the total online population in the Asia-Pacific region visited a social networking site in February 2010, reaching a total of 240.3 million visitors.

Brett Henry, vice president marketing, Abacus International, the travel technology company which processes most of the region’s air reservations, said, “The people going to social networks are no longer just the younger generation.

"Granted that in Asia, there is still a market for the 50s and above who are less Internet savvy and prefer to book offline. But if you project ahead, in a decade or less, the Internet and social media savvy Generation C will be ruling the world.”

In India, for instance, more than one-third of its total Internet population visit travel sites with comScore reporting that top online travel brands are seeing double and triple-digit growth as consumers take to the web in search of deals.

AirAsia’s Facebook fan page grew from zero members to more than 200,000 within a year and now stands at 339,009 members.

Said Kathleen Tan, regional head of commercial for the airline group which will fly its 100th million passenger by the fourth quarter of this year, “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.”

Said Yeoh, “Everyone recognises the huge travel demand there is in Asia, not only in the major population areas of China and India, but also across the whole of South-east and North Asia.

"People are travelling either for the first time, thanks to low cost airlines, or for the umpteenth time, and they are branching out to try new places. And they are being adventurous not only in where they travel to but how they plan and book their travels.”

In July as well, Google, which commanded 72 percent of the search market in the US in May 2010 (Experian Hitwise), paid US$700 million to acquire ITA Software, a company whose technology solution helps travellers search for air fares.

“This development which sees Google moving into the travel vertical can only benefit travellers as this will spur the industry to improve search and make it easier for us to look for the best air fares to anywhere,” said Yeoh.

It is against this backdrop that leading travel marketing and technology experts from around the world will gather at the Web In Travel conference to discuss and debate the latest customer trends emerging in Asia.

Represented on the speakers list are new brands such as TripAdvisor; travel.co.jp, the publicly-listed Japanese meta travel search site; koreahotels.com, the leading online hotel portal in South Korea; NileGuide, the US-based travel planning site; Holiday IQ, the India-based travel media site that’s expanding in South-east Asia; and Indonesia’s Mandala Airlines, which is launching international services to Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau soon.

Established online travel brands such as Wotif, ZUJI/Travelocity, Expedia and Hotels.com will also be represented, along with the leading players in search, revenue management, social media, branding, marketing and distribution.

“What we wanted to do this year was to widen our net to cover players who are making waves in Asia Pacific, international brands who are entering the region and emerging markets such as Indonesia and Korea,” said Yeoh.

Close to 60 speakers have been confirmed, with more likely to be added in the months to come.

China twitters over blogger who may be in Canada

SHANGHAI -- It really doesn't matter whether China's most intriguing new blogger is also the country's Public Enemy No. 1, fugitive businessman Lai Changxing, typing missives from his refuge in Vancouver.


The fact that so many Chinese netizens - or cybercitizens - think it is him, is what makes the blogger interesting as does the positive reaction he is garnering.


Fat-Xing, as he is calling himself, posted his first blog on Feb. 27, a fairly benign introduction telling who he was and where he came from. It seemed to some, however, to be a thinly-veiled biography of Lai and less than a week later word went out on the web: "Lai is blogging, what is he trying to say?"


The reaction was immediate - and surprising.


In the past decade Chinese citizens have heard nothing but official denunciations of Lai - a cheat, a smuggler, a man who deserved to be executed more than once.


Faced with what they consider to be his own words, however, the country's cybercitizens appear to be discounting what they were told and are taking a shine to Lai.


Fat-Xing's blog appears to be operating underneath Beijing's radar. Since it isn't dealing with sensitive political issues or blatantly criticizing the regime, it wouldn't immediately attract the attention of China's omni-present Internet censors. When and if it does, it is difficult to say how they will react. The only thing that is certain, is they won't be happy to see a rehabilitation of Lai's reputation underway.


One Chinese web surfer, who called himself "president of the nubi party," wrote: "I heard your name (Lai) everyday before. Now I finally have a chance to respond to you. Waking up from a dream, I found I have been fooled so much and for so long. So are many of my countrymen. Keep blogging. We stand now with your freedom."


Youlongnaida wrote: "As a Xiamen citizen I am proud of you."


And Xuanzi said: "Hope you have a good life in Canada."


Only one dissenting voice stood out among the positive responses on Fat-Xing's blog.


"How come Lai has so many fans? Chinese people's morality has decayed to extreme," Old Ma wrote.


The Chinese government maintains Lai ran a $10 billion US smuggling ring in Xiamen, one of the coastal cities chosen to be a laboratory when China began to experiment with capitalism. One step ahead of the Chinese police, he fled to Canada in 1999 and has used the legal system to remain there ever since.


In February, Lai was even granted a work permit.


Lai's defenders, however, have long argued that his business practices only reflected the wild west atmosphere prevalent in Xiamen in the heady years after Deng Xiaoping declared: "To be rich is glorious." Fat-Xing seems to want to make the same point in his blog.


"Let me talk about smuggling. My understanding is that smuggling is just to bring the good things from abroad to China. Nobody wants bad things. About a decade or two ago, all that is smuggled are of high quality," Fat-Xing wrote.


He goes on to describe smuggling as "a redistribution of wealth" and notes that in Western countries "smugglers are simply fined."


Real crooks harm people, he said, like the dairy bosses so blatantly did when they sold melamine-laced baby milk formula in China last year.


You could almost see netizens nodding in agreement when they read that post.


One wrote, Lai "didn't kill people or cause fire, nor did he disturb society." The blog poster went on - anonymously - to suggest the Chinese government stop putting so much effort into trying to get Canada ("the paradise for criminals") to extradite Lai and use its energy to amend its own laws. "It is better to mend the fence after the sheep is lost than to lose everything."


In his latest post, Fat-Xing, has begun to interact with his fans, notably one who asks the alleged crook for advice on setting up a business in China.


Online, Fat-Xing made one faint-hearted attempt to discourage speculation that he is Lai.


"Please don't guess who, who, who I am," he wrote. "I am not who, who, who."


But later, he pumps up the intrigue by saying, "(I'm) missing my hometown where I've left for over 10 years." That's just how long Lai has been in Canada.


China's demand for Lai's return and Canada's refusal to produce him until he exhausts his legal appeals, have soured Sino-Canadian relations for almost a decade. Perhaps sensitive to this, Lai has kept a low profile for most of his sojourn in Vancouver, giving only a few interviews over the years and saying very little about his case.


And, he may still be lying low now, but you would be hard pressed to convince Chinese netizens of it.