TODAY: Phuket MICE market report, travel trends for the near-term future, boutique hotels: premium performance impacts flow-through and ROI of influencers.

Phuket MICE market report
Wednesday, 2nd January 2019

Phuket’s surging MICE market valued at close to THB11 billion (USD342B), as meetings, incentives and exhibitions attracted over 800,000 visitors to resort island last year.

Looking at the size of the market, a new report Phuket MICE Market Update revealed that for the full year, the island hosted 660 events with close to 60,000 participants. With overseas demand becoming increasingly prolific throughout Thailand, the Top 3 international geographic source markets are Singapore, Mainland China and India >>

News from around the APAC region
1 Jan 2019 : Hotel industry and travel news from around the Asia Pacific region: Artotel Group secures strategic funding, Banyan Tree announced 26 hotel signings, Radisson Debuts in Suzhou city and more >>

SIA moves to further into the digital space
31 Dec 2018 : Singapore Airlines has acquired a minority stake in Australia-founded Data Republic, in a move to further enhance its digital capabilities >>

Dusit continues expansion of its dusitD2 brand
30 Dec 2018 : Dusit International has continued its global expansion by soft opening two new resorts under its upscale dusitD2 brand – dusitD2 Yarkay Thimphu, Bhutan and dusitD2 Ao Nang, Krabi (Thailand) >>

Heightened focus on cybersecurity in the air transport industry drives investments
1 Jan 2019 : Pace of delivering concrete projects to tackle the increasing threat remains a challenge, while cybersecurity remains high on the agenda and is a spending priority for both airport and airline CIOs, faster progress towards implementation of concrete cyber prevention and management initiatives remains a challenge >>

Digital maturity a significant factor in tapping into today’s generation of technologically advanced travellers
25 Dec 2018 : Dubai Tourism has unveiled a third-party research report on the digital maturity of hotels in the emirate, with the objective of further improving the competitiveness of the travel and tourism industry >>

HIGHLIGHT ARTICLE

Travel Trends for the Near-Term Future
Wednesday, 2nd January 2019

The leading-edge luggage company AFAR.com has an advisory group they call their '2018 Travel Vanguard' whom they describe as 'visionaries who are transforming the industry'. In sharing their visions for the future of travel, six trends emerged >>

Boutique Hotels: Performance Impacts Flow-Through
While boutique hotels comprised just a small percent of the total US lodging supply, boutique projects represented close to 18 percent of the rooms in the development pipeline as of June 2018 >>

Reasons WHY Customers Choose to Do Business with You
Let’s get this one out of the way first. Some people choose price as a primary reason. Those companies that get customers because of low price will lose those customers when someone else has a lower price. The loyalty to the company is because of price, not the company >>

Tips For A Healthy Work-Life Balance
If you work in hospitality, you most likely don’t conform to the 9-5 working day or even standard 40 hr work week and I love this industry so much and can’t think of doing anything else, but it can seem like an impossible feat to achieve a work-life balance when work is your life >>

6 Travel Trends in Tours and Activities to Watch in 2019
Solo travel, pop culture influence and the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) effect are among the six driving factors in tours and activities for next year, reveals Hong Kong-based leading travel activities and services booking platform Klook >>

The ROI of Influencer Marketing
Influence marketing is all the rage now, and it’s fairly easy to understand why, as brands struggle to get their own organic and even paid content out to their target audiences >>