Is The Asia Crisis Over Yet?

Good news emanating from Asia this week.

Singapore is usually a pretty stable proxy for the whole region. It is typically imune from the fluctuations that can be dramatic in some of the other markets like Bali or Hong Kong.

After a dramatic drop off in visitors and time spent that began in the latter half of 2008 and reached its lowest point in the first quarter 2009, the market has slowly inch by inch crawled back. In January 2010 - the market occupancy rose above that of a year earlier. While not fully back to the same level of occupancy enjoyed before - the Singapore Government must be happy with the results. Correspondingly SQ must also be happy to see the back of 2009.

While yields are not fully restored yet - we are seeing rises there too.

This is good news all round

Cheers

Fire Questions at the Professor and Other Notables

OK - Shameless plug time (been doing a lot of that lately).

WIT - web in Travel is on October 21-22 in Singapore. This is the 4th year for the show - it is a great congregation of non-commercial comment and analysis with a great cast and audience.

This year - I shall be doing double duty as a moderator and a panelist. Plus I get to do a stint as a debater. And if you stay for the party - I hope to suitably embarrass myself in public.

For more details - please go to www.webintravel.com.

Tim Hughes - who writes one of the better blogs and one of the few that I read everyday will be firing questions so if you want to come along and join him in a form of twisted fun - please feel free.

http://tims-boot.blogspot.com/2008/10/ever-wanted-to-ask-questions-of.html

Siew Hoon let's me read the comment forms after the events and they are indicative of the quality she puts into the show's organization and selection of talent.

So if you want to be inspired and challenged this is the place to come (even if its all the way to Singapore!). There are two other shows going on at the same time HSMAI and ITB Asia so you can really benefit. If you are going to be in Asia or if there is one event set you want to attend then this is a must be place.

Cheers

Got Startup Pitch? Here's a chance to make yourself heard

Web in Travel Asia 2008, aka WIT the Premier Asian Travel Conference, is taking a leaf out of partner's PhocusWright's playbook and will offer an opportunity to get a pitch in front of investors.

So if you think you have what it takes - Read on...

Be part of WIT’s "The Start-Up Pitch" and get your ideas heard by investors
Always wanted to run your own start-up? Got a great idea? An idea that you think is unique and differentiated in the online travel space? An idea that will make potential investors sit up and take notice?
If so, this could be your chance to be heard.
What: WIT-Web In Travel 2008 (Oct 21-22, 2008) is organising “The Start-Up Pitch” as part of its conference programme this year. Three finalists will be given a chance to pitch their ideas in 5 minutes each to a panel of investor judges.
Vote: The audience will also get a chance to pose questions of the finalists, after which they will vote for the winning idea via SMS.
Win! The winner of WIT's Start-Up Pitch will win a Professional Development Program (PDP) voucher from the Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management (CNI) worth US$2,500 (valid for 2009) as well as the opportunity to take their winning idea to the next level with the investor judges.

For more details go here:

http://wit.verve.com.sg/fliers/start-up-pitch.html

Cheers

Timothy

Is Singapore picking off Europeans one country at a time?

Portugal last week joined the UK in a simple Open Skies bilateral treat treaty with the Republic of Singapore.



What is interesting about this is not that it happened but the fact that the EU has been trumpeting its common aviation policy stance particularly with the USA, yet individual countries still make deals like this.

The EU should be much more consistent on these matters.

Open Skies - US and OZ but with a catch

Australia and the US have announced a new Open Skies agreement. But it comes with a little catch. It is bilateral only.

It is really interesting to see that one of the first truly large scale (seventh freedom) Open Skies agreements came between the UK and Singapore, it becomes effective March 30th. However this OZ-US arrangement will effectively hamper Singapore's efforts to open up SQ service from Oz to the US west coast. Ditto the UK will not be able to operate freely from US to OZ despite having operated 7th Freedom right services in the 80s and 1990s as a code share.

One of these days we will see the USA operate a truly Open Skies agreement worldwide with fully all freedom's One through Eight. So US Congress - put your money where your mouth is....

But then I am only an analyst.