Hyatt Regency Danang Resort & Spa has named Adrian Pulido as general manager of the 360-key oceanfront resort.
He leads a team of more than 450 associates at Hyatt Regency Danang Resort & Spa, and will be responsible for all aspects of hotel operations, staff management and guest satisfaction.
Originally from Mexico, he held leadership roles at high-profile resorts in the Americas, Middle East and Asia-Pacific.
Hahn Air introduces Arsenio Cabanilla Jr. as the new regional vice president agency distribution for Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Thailand and the Philippines.
In his new position, he will assist travel agents in his markets on how to use Hahn Air’s ticketing solutions to increase their sales. In addition, he will provide support with training, presentations, as well as targeted sales and marketing activities. Part of his responsibility will also lie in developing strategic alliances with the local trade.
He has a broad background in tourism and his past experience includes positions at Legend Hotels International, Philippine Airlines and an online travel agency.
The Ritz-Carlton, Bali has named Subin Dharman as its new general manager.
He brings with him more than 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry and has held pivotal positions in various luxury hotels around the globe, such as Kuwait, Qatar and the US.
Prior to joining The Ritz-Carlton, Bali, Subin was also appointed co-chair for Marriott Business Council in Indonesia.
Face-to-face business events are returning with more ‘downtime’ where attendees get to refresh their minds and socialise, as compared to packed agendas commonly seen pre-pandemic – a change that Petrina Goh, regional commercial director for South-east Asia and Hong Kong, CWT Meetings & Events, says is a result of isolation during the pandemic emphasising the need for meaningful and participatory human connections.
In this episode of TTG Conversations: Five questions video news series, Goh also highlights the growing confidence in longhaul travel, sharper focus on personalised content at business events, increasing value being placed on social functions during business events, and other observations around the way business events are designed today.
The removal of travel barriers between China and Hong Kong has brought event planners in the latter destination a welcome change of pace.
Event planners in Hong Kong tell TTGmice that they are flooded with enquiries and bookings since travel restrictions were lifted, and most of the business is coming from the mainland.
Business is returning so swiftly that CTSHK Metropole International Travel Services, deputy general manager, George Kai, expects performance to reach 50 per cent of pre-pandemic levels by this May.
He said: “(The reopening has) triggered numerous enquiries and bookings. Most are firmed up within a short time, such as a week before departure. These have kept us very busy.”
Kai said the majority of events are led by government bodies, and can range from meetings and incentive programmes to product launches and roadshows aimed at promoting provincial business. Each event runs for four days on average.
The optimism is shared by Frankie Lam, director of Kam Wai Travel. Events have streamed in since February, and most of them are from China organisations eager to catch up on business, investments and promotions in Hong Kong.
“The pace of recovery is fast and we expect to hit 40 per cent of pre-Covid business by May 1 and 50 per cent by summer,” said Lam.
Momentous Asia Travel & Events, general manager, Doris Lam, noted that the Chinese used to make up 50 per cent of attendees at conferences held in Hong Kong, and she hopes the same representation will return now that the ease of cross-border travel has returned.
Returning Chinese planners have come with higher expectations, observed Kai.
They now expect fresh destination experiences, Michelin-star meals and quality service. And their desires are being met, according to Kai, thanks to Hong Kong’s dedication to reinventing itself as a destination and creating new tourism experiences during the pandemic years.
“The quality of service at restaurants and provided by guides has also improved,” he added.
However, one stumbling block to Hong Kong’s business events recovery remains – the intense manpower shortage.
Lam said: “Prior to the pandemic, it was typical for us to handle groups with attendees ranging from thousands to 10,000. Now, with my team strength down by 50 per cent, we have to restrict group sizes to 1,000 pax.”
Kai pointed to a shortage of tour guides and hotel staff to support event groups.
With coach drivers and tour guides in high demand, prices for land tours have also gone up by 30 per cent, noted Lam.
Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo, have topped ECA International’s Top Ten Most Expensive Locations For Business Travel in Asia list.
“Singapore overtook Tokyo in 2022 to become the second-most expensive city in Asia to visit for business,” said Lee Quane, regional director – Asia at ECA International.
“Business travel to the city picked up earlier than most other locations in the region with the government’s comprehensive lifting of travel restrictions. The resulting increase in demand contributed to rises in hotel accommodation costs, while costs associated with other daily essentials consumed by business travellers also increased at a faster rate than other locations in the region. Together, these propelled Singapore to second place in Asia and 19th worldwide.”
The average business trip to Singapore now costs US$515 per day – an increase of US$34 from the year before, just slightly cheaper than Hong Kong.
Tokyo fell one place in the ranking and is now the third most expensive city to visit in Asia. Although daily costs for business travellers have increased in local currency terms in the past year, the depreciation of the yen against the US dollar has caused it to fall in the rankings.
“In local currency terms business travellers’ costs rose by over five per cent in Tokyo last year,” explained Quane. “However, the weaker yen means that with average costs of US$424 per day, the average daily cost of business travel is almost 20 per cent lower than in Hong Kong. It is now ranked outside the top 30 most expensive cities for business travel globally, and other Japanese locations have experienced similar falls in the past year.”
Meanwhile, locations in Taiwan including Taipei and Hsinchu have risen in the rankings, with both locations entering the ranking of the 10 most expensive business travel destinations in Asia.
“The rise in our rankings of Taipei is largely due to the fact that locations such as Yokohama, Beijing and Macau, which were all more expensive before the Covid-19 pandemic, are now relatively cheaper rather than Taipei becoming more expensive in absolute terms,” noted Quane. “Nonetheless, as locations in Taiwan will expect to receive more business travellers this year, their guests will find Taiwan to be more expensive relative to other comparable destinations in the region.”
Popular tourist destinations in South-east Asia saw relatively little change in travel expenses in 2022, with business travel costs rising only slightly over the last year in local currency terms.
“Cities like Pattaya and Chiang Mai in Thailand, alongside Denpasar in Indonesia, all witnessed small rates of growth in local currency terms in 2022, ranging between one and three per cent,” added Quane. “Hotel rates have been suppressed by low demand in comparison to pre-pandemic levels. Even a tourist hub like Bangkok, which typically receives many business travellers, only saw a moderate four per cent increase in business travel costs, leaving it well outside the top 100 most expensive business travel destinations last year.”
Elsewhere in Asia, inflation in many locations has contributed to significant increases in business travel costs in local currency terms even though business travel demand has not yet recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. Costs have risen most in countries such as Sri Lanka, Laos, Pakistan and Kazakhstan but have actually fallen in some key cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.
“Business travel expenses were over 75 per cent higher in local currency terms in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2022 in comparison to the year before”, advised Quane. “This is due to high inflation and currency depreciation since some costs associated with business travel, such as hotel costs, are incurred in US dollars by foreign business travellers here. At the other end of scale, the fall in costs for business travellers in China has been largely due to falling hotel costs associated with a drop in demand for business travel last year. In spite of this, Shanghai is nonetheless the fourth most expensive business travel destination in Asia.”
Globally, New York remains the most expensive location in the world for business travel, with the average daily cost of a business trip now standing at US$796.
“New York tops the rankings for yet another year as the cost associated with business travel rebounded strongly over the course of a year,” explained Quane. “A post-pandemic surge in demand for business travel and tourism to the Big Apple, along with inflation-driven price hikes on goods commonly consumed by business travellers, has all contributed to a stark eight per cent growth in business travel costs.”
Like New York, locations in the US continued to dominate this year’s global top 10 list, while Switzerland remained home to Europe’s two most expensive cities for business travel – Geneva and Zurich. Traditional business hubs London and Paris also retained their positions in this year’s rankings, with Luanda, Angola, rounding off the list as Africa’s most expensive city.
Updated annually, ECA’s Daily Rates reports provide average costs for hotel accommodation – which makes up the bulk of any daily allowance – as well as meals, drinks, laundry, taxi costs, and daily essentials.
The Melbourne Convention Bureau (MCB) has launched the second edition of its interactive Melbourne e-Guide.
Special features include how to create first-class VIP experiences at iconic venues such as the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Flemington and Melbourne & Olympic Parks, to learning how to weave a business event or itinerary programme around one of Melbourne’s major events such as the Australian Formula 1 Rolex Grand Prix.
Event planners will also be able to learn about Melbourne’s new venue offerings for major business events; benefit from an update on the city’s Accor properties; receive tips for hotels with twin-share rooms to consider; and product and venue ideas to take their event to the next level.
Meanwhile, the embedded interactive map in the e-Guide enables event owners, planners and attendees to plan their trip and create custom itineraries for site inspections, delegate tours and pre-and-post conference travel, with the aid of videos, images, 360-degree experiences, product descriptors and hyperlinks.
Offering geographic location or category search functions such as Eat, Play, Relax, Conference and Caffeinate, the map is an effective way to familiarise users with how to maximise their time in Melbourne and provides real-time directional features accessible via mobile phones to help guide users through the city.
Thomas Cook India, and its subsidiary SOTC Travel, have partnered with global technology consulting and digital solutions company LTIMindtree to launch Green Carpet, a technology platform that will help enterprises monitor and manage their travel emissions.
Green Carpet enables swift and easy integration with current business travel platforms, and will also provide analysis of travel emissions with real-time dashboards. The launch pricing of the solution is based on the number of trips, which starts from US$1,500 and goes up to US$3,500 annually.
The launch comes at a time when the market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), made it mandatory for the top 1,000 listed companies in India by market capitalisation to make filings as per the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) starting from financial year 2023.
The platform will help Indian companies capture, measure, benchmark and report Scope 3 emissions as mandated by SEBI. Carbon emissions that are caused, because of business travel, come under the Scope 3 of BRSR.
“Corporates through the Green Carpet platform can evaluate parameters like how various business verticals are adding to carbon emissions, or how much carbon emissions are being added due to domestic or international travel. A standardised report can be then submitted to SEBI,” said Mahesh Iyer, CEO & executive director, Thomas Cook India.
“The travel and tourism sector plays an important role in reaching India’s target to achieve net zero emissions by 2070,” he added.
ICMS Australasia (ICMSA), an Australia-headquartered PCO, has expanded its footprint and opened an office in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Karen Hamilton, who has been working in the New Zealand business events sector for the past 16 years, has assumed the new role of director New Zealand.
She will join ICMSA owner and managing director, Emma Bowyer, and fellow directors at the company’s first Directors’ Meeting in 2023 in Christchurch in late March.
Bowyer said it had been a long-held goal for the company to move beyond Australia and, with confirmed future business in New Zealand, now was the right time.
“In recent years we have been approached by our clients – particularly associations – to manage their events in New Zealand. With a dedicated New Zealand office that now becomes more realistic,” Bowyer said.
“The opening of Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre, the Tākina Wellington Convention & Exhibition Centre coming online this year, and excitement building for SkyCity’s New Zealand International Convention Centre bodes well for a strong business pipeline.”
ICMSA has already been confirmed as PCO for the Australasian Polymer Conference in New Zealand in 2024, and the 62nd Annual Meeting of the International Forensic Toxicologists in Auckland in 2025.
ChristchurchNZ head of business events, Megan Crum, said she was thrilled ICMS Australasia had selected Ōtautahi Christchurch as its New Zealand base.
“The arrival of ICMSA here brings a new level of high-profile event opportunities and boosts Christchurch’s reputation as a fantastic place not only to host business events but also to do business.”
SITA will provide a carbon management platform for Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) to monitor data on carbon emissions across the airport environment, helping to track key performance indicators as the airport progresses towards its net zero carbon goal.
The platform will be fully deployed by summer this year and will comprise collection and aggregation of carbon emissions data from 29 participating business partners across the airport value chain, overseeing services such as ground handling, aircraft maintenance, air cargo logistics, and catering. It will provide accurate, clear, and customisable visualisations of this data, allowing HKIA greater efficiency and precision in its carbon reporting efforts.
In 2012, the Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK) pledged to make HKIA the world’s greenest airport, reinforcing this goal in 2021 with the announcement of its 2050 Net Zero Carbon Pledge, a commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, with a midpoint target of a 55 per cent absolute emissions reduction by 2035 (from a 2018 baseline).
HKIA has adopted an airport-wide approach for carbon management, working collaboratively with business partners to set carbon reduction targets and implement measures to accelerate airport-wide carbon reduction. While HKIA already has an online emissions tracking system, it does not unify emissions data collected from the many sources active in the airport environment, requiring more time-consuming manual processes.
SITA’s solution allows the tracking of emissions data alongside key performance indicators towards HKIA’s Net Zero Carbon Pledge. The dashboard interface facilitates carbon performance tracking, and monitors individual emissions sources against specific targets.
Having all available data in one place supports HKIA in aligning its carbon reporting to government and industry measurement standards such as ISO and complying with Airports Council International’s Airport Carbon Accreditation programme for which mapping of greenhouse gas emissions is key.
“The development of this new carbon management system will provide comprehensive, accurate carbon emissions tracking against the long-term target for both AAHK and each of our pledged business partners, and serves as a foundation for transparent reporting,” said Peter Lee, general manager, sustainability, AAHK.
SITA’s president for Asia-Pacific, Sumesh Patel, commented: “We applaud HKIA’s proactive efforts towards a net zero goal, and we are proud to apply our expertise and familiarity with HKIA’s operating environment to support its sustainability goals with a precise, customisable, and efficient solution.”
