Asia
New STR data show China’s hotels on road to recovery
Latest figures from specialist hospitality industry analysts, STR shows some noticeable growth in Chinese hotel RevPAR over past few weeks as the country starts to recover from the coronavirus outbreak. Regional cities have been coming back strongly in particular both in terms of RevPAR and occupancy. Zhengzhou’s hotel occupancy rates, according to STR, have gone from 25% to 60% in just six weeks....
ICCA and TCEB announce webinar series to navigate the new norm
The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) and the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB) have agreed a new collaboration to organise a series of educational webinars for the meetings community. The webinars kick off on 26 May 2020 under a partnership that is designed to focus on education in response to the global Covid–19 crisis, with the objective to mitigate t...
FC Seoul ‘sexes up’ spectator-less matches
South Korean football club, FC Seoul has issued an apology for some mannequin exhibitionism at a televised curtain raiser, after filling empty seats with sex dolls. The K-League side had attempted to fill, at least partially, the spectator void by using mannequins to replace fans. However, the ‘mannequins’ turned out to be sex dolls, with the club blaming the mix-up on a “misunderstanding” with th...
Sands SafeStay initiative in Macao
Sands Resorts Macao hotel complex has announced the launch of Sands SafeStay, a health and safety initiative to combat Covid-19 and keep guests safe. The Sands SafeStay strategy focuses on three key areas – sanitisation, prevention and contactless services, with protocols going beyond the hygiene programme currently in place. A number of precautions have been implemented, through collaborati...
Open sesame: Alibaba Group in JV to create online exhibition platform
E-commerce giant Alibaba Group and event organiser CCPIT (the Council for the Promotion of International Trade) in Shanghai, China, have announced a new joint venture to create a major online exhibition platform. The new company is a result of Shanghai’s latest push into online events as part of the city’s policy to develop the so-called online new economy which has identified 12 key industries to...
Mirae consortium scraps $5.8bn deal to buy US hotels from China’s Anbang
REUTERS: South Korea’s Mirae Asset Global Investments has said it has terminated a US$5.8bn deal to buy 15 US hotels from China’s Anbang Insurance Group accusing the insurer of breaching contract obligations. The move comes at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has put a series of deals at risk, as valuations have been severely impacted. The tourism industry has been one of the hardest hit...
Singapore Tourism Board launches content fund
The Singapore Tourism Board has launched a fund which aims to ’empower content creators’ both in Singapore and around the world to tell amazing stories of Singapore. The Fund will support 90% of the qualifying costs for content creators, but will be capped at S$150,000 (US$106,000) per project. Each project must look at Singapore, whether this be, as STB says, as, “a destination,...
MyCEB partners with IAPCO and KLCC on education platform
Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB), an agency under the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture (MOTAC) is bringing in the International Association of Professional Congress Organisers (IAPCO) online education platform thanks to a partnership with Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC). Malaysia’s meeting professionals will now be able, for the first time, to access the new IAPCO web...
Malaysia’s MITEC gets Green Building Index certification
The Malaysia International Trade & Exhibition Centre (MITEC) in Kuala Lumpur has achieved the Green Building Index (GBI) certification, awarded by the GBI Accreditation Panel. MITEC’s CEO Gunther Beissel said: “MITEC was built with a vision for its functionality as Malaysia’s largest trade and exhibition centre but also with strict intentions to ensure that the development preserves the ...
Seoul Convention Bureau standing strong with $2m support fund
The Seoul Convention Bureau is supporting its alliance members with a new #Stand_Strong_Together campaign and a $2m support fund. When the outbreak of Covid-19 was first detected in South Korea, a large incentive tour group of 4,600 delegates from Indonesia was already in Seoul, a test for the bureau which arranged equipment for the small private sector MICE businesses directly involved so that th...
Tokyo’s hotels forecast to do less well from Olympics delay
The Summer Olympics’ performance gains for Tokyo hotels are projected to be lower, following the announcement of a one-year delay in the event, according to the latest data from hospitality research specialists STR and Tourism Economics. “We are projecting less overall demand when compared with our initial forecast for 2020, and while double-digit RevPAR growth is expected, it will come from a muc...
New Samsung launch demonstrates broadcast grade livestream
Samsung tells CMW how it leveraged the new Galaxy S20 to livestream for its first Unpacked of the decade. In a world-first, global electronics brand Samsung used its own Galaxy S20 mobile devices to livestream an entire launch. Seoul-based marketing agency Cheil Worldwide brought the Galaxy Unpacked launch to San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, 11 February, where the brand unveiled its Galaxy S20...