The WiT Podcast WiT

Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) returns to the Middle East for the first time since 2019 for WiT Phocuswright Middle East 2024. But what she experiences there upon landing serves as both culture shock and eye-opener to the progress the region has supercharged itself with in the last few years.
Yes, there are lots of expected – the masses of cranes; the construction going on everywhere you look; the traffic in Riyadh – but underneath all that, the unexpected open-ness, the overwhelming warmth of people, the unbridled pride of Saudis to share and show off their kingdom and the lack of guile in their conversations.
This is a story that goes beyond the warmth and hospitality of its people. Something momentous is happening in Saudi and it goes beyond the numbers, the dollars, the targets – this is nation-building, social-transformation, call it what you will, with travel and tourism as its engine.

While standing in a long queue at the café at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre, wondering why it doesn’t have a robotic barista because the human ones were looking rather frazzled, Siew Hoon spotted a man wearing a delegate badge that says “Black Hat Asia”.
Intrigued because she associated Black Hat with hackers (Google says “the term black hat has been used to differentiate criminal hackers from white hat and gray hat hackers”) and because she has always wanted to meet a real-life hacker, she asked him what he did for a living.
Without missing a beat, the man replied, “My company does security upskilling training in penetration testing.”
While Siew Hoon may have restrained herself from making the joke we're all thinking of, this encounter did lead to revelation at another conference next door. 
Stream the episode to find out.

Author and travel writer Paul Theroux had a very simple way of describing people who travel. He divided them into tourist and traveller, saying, “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travellers don’t know where they’re going.”
Of course, he said this, way before social media turned travel into a mass team sport. One wonders what the scribe, who by the way has just published a new book “Burma Sahib”, would think of the many jargons we in the travel industry have come up with in recent years to describe all the different types of people who travel.
In this episode of WiT Stories, Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) looks at some newer terms, buzzwords and jargon that has popped up in travel, while creating some of her own along the way.

This final episode of “Customer Love” fittingly covers tours and activities – the things travellers do in-destination. It’s the most exciting part of travel and it’s coming online at great speed, thanks to companies such as Booking.com which started building out their “connected trip” in 2019 and Klook which has been building up the sector in Asia Pacific for the past nine years.
We speak to two product chiefs, Austin Sheppard, Senior Vice President of Booking.com’s Trips Business Unit, and David Liu, Chief Product Officer of Klook, on the trends they are seeing, the products they are building and how they see technology such as AI and Augmented Reality changing the sector.
For David, who’d always been into tech, joining Klook in 2016 as VP of Product and UX, a year after it was founded, was a no-brainer. “I didn’t pick a startup, I picked Klook," he says during the episode, emphatically.
The founders’ passion and vision in wanting to bring experiences online and connect suppliers and travellers excited him. “I care a lot about customers, and they care about our customers as well.”
Meanwhile, Austin, quoting Booking.com’s Q3 2023 financial results, said that they “saw an increase in the percentage of transactions which we count as connected trips, meaning two or more travel components within a trip (though still small number of total transactions).
David also shared an experience about buying shoes online, which co-host Laura Houldsworth then extrapolated on, citing her own experience of an AR shoe fitting – which then led to a new idea that David said Klook would develop to ride on the growing trend of “costume dressing” among Asian travellers in destinations such as Japan and South Korea.
Have a listen for the reveal at the end.

It's news to no one that the words 'pain' and 'suffering' have negative connotations, for obvious reasons. However, many modern thinkers believe that these experiences are often intertwined with success and happiness. 
Of course, for those of us in Asia, these teachings and sayings aren't new. In fact, they're ingrained in many cultures and religious beliefs in the region. 
Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) doesn't think this “pain and suffering” message is new to entrepreneurs as well. During Web in Travel Africa last week, she interviewed three travel founders to find out their tales from the edge.
One of them said, “If you’re not at one point about to go bankrupt then you can’t say you really had a startup! What’s really difficult is to hire good people, so you have to appear motivated and positive in front of them to keep them on board, while suffering quietly in the back.”
Want to find out what the other entrepreneurs had to say? Have a listen.
In this episode, Siew Hoon delves into what it means to be a happy entrepreneur, warts and all.

Aviation veteran and consultant Peter Harbison has many accolades - founder of CAPA, aviation lawyer and commentator, and of course, author. His new book, 'Alan Joyce and Qantas: The Trials and Transformation of an Australian Icon' contains all the ingredients of a corporate thriller, filled with constant shocks to the system and boardroom drama. 
But despite all the corporate chaos, Peter's book tells a deeply human story - of a man at the peak of a monumental industry, navigating arguably the most turbulent years in aviation history. 
In this episode, Siew Hoon (Founder, WiT) chats with Peter, whom she calls a mentor, about not only the professional trials of Alan Joyce, but the often-ignored emotional element of people in high places. As the saying goes - it's lonely at the top. 
Siew Hoon also asks the serious question - why are there so few women in aviation, to which Peter responds with some honest albeit harsh truths. The two also talk about life Down Under and yet another book that Peter is currently working on. 
It's all here in this special whopper of an episode.