Oh yes.. before I forget, I also spoke to Alex Lim from New Shan Travel. Well, he is the IT manager of New Shan. Wanted to learn a bit more about the travel industry from him too. From what I understand, New Shan will be rolling out their own internal Hotel Booking system by January. It should be just a normal database with no integration with external system.
I’ve been made to understand that Octopus marks up 35% while New Shan intends to compete by marking up only 25% of the base hotel fare. Also, it seems that they will be getting the hotel bookings directly from a mother company, TravelPort.
Hmmm… really confusing… maybe it is going to take some time to learn about this industry after all….
Anyway, my nice X boss, whose wife is also working in the travel industry promises to help me fish out some information. Lets hope it helps me along in this rocky path of being an entrepeneur.