Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Business Traveller Asia-Pacific Edition

THE WAIT IS ALMOST OVER – Changi Airport’s much vaunted mixed-use development, Jewel, is due to open to the public this month, giving visitors more than 280 new retail and dining outlets to choose from when they fly to the Lion City. Encompassing some 134,000 sqm, the development has a number of key attractions, including Southeast Asia’s largest Nike store, an IMAX cinema, a Yotel short-stay hotel and a 40-metre-high Rain Vortex – the tallest indoor waterfall in the world. Much of the new facility will be open from April 17 onwards, though unfortunately travellers will still need to wait until mid-2019 for the opening of the development’s rainforest-style Canopy Park, which features elevated walkways suspended 25 metres above the ground. changiairport.com…

THE AIRBUS A340 is something of a rarity among airlines these days, the gas-guzzling aircraft having largely fallen out of favour compared with newer, more fuel-efficient planes. However, some airlines do still operate the long-haul aircraft and those travelling with Swiss can expect to see new first and business class seat products on the airline’s A340s. The first class seats have a distinctly office-style look to them, while the fully flat business class seats have been designed to align with those on the airline’s Boeing 777s. Passengers flying to Tokyo can already experience the new seats, while those flying to Shanghai can expect to see them by this summer. swiss.com…

Q&A WITH ALEXIS OFFE, FOUNDER OF MERAKI HOSPITALITY Most unusual place you have been? Definitely a trip to Ningxia when I was in my teens. I was learning Mandarin at the time in school and our class took a trip to a very poor region of China as part of a learning experience and also as a way to give back through volunteering. Top travel tips? Eat well and drink lots of water. With my long legs, I always ask for the emergency exit space (or an upgrade; doesn’t always work though) and make friends with the in-f light team. Indispensable travel gadgets? My phone so I can get my Netflix fix! How could international airports improve? Better wifi options. I was stuck in Qatar for almost eight hours a…

Fifty-two-year-old Mr Liu likes to bet in underground gambling dens. Chewing betel nut helps him keep focused. He can easily get through 200 nuts per day – four whole packs. The nuts, which come from the areca palm, give users a buzz familiar to coffee drinkers and cigarette smokers. One of the major downsides: chewing betel nut stains your mouth, lips, teeth – and even your stools – an unattractive shade of red. It can also lead to at least five types of cancer. A habitual user like Mr Liu – who sells peanut wraps to tourists visiting the Wufongci scenic area in Jiaoxi, a hot-spring town in the northeast of the country – doesn’t seem to be concerned, though. Indeed, he is proud to show off and even let…

1 Dinerama Head west out of Shoreditch High Street station up Great Eastern Street and you’ll quickly come to Dinerama, a vibrant patchwork of street-food stalls and bars that is not to be missed. The labyrinth of more than 15 vendors serves dishes from around the globe, including Taiwanese steamed buns, Jamaican jerk and everything in between. Join the lively crowd seated at picnic tables and barrels on the ground floor, or head upstairs for a more relaxed experience at the Winerama wine bar. The rooftop patios are covered in the winter, so you can enjoy this fun destination all year round. Open from 5pm on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and from noon on Saturdays. Families (and pet pooches) are welcome as well. streetfeast.com 2 Cargo For the…

BACKGROUND The JW Marriott Hong Kong, which opened in February 1989, renovated all of its 608 guestrooms and suites between March and September 2018. The hotel also opened its new executive lounge in June 2018. The fitness centre is undergoing refurbishment for three months from March 1, reopening on June 1. WHERE IS IT? The hotel is one of four luxury hotels clustered around the Swireowned Pacific Place shopping centre, which sits atop Admiralty MTR station. This MTR station is great for connectivity, being on three different lines: the Island Line, Tsuen Wan Line and South Island Line. If it’s raining, there’s no need to go outside as the hotel connects directly to the shopping centre and MTR station below. WHAT’S IT LIKE? I arrived at a spacious fourth-floor lobby…

WHO needs a car service when your airline will book you a helicopter to connect with your flight? American Airlines plans to do just that with its Five Star Service offered in Los Angeles and New York set to include the option of private helicopter transfers to the airport. “Customers will be picked up in the city at a destination of their choice and flown to LAX or JFK where they’ll be greeted by an American Airlines team member and escorted via Cadillac to Flagship First Check-In,” the airline says. “After clearing security, customers can spend their extra time relaxing or working in the Admirals Club, Flagship Lounge or Flagship First Dining before their flight.” Helicopter transfers, provided by Blade, will be available to arriving travellers as well. aa.com…

THIS MONTH’S prizes come from global airport hospitality leader, Plaza Premium Group. The world's largest airport lounge network, Plaza Premium Lounge spans across more than 30 international airports globally with the latest location opened in Langkawi, while the group’s transit hotel concept, Aerotel, serves travellers in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Cebu, Muscat, Abu Dhabi and Rio de Janeiro. Combining airport meet-and-greet service Allways and its portfolio of Airport Dining concepts, the group operates more than 160 locations in 44 international airports around the world, serving 14 million travellers annually. For more details and to enter, visit businesstraveller.com/competitions Three winners this month will each receive a one-year Plaza Premium Lounge Gift Card valid for ten complimentary visits to any lounge in the group’s network; and one 12-hour stay in…

Q: What are the key aspects that go into planning, designing and building the perfect airport lounge? We look at four key elements: service, facilities, ambience and F&B. Depending on the location and the specific target travellers, we ensure details to reflect each lounge’s unique aspects. For example, with our recent opening in Langkawi, a leisure destination, we built family breakout zones, whereas in Hong Kong, we focus on work stations to cater for business travellers. Q: How are you accommodating the needs of families? We’ve seen a rise in younger families whose travel habits significantly shifted in the last decade. We have children’s areas including libraries, nursing rooms and a children’s menu at Plaza Premium First in Hong Kong. It is more than creating family-friendly facilities and services but…

I feel nothing as the huge girder swinging ominously in front of me smashes into my chest, knocking me off my precarious position atop a high-rise construction site. My body spins as I plummet towards the ground before the concrete greets me with an unforgiving jolt and my world turns a grim shade of red. Mere seconds earlier, I had been edging along a steel beam, arms outstretched to keep my balance. Now, I am little more than a crumpled mass of regret at the base of a half-built tower, wondering aloud – as I remove the virtual reality headset – what I could have done to avoid my grisly fate. “There’s no way to avoid it,” says Steven Boura, a designer at technology firm BeRise that developed the unwinnable…

All nations are to some extent caricatured by lazy stereotypes and headline-grabbing sensationalism by the media. Few, however, get as bad a press as Mexico. You’d never guess, in the slew of lurid stories on drug and gun trafficking, horror-film criminality, Trump’s wall and immigration, that the United Mexican States one of the oldest territories settled by Europeans in the mainland Americas, is the world’s 15th biggest economy, second biggest in Latin America, home to the largest Spanish-speaking population in the Americas – and a powerhouse of literature, the arts, architecture and gastronomy. Any visitor to Mexico City – perhaps the most misrepresented of all Mexican destinations – is quickly apprised of the fact that life south of the Rio Bravo (its name in Mexico, not Rio Grande) can be…

BACKGROUND Cathay Pacific (CX) opened its lounge in Changi Airport’s Terminal 4 (T4) at the end of October 2017. Unlike its lounges in Hong Kong, which each bear unique names in order to differentiate them, the T4 lounge is simply dubbed the “Cathay Pacific Lounge”. It has seating capacity for around 200 people, but doesn’t feature separate areas for first and business class passengers. I tried this lounge on a Sunday morning, keen to see how it compares to CX’s highly praised lounges in its home base of Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA). WHERE IS IT? After clearing immigration and security, you turn left through duty free and proceed straight until coming to an escalator – the lounge is just to the right at the top of the escalator. WHO…

FIRST CLASS travellers flying with British Airways can expect to see a new range of in-flight services and features starting this month as the airline introduces new menus, bedding and amenities. Key will be the introduction of a new afternoon tea service offering sandwiches, pastries, scones and tea infusions, along with a refreshed à la carte menu served on William Edwards-designed bone china crockery and Dartington glassware. Meanwhile, on the amenities side, passengers will be given new loungewear and amenity bags by British brand Temperley London, with the latter featuring Elemis toiletries. Travellers can also look forward to new 400-threadcount bedding, a foam fibre mattress topper, day blanket and bolster cushion. ba.com…

LOCATED AT the southern tip of Palawan, the westernmost province of the Philippines, Balabac is nine hours from the nearest airport and a three-hour boat trip from Bataraza on Palawan. Despite its remoteness, it seems thousands of people are interested in going there. Youtube videos with names like “The Most Beautiful Place in the World” and “The Best Island in the Philippines” have racked up several hundred thousand views. One blogger advises travellers to “visit soon before this paradise becomes hidden no more”, noting the intense social media interest. But paradise is never without its perils. The New York Times reported last month on a man-eating crocodile that had terrorised the island, attacking adults and children alike. One enraged villager was planning to use dynamite to blow the crocodile up.…

Amid the use of new innovations to tackle challenges in the city’s industrial and agricultural sectors, Hiroshima is also seeing inventive use of technology in a more cultural setting. Tokyo-based design firm teamLab has in the past developed numerous artistic exhibitions around Asia, and throughout February and March (and up until April 7) the company gave the city’s historic Hiroshima Castle a vibrant facelift as part of its “Digitised Hiroshima Castle” installation. The surrounding park was adorned with inflatable eggs ranging from a foot high to over two metres tall, each glowing with an array of ever-changing colours accompanied by soothing music. Meanwhile, up on the hill and overlooking the luminescent display below, the castle itself was bathed in light that transitioned from majestic blue and calming turquoise to eerie…

Slow, noisy, dusty, bumpy and very, very dangerous. The early days of commercial air travel were anything but comfortable. In 1938, on the f ledgling Imperial Airways, it took four long days in a Short Empire flying boat from Southampton to South Africa, with 24 stops en route in France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika and Portuguese East Africa (see picture, page 44). Passengers had to endure airsickness, technical failures, empty fuel tanks and even crash landings. Fatal accidents occurred with startling regularity. In its 15 years of operation, Imperial Airways suffered 20 of them, including two ditchings in the English Channel, a sinking off the coast of northern Italy, a collision with a radio mast in Flanders and a crash in Belgium following an in-flight fire. The…

Each January, the very latest electronic gadgets are showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. From large-screen TVs to flying cars, and everything in between, thousands of new releases compete for the attention of the early adopters and industry professionals who flock there in their thousands. Though the town may be better known for its casinos, the gamble here is to be the product that will change the world for consumers in the year ahead. The biggest trend to come out of this year’s show was integration of digital assistants into products. Google showcased upgrades to its assistant, most notably the new interpreter mode, which allows text and voice translation in 27 languages, and is already being trialled at hotel concierge desks in the US (see p.38…

BACKGROUND Hong Kong became the first Asian destination to see Qantas’s newest aircraft, the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, on December 13 last year when it took over the majority of flights per week on the airline’s Melbourne-Hong Kong route. Until that point, the Dreamliner had largely been focused on ultra-long-haul routes, notably the airline’s 17-hour nonstop flights between Perth and London, which took off in early 2018. The Dreamliner’s deployment between Hong Kong and Melbourne was only temporary, having ended on March 29; however, the aircraft is now operating flights to Sydney. This is a review of Qantas’s first Dreamliner flight out of Hong Kong flying to Melbourne (QF30). CHECK-IN The Qantas check-in desk is located at Hong Kong International Airport’s Terminal 1 at aisle J, on the far right side…

BACKGROUND Cathay Pacific’s The Pier, Business lounge is one of six lounges the airline operates at Hong Kong International Airport. In 2016, Business Traveller reviewed The Pier, First lounge, calling it “superb”. CX has recently introduced a yoga and meditation space to The Pier, Business lounge called The Sanctuary, so I thought it was a good time to do a full review of the entire facility. WHERE IS IT? Once you clear security and immigration, you need to go down to the main level of the concourse, L6, then travel all the way to the other side of the terminal using the shuttle train. When you see CX’s The Bridge lounge, turn right and go straight. You will eventually come to The Pier, Business lounge on your left near gate…

Most travellers like using credit cards because they offer benefits like cashback, rewards and the ability to earn air miles. However, it’s easy to be stung by surcharges that can apply when we use credit cards abroad. Therefore, it’s important to understand the maths behind credit cards and where your money goes, so you can avoid those annoying additional fees where possible. LOCAL OR HOME CURRENCY PAYMENT? When using credit cards overseas, you’ll often be asked if you prefer to pay in the local or home currency. If you choose to pay in the local currency, you’ll be subject to an exchange rate that is determined by the card association of your credit card. Generally speaking, Visa, Mastercard and American Express offer better exchange rates, while China UnionPay has higher…