Taiwanese e-commerce platform KKday yesterday inked a memorandum of understanding with European train ticket vendor Rail Europe Inc to promote rail travel in Europe.
KKday.com International Co (酷遊天) founder and chief executive officer Ming Chen (陳明明) said that he appreciated the opportunity to work with Rail Europe and he is positive travel growth momentum in Europe would continue next year.
The European travel market had a 60 percent surge in the first nine months of this year from the same period in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic, Chen said.
Photo: Ting Yi, Taipei Times
The two sides agreed to focus on product and technology integration, market promotion, passenger experience enhancement and exploration of innovative services.
“The objective of this collaboration is to inspire a deeper exploration of Europe among Asian travelers,” Chen said.
KKday plans to utilize its platform to draw more travel industry partners and enlarge Rail Europe’s customer base, he said.
Rail Europe president and CEO Bjorn Bender said that his visit to Asia has enabled him to gain a better understanding of the region’s diverse markets.
In the post-pandemic era, people have displayed a keen desire to travel and many would opt for train travel to avoid unnecessary flights and help reduce carbon emissions, Bender said.
The company hopes the partnership with KKday would establish an all-in-one platform for travelers and the travel industry that would provide a wide array of products spanning 33 European countries, and more than 150 European rail brands and routes, he said.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
RSS