Quarantine-free travel lane between Singapore and Malaysia reopens, 'Expand VTL-Air scheme', Frustrated over quarantine policy updates

  Quarantine-free travel lane between Singapore and Malaysia.. 

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Singapore -  A Causeway Link bus leaving the Larkin Sentral Bus Terminal and Public Transportation and heading into Singapore under the Vaccinated Travel Lane here in Johor Baru on Friday (Jan 21, 2021). - THOMAS YONG/The Star

Quarantine-free travel lane between Singapore and Malaysia..

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan. 21 (Xinhua): The bus and flight tickets under the land and air Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) between Malaysia and Singapore have resumed with immediate effect, Malaysian Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said on Friday.

However, the volume of tickets has been halved with only 50 per cent of the capacity of vehicles plying the routes allowed, as part of measures to slow the spread of Covid-19, he said in a statement.

"The timeline regarding this ticket sales quota increase will depend on the risk assessment to be performed from time to time by the Health Ministry based on the current Covid-19 situation in both countries," he said.

The VTL kicked off on Nov. 29 last year and involved travel via the bridge connecting Malaysia to Singapore as well as an air corridor, but was suspended since Dec. 23 over the emergence of the Omicron variant.

Those traveling via the VTL will face eased restrictions including quarantine requirements being waived for fully vaccinated individuals. - Xinhua

Covid-19 won't keep families apart | The Star

Frustrated over quarantine policy updates

"I feel very helpless as the policy has been changed a few times and I am not sure what I should do anymore" - Zainah Ismai;.

PETALING JAYA: Malaysians who travel abroad regularly have urged the government to be consistent and clear when updating its quarantine policy.
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Some said they were unaware of the latest changes and were caught by surprise at the airport.
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Dr Katherine Poh, a deputy vice-chancellor of a private university, said the period of quarantine must be spelt out in terms of nights and not days.
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“Seven days and seven nights are two different things. When I touched down at KL International Airport from Bangkok recently, I was told that I had to quarantine at a hotel for seven days.
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“However, on the seventh day, I was forced to stay for one more night. I thought seven days meant six nights and seven days,” she said.
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“I was told that as I checked into the hotel during the wee hours, I had to quarantine for an extra day.”
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To make matters worse, Poh, 68, said she was not provided with the help needed at the airport.
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“I was told that I had to observe my quarantine at a hotel and that I needed to get pre-approval if I wanted to do home quarantine.
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“I went to the counters representing hotels to seek help but none of them was open as I arrived in the wee hours.
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“I don’t mind quarantining at a hotel but I was so helpless as no one was there to assist,” she said.
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She said she was also treated like a Covid-19 patient at the hotel.
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“Why can’t the government have a different set of standard operating procedure for people arriving and not to treat us like Covid-19 patients?” she asked.
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Tutor Zainah Ismail vented her frustration as her application for home quarantine was rejected.
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“My home quarantine was rejected because I was coming back from Saudi Arabia. I live alone there. I have been teaching online and working from home for the past few weeks,” she said.
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Zainah said she did not want to pay extra to be quarantined at a hotel as she has a house where she can be alone.
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“I am really disappointed as I have been fully vaccinated but I still have to fork out extra money to quarantine in a hotel.
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“I feel very helpless as the policy has been changed a few times and I am not sure what I should do anymore,” she said.
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Australian Malaysian Singaporean Association president Thomson Ch’ng said the latest challenges posed by the Omicron variant and the constant changing of travel rules, including quarantine regulations, made it challenging for Malaysians abroad to plan a return trip home.
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“Malaysians abroad, including the thousands in Australia, have been separated from their loved ones since the start of the pandemic. “The high vaccination rate in both countries initially offered a glimpse of hope for international travel to return to normality.
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“Many Malaysian Chinese who are residing in Australia, were hoping to go home to reunite and reconnect with their loved ones during Chinese New Year, especially those with elderly parents and relatives after being separated for two years,” he added.
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On Thursday, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said travellers who received booster shots were only required to undergo a five-day quarantine period upon arrival in Malaysia and they would not be required to wear pink surveillance wristbands.
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However, he said travellers from higher-risk countries, who were allowed to home quarantine, would still be required to wear a digital surveillance bracelet.

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Take precautions on public wifi, hackers are watching you, travellers !

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/08/01/take-precautions-on-public-wifi-cybersecurity-firm-hackers-can-gather-sensitive-data-via-unsecure-co/

KUALA LUMPUR: If you are surfing the Internet on a public Wi-Fi, always assume someone is watching you out there.

Better yet, do not connect to any public Wi-Fi at all, said LE Global Services (LGMS) executive director Fong Choong Fook, whose private cybersecurity firm employs hackers to test the network security of the country’s major banks.

“I would never use a public Wi-Fi,” he said.

“Even an IT person may not be able to tell if the access point he is connected to is safe or if the activities are being watched.

“There may be signs like your Internet is slowing down but hackers can make it so elegant that you won’t even notice,” he said in an interview.

Malaysia’s national cybersecurity agency CyberSecurity Malaysia (CSM) said hackers could position themselves between a person’s device and the Wi-Fi router and are able to record sensitive data that the surfer is keying into his device.

Hackers can also “create” their own Wi-Fi and trick people into thinking they are connected to a credible public access point like the one from a restaurant, airport or office – when in actual fact these devices are connected to the criminals’ hardware.

Thus, they would be able to remotely watch everything a person is sending out on the Wi-Fi like passwords, e-mails or credit card information.

As frightening as these attacks may sound, Fong said this had been going as early as the 1990s.

Demonstrating to The Star how a hacker could steal information, LGMS set up an “evil twin” Wi-Fi using a laptop and named it after a famous franchise restaurant just below its office in Puchong, Selangor.

Fong connected two devices to this Wi-Fi and proceeded to log into social media, e-mail and Government websites.

Within seconds of logging in, the hacker’s computer began recording the activities in both devices in the experiment – recording every e-mail address, username and password that was keyed in.

Though the demonstration was only meant for the devices in the controlled environment of the LGMS office, three other users got connected to the dummy Wi-Fi, thinking they were linked to the franchise restaurant’s Internet, during the experiment.

“Hackers can target one specific person or they can target everyone in a cafe to get their devices to send all their data through their dummy Wi-Fi

“When they have your information, they can steal your identity. They can pose as you on Facebook, or send out e-mails to your contacts under your account,” he said.

Fong advised users to avoid connecting to public Wi-Fi or to only limit their browsing to Internet searches if they must connect to one.

The firm also suggested users to subscribe to VPN (virtual private network) technologies to secure their traffic.

VPN encrypts data on devices, making it hard for hackers to spy on the user’s online activities. Most VPNs are available on a subscription basis, much like an anti-virus programme.

So far this year, CSM has recorded eight instances where private Wi-Fi networks were hacked and 1,462 cases of online intrusions have been reported, which is nearly double the number of incidents compared to the same period in 2015.

It advised users to keep their Internet browsers up to date and to disable the feature which automatically saves password in the cache –as it makes it easier for criminals to steal.

by Nicholas Cheng The Star/Asia News Network

82% of travellers would use public Wi-Fi

KUALA LUMPUR: You are on a holiday in a foreign country. Naturally, you want to upload pictures to your Facebook or send messages to your friends back home or trawl the Internet for places to visit.

Chances are there is no Internet data connection where you are and you would search for whatever free Wi-Fi there is at the airport, hotel or cafe to stay connected.

An estimated 82% of travellers would choose to connect with unsecured public Wi-Fi, a practice which could up risks of cyberattacks, said Kasper­sky Lab.

The cybersecurity company surveyed 11,850 people worldwide and found that people on holiday would be carefree when it comes to their personal data protection.

The study found that 42% of travellers said they were less likely to care about the credibility of the Wi-Fi when they were on holiday compared to on business travels.

A third (33%) admitted to visiting websites of sensitive nature using foreign Wi-Fi, while almost half of the respondents conducted online banking (48%), shopped online (46%) and made private calls (35%) when they were abroad.

In a separate study, it found that at least 22% of travellers who conducted transactions online had experienced money loss while 8% had had a credit card compromised while in a foreign country.

Most of the time, victims do not even know they are being watched.

CSM advised users to keep an eye on their devices’ firewall alerts. Any trigger may indicate that a third party may be trying to access their devices illegally.

A report by MasterCard estimates that 10.9 million Malaysians travelled for overseas holidays in 2014, with the numbers expecting to hit 15.2 million by 2020.

The Kaspersky study also found that people were more likely to throw caution to the wind while on holiday with respondents saying they were 18% more likely to let strangers handle their smartphones to take pictures, 28% more likely to leave their devices unsupervised, 18% more likely to contact strangers online and 6% more likely to engage in “sexting”.

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Airbnb and other Home-sharing businesses have Hotels worried in US

Airbnb, the most popular of the home-sharing sites, has an estimated 2 million listings worldwide, with revenue of about $2.4 billion in the U.S. last year. Above, Echo Park Airbnb host Jonathan Entler, top left, and his daughter Ruby, top right, talk to guests James Green and Camille Smithwick in 2014. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

Tired of "sterile hotels," Brooklyn resident Kelly Dwyer turned to home-sharing site Airbnb three years ago when planning a Southern California trip, finding a Silver Lake apartment that came with two roommates: a dog and a cat.

"It was such a good experience that it sort of pulled me in," said Duncan, 40, a pet owner and musician. "I can't remember the last time I stayed in a hotel."

Hotel executives have long shrugged off Airbnb and other short-term rental websites. The home-sharing businesses weren't considered a threat to the $176-billion hotel industry because they were believed to primarily serve penny-pinching millennials.

But eight years after Airbnb launched with a single air mattress for rent in a San Francisco loft, the hotel industry is starting to worry that short-term rental sites may pose a serious problem. Not only is the company expanding, there is evidence that competition from rental sites is holding down hotel rates in some areas.

Airbnb, the most popular of the home-sharing sites, has an estimated 2 million listings worldwide, with revenue of about $2.4 billion in the U.S. last year. The business has been valued at $24 billion, higher than the $21-billion valuation of hotel giant Marriott International.

Even more concerning for hotel managers is Airbnb's torrid growth. In Los Angeles County, Airbnb listings increased 42% in the seven months ended in January, a Times review found. In some neighborhoods, the increase was much larger.

"Hotel companies are going to start paying a lot more attention to Airbnb now that their numbers are as big as they are," said Jamie Lane, a senior economist for the hotel research arm of real estate firm CBRE.

The industry came out firing recently with a study contending that a growing number of Airbnb landlords are really running "illegal hotels" in major cities, including Los Angeles, which lets them avoid taxes and regulations that hoteliers pay.

If Airbnb is impacting hotels in any way, it's in the ability to raise rates. — Brandon J. Feighner, director, CBRE hotel valuation and advisory services

That study, by the Pennsylvania State University School of Hospitality Management, concluded that nearly 30% of Airbnb's revenue in 12 big cities comes from people who rent out their properties at least 360 days a year, drawing an average of more than $140,000 annually.

Traditional hotels welcome competition, said Vanessa Sinders, a spokeswoman for the American Hotel & Lodging Assn., the trade group for the nation's 53,000 hotels, which commissioned the study. But she added that the growing number of Airbnb properties operating year-round aren't required to meet the health, safety and cleanliness standards that hotels must maintain.

"Competition in our industry thrives because everyone plays by the same set of rules designed to protect homeowners, guests and communities," she said.

Airbnb rejects such contentions, saying most of their hosts live in the homes they rent.

"In Los Angeles, 82% of Airbnb hosts in L.A. share the home in which they live, and furthermore, 80% of entire home listings in L.A. are rented for less than 90 days a year," Airbnb spokeswoman Alison Schumer said.

Hotels and online travel sites clash over booking scams Hotels and online travel sites clash over booking scams

Nationwide, Airbnb lists about 173,000 units, equal to about 3.5% of the more than 5 million rooms rented out by traditional hotels — not enough to pose a serious threat to the hospitality industry, according to a study by CBRE's hotel research arm. The study analyzed Airbnb's operations from October 2014 to September 2015.

The study goes on to say that Airbnb properties have started to pressure hotels to keep rates low in a handful of cities where home-sharing units are plentiful, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Yorks.

In Southern California, Airbnb may be keeping hotel rates from skyrocketing in areas such as Santa Monica, Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Marina del Rey, according to CBRE.

For example, hotel room rates around Los Angeles International Airport rose nearly 13% in 2015 over the previous year while rates in the Santa Monica and Marina del Rey area increased only 5.6%, CBRE found.

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In Santa Monica and Marina del Rey, Airbnb has one bedroom listed for every two hotel rooms, the report said. Around the airport, Airbnb has one room listed for every 4.4 hotel rooms.

In addition, Airbnb's rates around Santa Monica and Marina del Rey are nearly 30% lower than the hotel rates in the same area, according to the CBRE report. Around LAX, the Airbnb rates are 8% cheaper than hotel rates.

"If Airbnb is impacting hotels in any way, it's in the ability to raise rates," said Brandon J. Feighner, director of CBRE hotel valuation and advisory services.

Another area in Southern California where hotel rates may be held in check by Airbnb is Venice, where the home-sharing site had 1,741 listings in early January, according to data collected by Inside Airbnb, a site that tracks the company's short-term rentals.

That figure was 25% higher than the number of listings in May 2015, a Times analysis shows. The tourist-friendly area leads all Los Angeles County neighborhoods for Airbnb listings, ahead of Hollywood and Santa Monica.

Mark Sokol, an owner of the 120-room Hotel Erwin in Venice, said he feels pressure to keep his rates low because too many short-term rentals in Venice have turned into illegal hotels that operate year-round and don't pay the fees and workers' salaries of traditional hotels.

"When you have that much supply, it definitely has price pressure," he said.

Some hotel owners say they don't worry about competition from Airbnb because only hotels can offer guests the assurance of a clean room, with amenities such as a coffee maker, a television and a comfortable bed.

"Hotels are going to provide a standard hotel experience whereas Airbnb can be an adventure or a nightmare," said Ken Pressberg, owner of the Orlando, a 95-room boutique hotel near the Beverly Center.

See the most-read stories this hour >>
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-most-read-stories-this-hour-story.html

As young travelers advance in their careers and earn more money, he said he believes they will eventually abandon Airbnb for traditional hotels.

A survey of 1,650 adults by the travel search site Hipmunk found that 74% of millennials have stayed in a home-sharing property for a business trip, compared with just 38% for Gen Xers and 20% for baby boomers.

To lure young people away from short-term rentals, many hotel owners are investing in their properties, such as upgrading Wi-Fi speeds in the lobby, adding electronic tablets in the rooms and offering meals and drinks that are unique to their hotels.

"Airbnb is just another competitor that you have to keep your eyes on," said Phil Anderson, general manager of the DusitD2 Constance Hotel in Pasadena.

But for many young travelers, the quirky extras found at Airbnb properties are what attract them — extras they won't find at traditional hotels.

Tasmin Lofthouse, a 22-year-old marketing assistant from Blackpool, England, said she has booked an Airbnb property for her trip to Los Angeles in June because she wants to avoid the "commercialized and touristy" setting of a hotel.

"From what I've seen so far, Airbnb hosts are willing to go the extra mile, and some even let you help yourself to any homegrown vegetables or fruit they may have," she said. "I doubt you'd see that at a hotel."

Hotels and online travel sites clash over booking scams

The websites for Expedia and Orbitz Worldwide are seen next to each in a photo illustration. Hotels and online travel sites like Expedia are feuding over the real danger of booking scams. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)

A battle is heating up between online travel sites and U.S. hotels over the best way to book your hotel room.

Like most things in business, the feud comes down to money.

The American Hotel and Lodging Assn., the trade group for hotels in the U.S., is pushing for legislation to crack down on fraudulent online booking sites that trick travelers into paying for hotel rooms but have no relation to the hotels. The group says the scams cost travelers up to $1.3 billion a year.

A coalition of online travel sites isn't buying it. The sites say the hotel industry is exaggerating the online scam problem to push travelers to book directly on hotel sites so that hotels can avoid paying sales commissions to the online booking sites.

“It's just a veiled attempt at trying to scare consumers to book directly with the hotel chains themselves,” said Philip Minardi, a spokesman for the coalition of online sites, including Expedia, Priceline and Airbnb.

Hotel chains launch Wi-Fi war
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hotel-chains-launch-wifi-war-20141226-story.html

The stakes are high in this feud. Travelers make an estimated 480 online hotel bookings per minute in the U.S. Hotels pay third-party booking sites commissions of up to 25% of the room price. Hotels also want travelers to book directly from them so they can pitch future deals and packages and develop guest loyalty.

Hotel industry officials reject suggestions that they are using the scams to scare travelers away from outside booking sites.

“The fact is online scams are hurting consumers and jeopardizing their confidence in the online booking process, while also harming the reputation of hotels,” said Katherine Lugar, president and chief executive of the hotel trade group.

BY Hugo Martin/Los Angeles Times

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