Blog post by our customers Giulio and Nat

Nat out and about with the TouristPad.

A couple, Giulio and Nat, recently visited Singapore and took advantage of our iPad rental product. They blogged about their trip to Singapore about a week ago (with some really great photography), and they just posted another post on their experience renting our iPad yesterday. Thanks Giulio and Nat!

They liked the ability to access the internet islandwide:

The other thing we liked about the TouristPad is the internet access. Many international visitors to Singapore travel with their own iPad but internet costs are very high if you are on an international roaming plan. The $24/day - dropping to $16/day from the third day onward - is a good price to pay for internet access 24/7 (negating having to pay for hotel internet). It helped that the internet connection was smooth and fast no matter where we ventured in the city.

They also appreciated having loads of local and travel apps (such as gothere.sg, pictured, photo used with permission) at their fingertips:

Using the TouristPad as a travel guide was far more interesting, reliable and better than any guide book that eventually becomes outdated (sorry Lonely Planet!). The convenience of having everything at our fingertips (pun intended) was highlighted best when we came across a landmark, or local area, and we were able to instantly Google it to gather more information.

gothere.sg

We take feedback from our clients seriously, and we agree with Giulio and Nat's feedback about having a weather app. From now on, all customers will find a new weather app pre-loaded on their iPads. When you rent from us, feel free to indicate if you wish to have any other apps preloaded and we'll be pleased to help! :)

Ticktok

TickTok, available on our iPad rentals for Singapore tourists

We recently met with the people behind Ticktok, and after hearing about their app, we are excited to feature the TickTok app on all our iPad rentals for Singapore tourists!

Ticktok is a great app which allows you to find out about queue times for food establishments in Singapore, and has this special function where they tell you if a restaurant or hawker stall is "Worth the Wait". Junguang from Ticktok explained to me that queue times are an objective measure of a restaurant's popularity and can be a good indicator of which are the restaurants worth going to. As more and more people share queue times with the app, the information will become more and more useful to everyone!

What we found very useful, and that we believe our tourist customers will appreciate, is their aggregation of food blog recommendations. Unlike print guidebooks, food blogs offer the latest updated content and reviews of restaurants, and that is why we link to several great food blogs on our TouristPads currently. With the addition of this app, we hope to provide a richer set of useful information to our iPad rental products.

Read more about Ticktok here.

Testimonial from CheapTickets

Another of our customers recently wrote a review of our service and product. Interested to know what CheapTickets thought? Here’s their review: (taken from their comment on Facebook)

"A huge thanks to TouristPads for helping to make our event at the Great Eastern Women's Run a success. Our team used the iPads to enable us to help the runners sign up online for their discount from CheapTickets.sg. We blasted through our target sign ups thanks to the support and quick thinking of Caleb's trouble shooting skills. It was invaluable to have the roaming iPads to be able to demonstrate our website to customers and help them do a flight search there and then. We will definitely be recommending TouristPads to our visiting friends and colleagues in the future- it's so hard to go without the internet these days and this service means you don't have to! Below is a picture of our team with the TouristPads. We look forward to using the service again in the near future!"

Pilots and flight attendants from CheapTickets!

We exist to delight our customers, and we’re glad to be of service!

CheapTickets and TouristPads

CheapTickets Main Booth

Lucky Draw

TouristPads is proud to support CheapTickets with their recent event from the 2-4 Nov held at the Suntec Tropics Atrium. They are a cool bunch of people, donning uniforms of pilots and flight attendants for the event!

The event attracted thousands of people, as it was part of the Great Eastern Women's run and CheapTickets is a proud partner of this event. CheapTickets organized a lucky draw and will give away free tickets to the few lucky ones who joined their mailing list!

CheapTickets Poster

Flight Stewardesses

We heard that the 8 iPads deployed over 3 days managed to get entries of over a thousand! We are really happy for them that renting our iPads gave them a good return on investment (ROI). Many people commented that our iPads looked beautiful and attractive, which is no surprise given its bright distinct red colour.

On top of this event, we are also supporting CheapTickets for another upcoming event that is going to be held at theTheFloat@MarinaBay this coming Sunday. Watch out for our red lovely iPads in action once again!

Monica Gray, winning more!

Viator winner, Monica Gray

Monica Gray was the lucky Viator winner visiting Singapore. She participated and won the online lucky draw for a free ticket to the Night Safari as well as our iPad rental product.

Well, perhaps she is going to win even more – having her husband and herself featured on The Straits Times! We felt very grateful to them for willing to pose for pictures, and answering some simple interview questions. They visited Singapore some 14 years back and were saying how much Singapore has progressed!

Warren and Monica, have a great vacation in Singapore with our “Tour Guide”!

Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix 2012

Sebastian Vettel

Fernando Alonso

Michael Schumacher

Lewis Hamilton

To all F1 fans, Sebastian Vettel needs no introduction. For the uninitiated, Sebastian Vettel is a German Formula One racing driver, currently driving for Red Bull Racing. He is the current World Champion, having won the championship in 2010 and 2011. The defending champion is currently fourth going into the upcoming race held in Singapore, and he is certainly gearing up to close the gap on Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Räikkönen who is currently ranked first, second and third respectively. Singapore is one of Vettel's favourite hunting ground, as he came in 2nd and 1st place in 2010 and 2011 respectively. This Championship is of great significance to Sebastian Vettel as winning it would complete a hat trick, a feat achieved only by Juan Manuel Fangio (1954-1957) and Michael Schumacher (2000-2004). It is also worth noting that Michael Suhumacher is the idol of Sebastian Vettel.

The drivers will be racing at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, with a total of 61 laps covering 309.316 km. The race is held in the night, which is a novel event compared to the other circuits. Drivers mentioned that racing in the night gives a different experience with an increase in difficulty. They must display a higher level of performance but they are relishing the challenge.

F1 2012 Singapore Circuit Map

The tracks are now all sealed and prepared to welcome this event. At the same time, many booths are set up around these tracks to give tourists more information of this event as well as other useful information of Singapore. Tourists with access can drop by these booths on the event dates (21 - 23 Sep) up to 24 Sep 2012. We recommend tourists to visit the Singtel booth located near the Cenotaph, where you can view some race cars on display, use the on site iPads to find out more information about F1 and Singapore. You can also try finding our TouristPads icon on the displayed iPads and rent our iPad rental product!

Just like in the popular game "Daytona", the commentator would say, "Gentlemen, start your engines". You can take a sneak peak of the start this coming 21 Sep 2012!

Thomas from Austria

Thomas

Thomas took up our iPad rental service for 3 days and just like all our previous customers, he was happy with the service. He was seen sharing something on the iPad with his friend on their way to meet me. I asked him about it and he mentioned he needed directions. Instinctively, I blurted "gothere.sg, right?". He nodded with a smile. I was really glad that this iPad rental benefited him, even to the last min of the rental period. Unfortunately, they were in a rush and could not stick around for a chat. Nevertheless, he was nice enough to let me take a photo of him and we waved each other goodbye.

"Being Together" by John Clang at the National Museum of Singapore

Photo credit: http://mashable.com/2012/09/06/john-clang-being-together/

Local photographer and artist John Clang used Skype to create family portraits. According to the artist as quoted on Mashable:

“To be able to witness all these technology progress and wondering what the future looks like, which they may not be able to participate brings a tinge of sadness to me. I think maybe I’m the one sensing the sadness.”

The full series of forty portraits will be on display at the National Museum of Singapore next year.

In the meantime, while visiting Singapore, you can rent our iPads, and use Skype to call and talk to  your family and friends back home with 3G internet included with your rental for free.

TouristPads

Boeing's Aeroloft

Only for world leaders. You can now fly in super comfort in Boeing’s new airplanes fitted with extremely spacious cabins for you to sleep in between conducting stately affairs. These cabins are fitted with a full length bed as well as a private changing area. The price tag for one of these planes? $500million. Read more on CNN.