SINGAPORE, Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Digital travel platform Agoda has unveiled the top destinations in Asia for the upcoming Lunar New Year, based on accommodation search data. Tokyo (Japan), retains its top position, followed by Bangkok (Thailand), and Taipei (Taiwan) making to the top three for the first time.

The data, comparing searches from December 2025, with the same period in 2024 for check-ins during the Lunar New Year. Osaka (Japan), ranked at fourth place, and Seoul (South Korea) secured the fifth spot while Fukuoka (Japan) held sixth position.

Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) debuted the list at seventh rank, and Sapporo (Japan) slipped one spot to eighth. Singapore and Hong Kong also remain popular, rounding out the list of top ten destinations.

This year marks the Year of the Horse, symbolizing energy, movement, and adventure. Travelers are inspired to explore new horizons and embrace the spirit of the Horse, seeking vibrant experiences and dynamic destinations. The Lunar New Year, marking new beginnings and Spring’s arrival, is a prime time for reuniting with loved ones and embracing renewal. It’s an opportunity for self-discovery, whether rediscovering familiar places or venturing abroad.

Andrew Smith, Senior Vice President, Supply at Agoda, shared, “The Lunar New Year is all about adventure and discovery, especially in the Year of the Horse. It’s exciting to see travelers embracing both traditional favorites and new experiences during one of Asia’s top travel moments. Whether it’s the bustling streets of Tokyo or the urban energy of Singapore, Agoda is here to help travelers find amazing deals and create unforgettable holiday stories.”

Embracing the adventurous spirit, travelers planning their Lunar New Year getaways can explore Agoda’s extensive offerings, including over 6 million holiday properties, more than 130,000 flight routes, and over 300,000 activities. Running from 14 to 28 February, Agoda’s Mega Sale will offer up to 60% off on hotel bookings, with special flash sales of up to 70% on 17 February and exclusive deals on flights and activities. Agoda VIP members will receive early access to deals from 10 to 13 February. The latest deals are available on the Agoda app or at agoda.com/deals.

SÃO PAULO, Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Treeal, a Brazilian fintech company specializing in innovative payment solutions for businesses, today announced the partnership with Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of leading global technology company Tencent, to introduce the advanced PalmAI Service to the Brazilian market. Designed to outperform traditional biometric methods, including fingerprint and facial recognition, the new system offers a secure, contactless, and highly accurate alternative for payment processing and access control.

Across several Asian markets, Tencent Cloud’s PalmAI Service is also already driving efficiency and elevating user experience in diverse scenarios. For example, in Tencent’s own buildings, the biometric readers are ubiquitous at every entrance, allowing employees and visitors to have instant access with no identification failures. The solution has also been tested in a variety of practical environments — including high-traffic transit locations (such as subway stations and bus stops), retail self-checkout experiences, private events, and other real-life access and identity verification scenarios.

Globally, the system supports more than 50 million active users conducting over two billion transactions annually. Treeal’s implementation delivers industry-leading performance, allowing user identification in less than 300ms, with a false acceptance rate of less than 0.0000001% (1 in 1 billion operations) and a false rejection rate of 0.01%.

“Biometric systems like this aren’t just about security—they redefine the user experience by making it faster, simpler, and more intuitive,” says João Santos, CEO of Treeal. “Brazilians are known for embracing innovation early, and we believe palm-based biometrics could become mainstream within the next five years.”

Commenting on the partnership, Eric Li, Director of AI Global Commercialization at Tencent Cloud, said, “We’re excited to see our PalmAI Service makes its way to Brazil through Treeal. This is a market known for its innovation appetite, and we believe this technology will play a key role in shaping the future of secure, frictionless transactions—not just in payments, but across smart access and urban mobility.”

Tencent Cloud’s PalmAI Service brings unmatched AI-based precision

The palm scanner can identify the unique vein patterns beneath the skin—appearing as dark lines—which remain distinct even between identical twins. It reads the lines, contours, creases, and skin textures such as pigmentation and calluses, which are unique to each person, to ensure unmatched precision.  Each scan is completed within milliseconds and requires neither a card nor a smartphone. All data is tokenized and encrypted, with no actual images of users ever stored.

Palm recognition addresses many shortcomings associated with fingerprint and facial recognition systems, including vulnerability to spoofing, reduced accuracy with certain demographics, environmental constraints, and hygiene concerns. While fingerprint scanners can be fooled by 3D-printed silicone replicas and facial recognition may struggle with poor lighting, occlusions, or distinguishing between similar-looking individuals (such as twins), PalmAI Service offers a more robust and reliable solution.

As biometric technologies continue to evolve, Treeal aims to position Brazil at the forefront of secure, frictionless transactions—ushering in a new era of intelligent identity verification.

About Treeal
Treeal is a company specializing in business, payment, and sales solutions, created to serve companies that need efficiency, security, and high performance in every transaction. Since 2020, Treeal has been transforming the way money circulates within companies, with a robust, reliable, and scalable technological infrastructure, prepared for large volumes without sacrificing stability. With high-performance APIs and robust operation, Treeal guarantees agile and secure processing, generating a real competitive advantage for its clients. Today, it handles more than 200 million transactions per month, serving segments that demand high performance and zero tolerance for failures.

More than just a “payment method,” Treeal designs complete solutions so that companies can sell more, receive payments more efficiently, and have total control of their financial flow, with agility, intelligence, and confidence to grow. Learn more: https://treeal.com/.

About Tencent Cloud:
Tencent Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation. 

China Masters AI at Scale, Japan Leads in Reliability, Driving Regional Innovation

SINGAPORE, Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in products and solutions across Asia-Pacific, as engineers advance adoption while addressing operational and design challenges. This is according to Avnet’s fifth annual Avnet Insights survey, which tracks global trends in AI integration across industries.

Globally, 77% of engineers reported improving market conditions for their design products and solutions. Across APAC, adoption is accelerating, with China leading in large-scale deployment and Japan emphasizing reliability and long product lifecycles. These regional strengths and shifting priorities are collectively fueling the next wave of Asia-Pacific’s technological evolution.

“While the survey focuses on major global design hubs, the findings serve as a critical framework for Southeast Asian markets,” said Tan Aik Hoon, Regional President for Avnet South Asia, Korea and Avnet United. “As ASEAN grows as a global manufacturing powerhouse, the ‘commercial-first’ AI strategies highlighted in the report offer a clear path forward for engineers in Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam looking to maintain competitive speeds.”

Download the 2026 Avnet Insights: The Reality of Artificial Intelligence whitepaper here.

How is AI Adoption Advancing Across APAC?
More than half of engineers globally (56%) said they are shipping products with AI incorporated, a 33% increase from the previous year. In China, adoption exceeds the global average, with engineers embedding AI across industries including automotive, industrial automation, and smart manufacturing. Japan and other APAC markets are advancing steadily, prioritizing practical applications that enhance efficiency, reliability, and sustainability.

Top AI applications across the region mirror global trends: process automation (42%), predictive maintenance (28%), and fault/anomaly detection (28%) remain the most adopted functionalities. Engineers are also increasingly combining Edge AI and machine learning (ML), with 64% globally prioritizing both equally, reflecting the growing importance of multi-modal AI.

“We see a clear shift from AI experimentation to industrial-scale deployment across the ASEAN manufacturing corridor,” added Tan. “Regional engineers face a growing complexity tax—balancing rapid time-to-market with specialized data requirements. Avnet’s role is to help partners overcome these barriers and move from concept to revenue faster.”

Navigating Challenges to Drive Broadening Impact
As AI’s influence expands, APAC engineers continue to balance technical challenges with evolving skill requirements. Data quality (46%) and continuous maintenance (54%) remain the most cited obstacles, while regional teams are investing in talent development—particularly in model optimization (17%) and data analysis (16%)—to convert complexity into competitive advantage.

“The report confirms that AI has entered its most critical phase: at-scale implementation,” concluded Tan. “In a market where production speed drives optimism, Avnet helps bridge the regional resource gap by providing the technical expertise and ecosystem support our partners need to lead—not just participate—in Asia-Pacific’s technological evolution.”

The 2026 Avnet Insights survey conducted online was fielded to 1,200 engineers from the Americas, EMEA, Asia and Japan, from October 21 through November 5, 2025.

Download the full 2026 Avnet Insights: The Reality of Artificial Intelligence whitepaper here.

About Avnet
As a leading global technology distributor and solutions provider, Avnet has served customers’ evolving needs for more than a century. Through regional and specialized businesses around the world, we support customers and suppliers at every stage of the product lifecycle. We help companies adapt to change and accelerate the design and supply stages of product development. With a unique viewpoint from the center of the technology supply chain, Avnet is a trusted partner that solves complex design and supply chain issues so customers can realize revenue faster. Learn more about Avnet at www.avnet.com.

CONTACT: Seraphina Wee, seraphina.wee@avnet.com 

SINGAPORE, Feb. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel Singapore has been awarded the ASEAN MICE Venue Award 2026 in the Meeting Room Category, a prestigious regional recognition under the ASEAN MICE Venue Standard (AMVS). The award celebrates venues that meet the highest benchmarks for business meetings across Southeast Asia and was officially presented at the ASEAN Tourism Standards Awards Ceremony during the ASEAN Tourism Forum (ATF) on 30 January 2026 in Cebu, Philippines.

In 2026, only 41 establishments across all ten ASEAN Member States attained this distinction after undergoing rigorous on-site audits evaluating structural quality, soundproofing, amenities, safety standards and service excellence. Grand Copthorne Waterfront is one of only two hotels in Singapore to receive the award, and one of just three Singapore representatives overall, highlighting its leadership in the regional MICE sector and reinforcing Singapore’s standing as a premier MICE destination.

The ASEAN MICE Venue Award – Meeting Room category honours venues that meet rigorous standards in facilities, service, safety and accessibility. This recognition reflects the hotel’s commitment to quality and seamless meeting experiences.

Commenting on the achievement, Andrew Tan, General Manager of Grand Copthorne Waterfront, said: “This ASEAN MICE Venue Award is a strong affirmation of our team’s dedication to delivering exceptional meeting experiences. It reflects the high standards we uphold across our facilities, service and operations, and reinforces our commitment to continuously innovate and elevate the experience for our clients and partners.”

Benedict Ng, Vice President, Operations, Southeast Asia and North America, added:
“Being recognised under the ASEAN MICE Venue Standard places Grand Copthorne Waterfront among the region’s most trusted and capable MICE venues. This achievement highlights the strength of our operational excellence and our continued investment in people, infrastructure and technology to support world-class business events.”

The accolade follows the hotel’s $40 million refurbishment completed at the end of 2023, which significantly enhanced its MICE capabilities. Featuring 6,200 square metres of meetings and events space, including naturally lit meeting rooms and three pillarless ballrooms spanning 1,385 square metres; the hotel is well equipped to support hybrid, in-person and virtual events. Overlooking the Singapore River, its venues offer a distinctive setting paired with state-of-the-art technology and world-class audio-visual facilities, reinforcing its role in elevating regional MICE standards and strengthening Singapore’s position as a leading international MICE hub.

Contact:

Claire Chan, Assistant Director of Marketing Communications
Claire.Chan@millenniumhotels.com 

Kok Nee Tsu, Assistant Manager of Marketing Communications
neetsu.kok@millenniumhotels.com 

Sharing the World of G-SHOCK with a Global Audience

TOKYO, Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Casio Computer Co., Ltd. announced today that it has entered into an ambassador partnership with professional skateboarder Yuto Horigome. Through this partnership, Casio will support Horigome and seek to raise awareness and increase users of the G-SHOCK brand of shock-resistant watches around the world.

Since taking up skateboarding at the age of six, Horigome has built an outstanding competitive record, including numerous victories at major events. In addition, he has released a great deal of skateboard-related content that conveys the technical skill and creative appeal of the sport. Through both skateboarding as a competitive sport and as part of street life, he has played a key role in the development of skate culture.

Yuto Horigome continues to challenge himself to reach unprecedented goals, overcoming setbacks along the way. This approach resonates with the spirit and passion for never giving up that drives the G-SHOCK brand as it continues to push the limits of watchmaking, leading to the ambassador partnership.

To mark the ambassador appointment, a special visual was created featuring typography by VERDY, an artist and close collaborator of Horigome. In addition, a special movie produced by THIRTY 3 MAGAZINE, a street culture publication with VERDY serving as editor-in-chief, was released today on official Casio social media channels.

Along with these works, Horigome and G-SHOCK will continue to share new messages with audiences in Japan and around the world. Together with Horigome, who is known for expressive street skateboarding and as a fashion and culture icon, G-SHOCK will engage in initiatives that support the broader recognition and continued development of skate culture.

Yuto Horigome commented:
“I am excited to be able to partner with G-SHOCK. I want to continue taking on challenges in my own way, and at the same time to do what I can to support the next generation. I look forward to taking on new challenges together with everyone involved.”