Nominations for IATO election, scheduled on 25th April at The Ashok New Delhi, have been released. The last date of withdrawal is today by 3pm. As of now, for the position of the President, there have been five nominations— Rajiv Mehra, Uday Tours & Travels; Amaresh Tiwari, AT Seasons & Vacations Travel; Lally Mathews, Divine Voyages; Rajesh Mudgill, Planet India Travels and EM Najeeb, Air Travel Enterprises. For Senior Vice President, the nominations are— EM Najeeb, Air Travel Enterprises; Lajpat Rai, Lotus Trans Travel; and Sarab Jit Singh, Travelite (India). For Vice President, nominations have been received from Raj Bajaj, Perfect Travels & Tours; Ravi Gosain, Erco Travels; Amaresh Tiwari, AT Seasons & Vacations Travel; Arun Anand, Midtown Travels; Lally Mathews, Divine Voyages; Rajesh Mudgill, Planet India Travels; and Lajpat Rai, Lotus Trans Travel. For Hony. Secretary, nominations have been received from Rajnish Kaistha, Paradise Holidays India; Raj Bajaj, Perfect Travels & Tours; Ravi Gosain, Erco Travels; Amaresh Tiwari, AT Seasons & Vacations Travel; Lally Mathews, Divine Voyages; Rajesh Mudgill, Planet India Travels; and Sanjay Razdan, Razdan Holidays. For Hony. Treasurer, the nominations have been received from Rajnish Kaistha, Paradise Holidays India; Viney Tyagi, Uni Crystal Holidays; Ravi Gosain, Erco Travels; Arun Anand, Midtown Travels; Sunil Mishra, Cosmos Tours & Travels; Atul Rai, Ananya Tours; Tony Marwah, Indian Travel Promotion Company; and Sanjay Razdan, Razdan Holidays. For Hony. Joint secretary, Rajnish Kaistha, Paradise Holidays India; Raj Bajaj, Perfect Travels & Tours; Viney Tyagi – Uni Crystal Holidays; Sunil Mishra, Cosmos Tours & Travels; Atul Rai, Ananya Tours; Tony Marwah, Indian Travel Promotion Company; Sanjay Razdan, Razdan Holidays; and Naresh Sharma – Inpac Tours. For EC Members – Active (5 posts), …

Singapore Airlines will be cutting 96% of the capacity that had been originally scheduled up to end-April, given the further tightening of border controls around the world over the last week to stem the Covid-19 outbreak. This will result in the grounding of around 138 SIA and SilkAir aircraft, out of a total fleet of 147, amid the greatest challenge that the SIA Group has faced in its existence. The Group’s low-cost unit Scoot will also suspend most of its network, resulting in the grounding of 47 of its fleet of 49 aircraft. The SIA Group diversified its network and set up Scoot to spread its risks and cater to a wide range of passenger and market segments. However, without a domestic segment, the Group’s airlines become more vulnerable when international markets increasingly restrict the free movement of people or ban air travel altogether. It is unclear when the SIA Group can begin to resume normal services, given the uncertainty as to when the stringent border controls will be lifted. The resultant collapse in the demand for air travel has led to a significant decline in SIA’s passenger revenues. The Company is actively taking steps to build up its liquidity, and to reduce capital expenditure and operating costs. As mentioned on 17 March 2020, SIA will continue to aggressively pursue all measures to address the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on the Company. These include: • ongoing discussions with aircraft manufacturers to defer upcoming aircraft deliveries. If agreed, this will consequently defer payment for those aircraft deliveries; • salary cuts for the SIA Group’s management with the Company’s Directors also agreeing to a cut in their fees, and a voluntary …

As initiated and facilitated by the Government of Srilanka, SriLankan Airlines, brought back 829 Sri Lankans who were stranded in India. They have been arriving in the country, as Sri Lanka was going into 48-hour quarantine curfew, since Friday , March 20,to Sunday 22nd 2020. The Airline wishes to state that these passengers had travelled to India on other airlines and were stranded there as the carriers concerned stopped operations to Colombo due to travel restrictions. The National Carrier took every measure to bring them home swiftly and safely, given that these passengers mainly consisted of senior citizens, an age group that has been advised to take extra precautions to be safe from the virus. Ever since the global outbreak, SriLankan Airlines has been playing a pivotal role in facilitating passage home to many Sri Lankans, which includes the mercy flight that was operated to Wuhan. The Airlines’ operational areas have been fully functional despite the government declared holidays and ‘work-from-home’ , and the staff members have been attending to their work dedicatedly and diligently, understanding fully the role that they are expected to play during these difficult times. SriLankan Airlines, going above and beyond the call of duty and not aiming at any commercial fulfillment despite the irretrievable impact this has made on business, has continued to step in and fulfil what is expected of the National Carrier, thus playing its part of staying united as a country in this crucial hour. Our Global Contact Center(0197331979), including Airport ticket office offering 24×7 service to our valuable customers for their ticket related services.

KLM’s contact centers have been overloaded by the corona crisis. Currently, the airline receives ten times more messages via social channels and receives four times more calls per day than usual. The expectation is that the number of questions will only increase due to future cancellations. The developments cause great uncertainty for customers. KLM wants her contact centers to be easily accessible again so that employees can make maximum efforts to assist passengers. In order to further aid this, KLM has created a video to assist customers, informing them about all the important links concerning their bookings. In addition to that KLM’s social media team is working day and night to support their passengers and solve all their queries. updates.klm.com provides the latest information on the commercial measures, FAQs and rebook policy. KLM trusts her clients to understand this exceptional situation and measure.  

In a recent release, Virgin Atlantic has said, “We continue to monitor the Covid-19 situation very carefully, including the latest guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), as well as any new entry or quarantine restrictions implemented by the countries we fly to.   “The Indian Authorities have advised that from 12:00 GMT on 18th March 2020 they will deny entry to any customers, regardless of nationality, travelling from the United Kingdom, the European Union, the European Free Trade Association, and Turkey. This is a temporary measure that the authorities will review on 31st March.  Our last scheduled services will be from Delhi to London Heathrow (VS301) on Saturday 21st March and from Mumbai to London Heathrow (VS355) on Sunday 22nd March.  We’d like to apologise for any inconvenience caused and any customers booked to travel should call our local contact centre team at 1800 102 3000 or 0124 469 3030, email India.Reservations@fly.virgin.com, alternatively contact our UK contact centre on +44 344 874 7747 or +44 344 209 7777 for rebooking options. Customers who have booked through a travel agent, we request them to contact their agent. ”  

UNWTO has revised its 2020 prospects for international tourist arrivals to a negative growth of 1-3 per cent, translating into an estimated loss of US$ 30 to 50 billion in international tourism receipts. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, UNWTO predicted a positive growth of 3-4 per cent for this year. This first assessment expects that Asia and the Pacific will be the worst affected regions, with an anticipated fall in arrivals of 9-12 per cent. Estimates for other world regions are currently premature in view of the rapidly evolving situation. UNWTO underscores that any estimate must be treated with caution and is likely to be updated.

According to a recent analysis by International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) on COVID-19’s impact on the meetings industry, 95.9 per cent of the confirmed meetings in Asia Pacific scheduled for 2020 were not affected by the virus outbreak. This accounted for 1,021 of the 1,065 meetings confirmed. The analysis also states that only 44 meetings scheduled for Asia Pacific were affected by COVID-19, accounting for only 4.1 per cent of the total. While 34 of these meetings were postponed, 10 were either relocated or cancelled. Outside Asia Pacific, two meetings in Europe and one in Africa are postponed. “We believe the international meetings industry can play its part in finding a solution to the current COVID-19 outbreak. International meetings represent the best possible vehicle for addressing this and many other global issues. As an industry, we must demonstrate resilience and confidence by maintaining to the greatest extent possible our ongoing schedule of activities – and where this is not possible, by working collaboratively to develop alternatives that help maintain the exchange of information and insights that account for the benefits we believe to result from this kind of engagement,” says ICCA President, James Rees.

CAPA India’s preliminary estimates for the near-term impact on the Indian industry states that as a result of the significant reduction in flying, Indian carriers may initially ground around 150 aircraft (including almost all of the international fleet), with this number expected to increase as more domestic operations are curtailed over the coming weeks. Based on the latest cancellations, international capacity is currently estimated to be down by 60-70 per cent year-on-year, although the situation is evolving on a daily basis. India has banned entry by all foreign nationals (with some very limited exceptions) until at least April 15, 2020. Foreigners account for around 25 per cent of international air travellers to/from India. However, India has also blocked the entry of its own nationals from the European Union and several other countries, and has advised its citizens not to travel overseas. If the decline in traffic continues to be severe, the majority of the fleet could be grounded by April.

Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, Vice President, Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) and President of HRAWI, has said that the association’s hospitality institute has launched new courses that were to start from March 2020. He says, “We have an institute called FIHM, which is short for FHRAI IHM in Greater Noida and keeping the demand for shorter courses in mind and so many new trends emerging, we have introduced short-term courses on FOSTAC and FSSAI that involve skill development. This is also something that the government is pushing. We have these courses ready and they were due to start immediately but now we have kept it on hold because of the unfortunate coronavirus situation. We will start them as soon as it comes under control. Apart from short-term courses, we also have the regular courses but we have stressed in these short courses as that’s the need of the hour. There will be guest lecturers and visiting facility for this as well.”

The Tourism Ministry of Thailand plans to return registration deposits to local tour operators amounting to 1.4 billion baht. The Tourism Department has this budget collected from inbound, outbound and domestic tour companies paying 50,000-200,000 baht per licence. To implement the policy, each company will receive 50-70% of the deposit back to help solve financial stagnation.