Category Archives: Agents

After 20 stellar years in the Indian and global travel trade, Hema Manghnani joins forces with Silicon Valley-founded StreetGooser.com, one of the fastest growing technologies developed to redefine the business of mid-size accommodation worldwide. As VP – Business Development, Hema will head global strategy and revenue of cloud-based StreetGooser, developed by technocrat/CEO John Varghese. StreetGooser is an intuitive, revolutionary technology solution that connects mid-size properties to a diversified audience and redefines their distribution strategy.

A new report by McKinsey & Company states that in addition to table-stakes safety initiatives, brands must differentiate themselves and re-engage their travellers with visible, communications-based cues, such as notifications about health status of destination city and personalised notes on importance of testing and other safety measures.

Airline and travel management company, InterGlobe Air Transport (IGAT) has launched its new website. IGAT provides diverse expertise across passenger and cargo sales, which will be showcased through a modern, well-organized, and easy to navigate website. It has been revamped to address the need of the current business landscape and is in-line with the company’s mission to provide its customers with the resources and tools to understand the experience and gain knowledge about the company’s three decades in the business. Commenting on the launch of the refurbished website, Siddhanta Sharma, President & CEO, InterGlobe Air Transport, said, “The business landscape has tremendously changed over the last few months with the global pandemic. In an era when every business is moving online, we felt there was a need to refurbish our digital presence to address the need of the hour.  We are delighted to launch our new user-friendly brand website, which will make all relevant information on our services easily accessible to our customers across the globe. By investing resources in the focused development of a modern age interface, we have ensured that the website allows prospective customers to find business-relevant information with the utmost ease. We are confident that this new website will not only serve our existing customers but also be instrumental in landing new business for the company.” The website is designed to deliver a smooth experience by enabling efficient navigation between passenger services, cargo services, car rental and other pages. InterGlobe Air Transport has worked with Multia – the design division of Multiversity Group  to completely revamp its website – www.interglobeairtransport.com

With the aim to educate the travel trade about the eight big cats, wildlife conservation and sustainable tourism, a Kolkata-based tour operator Time Travels is conducting a 35-series live webinar starting from August 10. The hour-long webinars with have 35 experts from nine countries speaking on their area of expertise. Supriya Khaitan, CEO, Time Travels  and Co-Founder of FOMONoMore, says, “We created a big team of experts from all walks of wildlife who wished to address the need for conversations, and this led us to establish FOMONoMore.”

TAAI President Jyoti Mayal was given an exclusive opportunity and invited on 13th August 2020 to have a Joint Meeting with Tourism Minister Prahlad Singh Patel and Minister of Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri. Suggestions were taken on: – Creating Demand & Supply for the growth of domestic tourism in India. – Opening of routes as per demand & study in Udaan scheme for destinations in North-East India, Khajuraho, Orchha, Dehradun & more. – Better use of International Airports. – Helicopter charters. – Opening up of skies for Domestic as well as international routes. Discussion on airline refunds was made along with other points including challenges of the trade due to pandemic and changes required to enhance the business of travel and tourism by agents. Both the ministers along with Director General Tourism Meenakshi Sharma and ADG – Rupinder Brar and Dy. Secretary, Civil Aviation Usha Padhee were present in the meeting, who assured full support and encouragement to the trade.

Recent statistics from ForwardKeys have claimed that Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Delhi have been the top 2 most searched domestic routes in India in July 2020. However, In July 2019, Delhi-Goa and Goa-Delhi were the top 2 most searched routes.

The #TogetherThailand digital campaign by TAT India has entered into the second week where ‘Food experiences in Thailand’ will be the key theme. The contest for Pan India travel agents and OTAs will focus on local food, street food, cooking class, food tours (tuk-tuk and bus tour), and Indian food in Thailand.

Subhash Goyal, Hony. General Secretary, FAITH has suggested that India Tourism Mart (ITM) will be held by the end of November 2020. “This will help in promoting India to the tour operators all over the world.  Last two years, we had 250 buyers, this year in the virtual mart we hope to interact with more than 500 leading travel agents and tour operators from all over the world,” he said. Goyal also thanked the  Tourism Minister for agreeing to organise a joint meeting of the Indian travel agents and tour operators with the Minister of Civil Aviation, Hardeep Singh Puri to sort out the pending issues of the tourism industry with Civil Aviation. FAITH also suggested for better coordination an Inter-Ministerial Task Force be formed chaired by the Tourism Minister consisting of mainly with Tourism, Civil Aviation, Commerce, Home, External Affairs & Railways along with the members of the tourism industry. An Inter-State Task Force should also be formed which should include all State Tourism Secretaries.  

Mehernosh Colombowalla, Director – Beyond Borders Travel Management Company says that he has sailed through the past few months by inspiring his clients to keep their travel dreams alive during this long hiatus. While he spoke at the 5th TravTalk Digital Conclave, he said, “As professionals in the tourism space we understand that regaining consumer confidence in travel is key to regenerating the industry. Clients do not have direct access to airlines & hospitality & thus shortly after lockdown, we invested our time in connecting with our clients, updated them with all the positive developments & factual information given to us by aviation, hospitality & tourism sectors. In the bargain, gained trust & became their validation point for various travel-related information. We spoke to them about new & less frequented destinations and sent them short videos on interesting & unique experiences around the globe – to keep their travel interest alive. Sent them information on the various safety procedures & new norms in travel. All this helped in generating business opportunities for us.” Talking about the future, he says, travel agents will need to become more ambitious in how they design experiences. As a new paradigm of luxury travel that is life-enriching & value-based is emerging.

Mehernosh Colombowalla, Director, Beyond Borders Travel Management Company, believes that going forward, when travel restarts, there should be relaxation in refunds and cancellations form service providers like hotels, airlines and tourism boards. “Going forward, I would like to see a little more relaxed policies from service providers in terms of cancellations and refunds so. For example, when a client is overseas and gets infected by the virus, we would expect the hotel to give refund on the remaining part of the stay, and airlines should be more accommodative in both charges for re-booking or even refund on the return portion of the journey, whatever the fare type maybe, in case the client has to come back on the first available flight. Hence, collectively we just need to work together to build trust and make sure that the client does not feel that he’s going to have huge losses if he contracts the virus when he is on a vacation overseas,” he commented at the 5th TravTalk Digital Conclave.