Tag Archives: Sales

Following the successful implementation of its New Distribution Capability (NDC) roadmap during 2018, Travelport  has completed the onboarding of the first group of travel agencies to receive access to NDC content. In October 2018, UK-based travel agency Meon Valley completed the first live booking using NDC content through Travelport’s Smartpoint desktop. The next phase of Travelport’s NDC roadmap involved onboarding a larger group of travel agencies. To ensure NDC works for all parts of the travel ecosystem, Travelport has implemented its booking solution with a wide variety of agencies of different sizes, including American Express Global Business Travel, dnata, Gray Dawes Group, Global Travel Management, Meon Valley Travel, Premier Holidays, TAG, Travel Counsellors and Travel & Transport Statesman. Commenting on this milestone in Travelport’s NDC delivery, Nick Dagg, SVP Global Agency Sales said, “We work at the heart of the travel industry and our agency customers rely on us to provide them with choice through access to the broadest range of travel content. NDC is no exception and we’ve taken great care in managing the roll-out of our NDC booking capability through Smartpoint to our agency customers. This has allowed us to learn as we go, listen to the important feedback from our customers as they operate in this new distribution era and refine our NDC solution to ensure it provides seamless, integrated travel choice.” John Bukowski, Director, Content and Distribution, American Express Global Business Travel said, “We are working with key parties to ensure we continue to deliver access to all content, with a focus on improving traveller experience, controlling cost, maintaining full end to end servicing, as well as transparent fares, pricing and comparison shopping. NDC is an …

India will need 2300 new airplanes by 2037, specially single-aisles as there is a huge growth in low cost carriers as well as domestic traffic, informed Dr Dinesh Keskar, Senior Vice President – Sales, Asia Pacific & India, Boeing Commercial Airplanes while presenting a forecast for the aviation industry – globally and for India – in New Delhi and in Mumbai recently. Outlining some highlights of the report, he said, “In the last 50 months, India has seen double-digit growth in the aviation sector. Clearly, it’s a country of single aisles.” He added that there has been a significant growth in the domestic market with more than 11.8 million passengers flying in 2018 till September.

Booking.com has partnered with Air India to offer the airline’s customers access to over 28.9 million accommodation listings, including everything from homes, apartments, villas to world-class hotels and resorts from the Air India website. Stewart Jones, Regional Director – Strategic Partnerships, APAC, Booking.com said, “Air India makes it the perfect partner for us to showcase our global online accommodation offering to their domestic and international customers. As India is poised to become the third largest aviation market by 2020 with its fast-growing outbound travel market, we are happy to combine our strengths with Air India’s to deliver the best travel experience to travellers across the country.” Madhu Mathen, General Manager – Sales and Marketing, Air India said, “Booking.com’s global reach and unique accommodation offerings is a key reason we chose the online accommodation platform as one of our first accommodation partner. As a member of the world’s largest airline alliance – Star Alliance, Air India has passengers that are globe-trotters. Partnering with Booking.com enables us at Air India to provide our customers a broad & unique variety of accommodation options in any city we fly them to.”  

Thomas Cook (India) has opened a new branch at Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad to leverage the growing potential of Telangana. Present at the inauguration were Romil Pant, Senior Vice President- Leisure Travel, and V Pradeep, Associate Vice President, Foreign Exchange, Thomas Cook (India). This expansion extends Thomas Cook India’s presence in Telangana to 10 consumer access centres (4 owned branches and 6 Gold Circle Partner franchise outlets) across Saifabad, Begumpet, Hitech City, Gachibowli, Kukatpally, Banjara Hills, Attapur, Sainikpuri and Malakpet; with five additional outlets in Andhra Pradesh. Rajeev Kale, President & Country Head – Holidays, MICE, Visa & Passport Services, Thomas Cook (India) said, “At Thomas Cook, Telangana State has been identified as a prime driver and continues to deliver strong growth of 25 per cent YOY for our leisure travel business. Our new branch at Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad (a key residential, commercial and retail centre), gives our consumers convenient access to a wide range of travel and foreign exchange services. Innovative products like our Holidays and Forex apps with doorstep delivery of foreign exchange; equally our cutting edge prepaid cards (Borderless and One Currency) are of great value to Hyderabad’s tech savvy travellers and we are confident of seeing a strong uptake.” Deepesh Varma, Senior Vice President– Sales & Relationship Management, Foreign Exchange, at Thomas Cook India said, “Given the impressive increase of 45% across our key Forex product-segments, we have identified Telangana State as a strategic source market. Telangana is also a significant outward remittances market for us; our Send Money Abroad service seeing increased uptake.”    

Pegged at $40 to $50 billion, the Indian wedding industry is the second largest market in the world after the USA, revealed Rajeev Jain, Founder and Director, Rashi Entertainment at the 5th Travel Wedding Show, held recently at Jaipur Marriott Hotel. The event witnessed over 2000 B2B meetings between exhibitors and buyers spread across two days. Speaking on trends in the wedding industry, Jain said, “The global wedding industry is pegged at $300 billion. As far as international destination weddings are concerned, the most wanted destination initially was Thailand but now people are venturing to Turkey, UAE, Cyprus, Mauritius, Macau, Malta, Sri Lanka, Bali, London, among other new destinations.” A panel discussion was held on ‘Destination Weddings: An overview, India v/s International.’ Moderated by Jain, the session’s panelists included H Deniz Ersoz, Culture & Tourism Counsellor, Turkish Embassy, New Delhi; Hemant Mediratta, Senior Vice President – Sales, Oberoi Hotels & Resorts; Saurabh Bhargava, AVP Sales, Indian Hotels Company; Shampa Dhali, Area Director, National Sales – India, Marriott International and Abinash Manghani, Area Manager and Head Travel, ITC Hotels. A knowledge book titled ‘An Insight on Weddings in India & abroad’ was also released on the occasion.  

Philippine Airlines (PAL) has appointed Bird Travels, the Airline Management Services arm of Bird Group as its local representative in India. The association marks the airline’s latest step in developing its sales distribution network within the Indian market. The appointment of Bird Travels is part of the intensive preparations undertaken by Philippine Airlines to realise its firm plans to commence operations to India by winter 2018. Reinforcing the airline’s growing confidence in the market, Bird Travels is responsible for all the airline’s sales, marketing and ticketing activities in India through its centrally located headquarters in New Delhi. “India’s tourism industry is expanding rapidly and we’re already seeing a steady flow of leisure and business travellers flying between India and Philippines. Bird Group is a veteran in air travel management and we are challenging them to capitalise on their strength and capabilities to help launch our upcoming flights to New Delhi and Mumbai,” said Ryan Uy, Vice President – Sales, Philippine Airlines. “Armed with our extensive local knowledge and experienced team, Bird Travels is well-equipped and committed to promote the airline’s presence in the country,” said Vijay Bhatia, President, Bird Group. PAL’s planned services from New Delhi and Mumbai to Manila will enable India-based travellers to easily access over 31 destinations in the Philippines, out of PAL’s hubs in Manila, Clark, Cebu and Davao.

One of the key takeaways from the AccorHotels Showcase 2018 was that MiCE is on the rise globally – with multiple events being held internationally, and also in India which is increasingly becoming a chosen destination for MiCE. Furthermore, with globalisation and Indian corporates opening offices around the world, the hospitality industry has seen traction for corporate travel both inbound and outbound. The AccorHotels Showcase 2018 witnessed participation from 35 hotels and resorts from the global network along with 22 hotels from India. The event was the ideal platform to discuss how to work together to benefit from the burgeoning travel market. The delegates were representing India’s topmost travel agents, wholesalers, corporate clients, tourism partners and MiCE organisers in attendance. Arif Patel, Vice President – Sales, Marketing, Distribution & Loyalty, AccorHotels said, “By 2020, Indian outbound travel is estimated to reach 48 million and foreign tourist arrivals is forecasted to cross the 10 million mark. This annual AccorHotels Showcase gives an opportunity for our attendees to engage with AccorHotels’ representatives from around the world to see how best we can work together given the opportunities in the market.” The daylong event in Mumbai on March 21 and Delhi on March 23 was packed with networking sessions where customers discovered the group’s newest offerings and met with hotel representatives from across the region.