Praveen Iyer, Co-Founder, and Chief Commercial Officer, Akasa Air, said, “By expanding our network with an aircraft arriving every 15 days, we aim to fulfill our goal of developing a strong pan-India presence and expect to operate 300 weekly flights by October end.”

Rakesh Verma, Additional Secretary, Tourism, has said that the Nidhi 2.0 platform is now maturing. “We have now tested it with almost all state governments and about 20 state governments have now been brought on that platform.”

Zubin Karkaria, Founder & CEO, VFS Global, has said that they are still capable of processing 32 million applications eventoday as we did in 2019. “We are still at 60 per cent of 2019 numbers,” he added.

Cross Hotels & Resorts, along with TravelBullz is conducting a webinar today at 12pm. Representatives from both the brands will update the trade about their offerings. Participants also have a chance to win exciting prizes. Register at jaspreet.kaur@ddppl.com, +91 9650196532.

Ramesh Arora, Managing Director at The Montcalm Luxury Hotels, has been conferred with the Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of hospitality by the NRI Welfare Society at the House of Commons, British Parliament in London on 30th September 2022. He also spoke at the Indo-UK Leadership Summit, which happened from 27-28 September 2022.

Turpal, a post reservation solution for travel professionals, has been launched in the India market. The first-of-its kind solution in the country, will help to manage their operation and increase their per-passenger profit.

Jagan Mohan Reddy, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh has declared 2023 as the year to visit Andhra Pradesh, and the campaign will be called ‘Visit Andhra Pradesh 2023’. The campaign kickstarted on World Tourism Day and a grand launch will be done in the first week of December.

Sharing his observations and concerns over the star categorisation criteria for hotels in India, G Kishan Reddy, Union Minister for tourism, culture & DoNER, said, “The current categorisation system doesn’t really differentiate between a 100+ room hotel and a 10-20 room hotel. It ruins the whole India experience for a traveller.” He also said that he’s in talk with the government to change criteria for hotel classifications.

With strong focus on strengthening ‘Wedding Tourism’ in India, the bespoke two-day Wedding Travel Show’22 witnessed participation of over 35 top wedding planners in the country and more than 30 hotels,  interacting & sealing deals right at the onset of wedding season this year. An exquisite table-top event, the show was held at Hyatt Residency Dehradun and saw the biggest names of the wedding and hospitality industries like Rajeev Jain, Chetan Vohra and Arif Patel, etc discussing revenge buying by the wedding clients and post covid challenges.

Air Vistara has been officially given the rights for the air connectivity between Singapore and Pune. Sudhir Mehta, the President of the Maratha Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA), tweeted “Great News. A big victory for Pune @airvistara has been formally awarded rights for Singapore – Pune. CEO Vinod Kannan shared that they are working out operational details, and schedule of flights will be announced soon.” Mehta had spoken to Vistara to increase international connectivity to Pune, and he along with Prashant Girbane, Director General of MCCIA wrote a letter to Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister for Civil Aviation Government of India regarding the same. He added in the tweet, “I thank Hon. Min @JM_Scindia ji, Hon. CM @mieknathshinde ji, Hon. DCM @Dev_Fadnavis ji, Guardian Min @ChDadaPatil ji and all others who have supported our demand, & are actively helping increase Air Connectivity for Pune. Looking forward to opening up of several other routes.”