According to Air Travel Forecast by Bain & Company, travel projections between Europe and Asia have taken a significant hit, dropping from 70 per cent to 56 per cent of 2019 levels, reflecting both the impact of China’s lockdowns and soaring operation costs due to bans on flights over Russian airspace.

Hotel Association of India (HAI) has submitted a recommendation to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, highlighting the steep rise in insurance premiums for hotel properties in the last few years. HAI has urged the government to restore the insurance premium rates for hotel properties to the level of FY 2018-19. MP Bezbaruah, Secretary-General, HAI said, “The current very high insurance premium rates as compared to pre-FY 2018-19 is a major disincentive.”

Ministry of Tourism has kicked off its one-month long virtual roadshow, titled Reconnect 2022, starting with Oman. At the same time, IATO has written to the Prime Minister to help the tourism industry for revival of inbound tourism. In the letter, Rajiv Mehra, President, IATO has suggested that MOT should participate in all major international travel marts/fairs along with industry stake holders and conduct Physical B2B meeting during structured roadshows along with Indiatourism offices and embassies.

The Hotel & Restaurant Association of Odisha (HRAO) conducted its 33rd Annual General Meeting-cum-Election FY 2023-25 recently and elected their Office Bearers. JK Mohanty has been named the Lifetime Chairman of the association.Dr. Srinibash Subudhi, Bhubaneswar was elected as Working President. Millind Gupta Bhubaneswar was elected as Secretary General, while Sujit Kumar Mohapatra was selected as Treasurer, Prasant Kumar Jena was chosen as the Joint Treasurer. HRAO started in the year 1984 with six members and today has 286 members across the State.

Rohan Khaunte, Tourism Minister, Goa, has said that online approval and registration services for the tourism industry will be rolled out within a week. Speaking at a Travel and Tourist Association of Goa (TTAG) event, he said that the state needs to focus on a long-term strategy to attract high spending tourists.

According to preliminary data from STR, for three consecutive days in April –16-18 April, 2022, India’s hotel industry crossed pre-pandemic comparables in occupancy and average daily rate (ADR). It was the first time that both occupancy and ADR were above 2019 levels in India. When using a running 7-day average, occupancy and ADR have been above 90% of pre-pandemic comparables since late-March. On Monday, 18 April, India recorded its highest ADR index of the year at 106% of the 2019 comparable.

VFS Global is organising a webinar for the travel trade on Thursday 28 April from 11am-12pm IST. The online session will give updates on VFS Global’s operations, latest visa guidelines for the summer travel season and all the convenient services on offer. Register for this informative webinar on https://event.webinarjam.com/register/394/xyo1rbr1 and hear senior executives from VFS Global speak about their services, solutions and what’s new.

Indian travellers are more likely to pick sustainable travel alternatives that cause the least damage to the environment, revealed a recent report by booking.com. According to the report, 91% of Indian travellers desire to travel sustainably over the next 12 months. Further, 88% of the travellers also expressed that they were much more likely to pick a sustainable travel option when it was presented to them, even if they weren’t actively looking for one.

Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs & Food & Public Distribution and Textiles, recently reviewed the progress of the India International Convention & Expo Centre (IICC) in Dwarka, Delhi. He also asked officials to expedite the works for completion of the Phase-1 of the project. “IICC will serve as a major economic driver helping India capture a larger share of global meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions market,” said Goyal.

After Thailand eased entry rules for international travellers, including pre-arrival and arrival RT-PCR tests, KD Singh, Founder & President, TravelBullz, said, “We are very excited to receive the news from the government of Thailand, lifting all restrictions related to mandatory RTPCR & other requirements before or after arrival in Thailand. We have already seen tremendous response from agents during April but with restrictions going away from 1st of May , the summer season is saved. We already have some operators confirming series and we expect a multi fold increase in travellers in the next two months. To capture the upbeat mood of travellers TravelBullz in association with Tourism Authority of Thailand has launched special campaign Welcome Back to Thailand focusing on KIDS GO FREE , Honeymoon Specials , WORKATIONS & Party in Thailand. Here’s welcoming everyone to the land of smiles.”