The Ministry of Tourism (MOT) will be organising Bharat Parv from January 26-31, 2020. Now, an annual affair, the ‘Parv’ will showcase the cuisine and culture of different states of India. Rupinder Brar, Additional Director General (ADG), Tourism, said, “We are extremely excited about the upcoming Bharat Parv. The event gets a lot of footfall and attraction from people across the country. We are looking forward to an exuberant response this year, just like the previous ones and we are prepared to showcase the food, arts, culture and also the tableaus that will come from the Republic Day parade.”  

Chennai Airport will be the first airport in India to house five screens of PVR Cinemas. The screens will be located in the multi-level car parking complex, which is under construction. The facility is being built at a cost of ₹250 crore by the Olympia Group, and will not only have a theatre but also many options for food and beverage. The five screens would have roughly over 1,000 seats. According to officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the multi-level parking would be completed and thrown open to the public by October. It has been revealed that the facility will be constructed in such a way that it will be convenient for passengers to park their cars, shop and watch a film. The facility is coming up on either side of the Chennai Metro Rail station at a height of 27 metres. The parking facility can accommodate 2,000 cars. The theatre will be built by Olympia Group for a budget of 250 crore rupees.

The Incredible India Tourist Facilitator Certification (IITFC), which was rolled out on January 1, 2020, already has 3200 enrolments, reveals Rupinder Brar, Additional Director General (ADG), Ministry of Tourism (MOT), Government of India. She said, “The programme started off really well and there has already been a growing interest of people in joining the programme. Currently, there are about 3200 people who have enrolled for the programme.”

In a bid to attract the Indian outbound travellers, Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) has launched its brand new ‘Your Japan 2020’ campaign, aimed at offering special experiences and never-before kind of offers to Indian visitors. Through the campaign ‘Your Japan 2020’, JNTO wants to invite visitors globally to experience Japan their way through events. This high magnitude campaign began on 1st January and will extend till end of this year; that is 31st December 2020. JNTO, through its premeditated partnership is allowing travellers on an economical trip to Japan as both, domestic and international airlines are handing out phenomenal discounts. Yusuke Yamamoto, Executive Director, JNTO said, “The year 2020 is highly crucial for Japan as all eyes would be on our destination for hosting the World Olympic Games. In order to make every individual’s visit to our destination enthralling, JNTO has made conscious efforts in planning. We have categorically focused on each areas of traveler’s interest and spread activities all around the year starting from 1st January to 31st December 2020. We are extremely thrilled to host each one of you in Japan and are certain that your visit would be something, which you would never forget. Through our new campaign “Your Japan 2020”, we would like to invite more and more Indian to come and explore Japan to the fullest the way you want it to be.” Japan witnessed 11,700 Indian tourist arrivals in December, posting 13.9% SPLY hike. Moreover, 175,900 Indians visited Japan from Jan-Dec’19, posting a phenomenal 14.2% year-on-year hike. In addition, 2020 also marks the year of Olympic and Paralympic Games in Japan, and hence the country is set to welcome visitors from across the …

Sanjay Kumar, who recently stepped down as COO of Air Asia India, will now be joining as Chief Strategy & Revenue Officer, IndiGo Airlines. Kumar was previously employed with IndiGo Airlines as Chief Commercial Officer till 2018, before his stint with Air Asia. With over 25 years of experience, Kumar has even worked with SpiceJet and erstwhile Sahara Airlines as well. The news has been confirmed by Kumar, who will reportedly be joining IndiGo very soon.

Lufthansa Group has chosen Google Cloud as a strategic partner to further improve its operational performance and minimise the impact of irregularities on its passengers. The idea is to build a platform that will suggest scenarios to return to a stable flight plan in the event of an irregularity so that passengers still arrive at their destinations as punctually and comfortably as possible. This will be done by merging data from various processes that are relevant for stable operations (for example aircraft replacement and maintenance as well as crew scheduling). “By combining Google Cloud’s technology with Lufthansa Group’s operational expertise, we are driving the digitisation of our operation even further. This will enable us to identify possible flight irregularities even earlier and implement countermeasures at an early stage,” said Detlef Kayser, Member of the Executive Board of the Lufthansa Group. For example, flights are sometimes delayed due to weather conditions such as snowfall and passengers might miss their connecting flights. In the future, it will be possible to offer faster rebooking possibilities across all four hubs for Lufthansa Group passengers thanks to systems based on artificial intelligence. “Through this collaboration, we have a significant opportunity to revolutionize the future of airline operations,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO for Google Cloud. “We’re bringing the best of Lufthansa Group and Google Cloud together to solve airlines’ biggest challenges and positively impact the travel experience of the more than 145 million passengers that fly annually with them.” A joint team of operations experts, developers and engineers from the Lufthansa Group and software engineers from Google Cloud will be developing and testing the appropriate platform. The test launch will take place in Zurich with SWISS.

The theme of the Indian delegation at FITUR will be ‘Finding the Incredible You’, revealed Rupinder Brar, Additional Director General, Tourism. The delegation will be led by Yogendra Tripathi, Secretary, Tourism. To be held from January 22-26, 2020, FITUR is an important market for India. Speaking about the same, Brar said, “Spain is an important market and is itself one of the top countries visited by Indians. So, these are occasions also for us to learn best practices of other counties that come into these events. We look forward to that. As far as showcasing India is concerned, the theme remains ‘Finding the Incredible You’. The idea behind the campaign is that there is so much within us that is not exposed and India is a place that allows you to visit the places and also discover yourself. I am sure that there is so much of spirituality and mysticism attached to India, along with the modernity that is a part of our lives now, we have a unique quality as a country. We are lapping up all the modern technologies, being a cutting edge nation and yet we are carrying along with it all our traditions that are coming to us from thousands of years. That is the USP of our country, and we are looking forward to showcasing that in FITUR also. The Indian delegation is being led by Secretary, Tourism, and he shall be accompanied by the officers of the departments, and the officers that are in Europe will also be part of the delegation.”

Asia Pacific remains solidly on the path to welcome close to one billion international visitor arrivals (IVAs) over the next five years. This is one of the key predictions from the Executive Summary of the Asia Pacific Visitor Forecasts 2020-2024, released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA). Covering the years 2019 to 2024 and 39 destinations within the region, these forecasts anticipate a volume of over 971 million international visitor arrivals into Asia Pacific, by 2024. The strong increase in IVAs has been driven by the average annual growth rate (AAGR) of 5.3% between 2014 and 2019, and that momentum is expected to increase even further over the next five years, to average 6.3% per annum between 2019 and 2024. This will result in an acceleration of more than 256 million additional IVAs into the region between 2019 and 2024, a significant increase over the additional volume of 162 million added between 2014 and 2019.

The Penang Convention & Exhibition Bureau (PCEB) launched its annual roadshow to India in Mumbai as part of the Penang Roadshow to India 2020. The objective is promoting Penang as the preferred destination for corporate and association meetings, conferences, and incentives, and leisure travel. Capitalising on Penang’s rising popularity in India, the Penang Roadshow to India will host, in each of the four cities, a B2B engagement session with participating Business Events and leisure travel buyers from India. Led by Hon. Yeoh Soon Hin, Penang State Minister for Tourism, Arts, Culture and Heritage, and Ashwin Gunasekeran, Chief Executive Officer of PCEB, the roadshow is supported by a Penang delegation of 14 partners, including hotels, destination management companies, attractions, professional conference organisers and event experts. Also accompanying the Penang delegation is Hon. Satees Muniandy, Penang State Assemblyman for Bagan Dalam. Also joining the roadshow is PCEB’s strategic airline partner, Malaysia Airlines. PCEB is also launching the Penang Specialist Programme designed for the Indian market. The Programme will equip select outbound travel, MICE, wedding and filming agencies with first-hand knowledge of Penang through a full day workshop conducted in each city concurrently with the B2B engagement session. Among the incentives that the Penang Specialists can qualify for are special incentive for group sales of 100 pax and above, famil opportunities to Penang, opportunities to attend PCEB’s training and networking programme in Penang and India, and much more. The certification of the Penang Specialist Programme is valid for three years upon which qualifying members will be invited for recertification. The workshop is conducted by Ms. Katharine Chua, the Managing Director of Penang’s Tropical Spice Garden. “The number of Indian travellers to Penang has …

Elaborating on their promotional plans this year, Amaresh Tiwari, Vice Chairman, ICPB said, “This year we are planning our roadshows just before IMEX and then we will be participating there. We will be taking the roadshows to London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and coming back to Frankfurt. We are also planning four domestic roadshows, the details for the same will be made available soon.