At the recently concluded PATA Annual Summit & Board Meeting held at Cebu, Philippines, Yogendra Tripathi, Tourism Secretary, Government of India, Ravneet Kaur, Chairman & Managing Director, ITDC and Jatinder Taneja, Managing Director, Travel Spirit International, were appointed to the PATA Board. Yogendra Tripathi & Ravneet Kaur have also been appointed to the Government/Destination Committee of PATA. Vikram Madhok is already been a member of the Board since 2018. Thomas Thottathil, Vice President Cox & Kings India and SanJeet, Director DDP Publications are members of the board as Industry Council Proxy. The PATA Industry Council now has the five members from India including • Vikram Madhok, MD Abercrombie & Kent India • Jatinder Taneja, MD, Travel Spirit International Pvt Ltd • SanJeet, Director DDP Publications Pvt Ltd • Thomas C Thottathil, Vice President Cox & Kings Ltd. • Riyaz U.C, MD Spiceland Holidays

Kuwaiti airline, Jazeera Airways will start flying from Ahmedabad to Bodrum, Turkey via Kuwait starting June 20. The inaugural flight will depart from Ahmedabad every Thursday at 5:35 am (IST) and will return to Ahmedabad every Monday. Economy class on the flight will cost around 18,700 INR.

The late night flights from Bengaluru to Kochi and Ahmedabad on Air India have been a great success and the airline is now all set to start this service to New Delhi. This service will begin from June 5 and will take-off from Bengaluru at 11 pm and will reach Delhi at 1:30 am, the next day. The fare of Red Eye flight will be cheaper than the day-flights and is expected to attract lot of flyers. (Source: New Indian Express)

Hyatt Hotels Corporation has announced that 21 new luxury hotels and resorts are planned to open in Asia Pacific by the end of 2020. This expansion is comprised of seven Park Hyatt branded properties, six hotels each under the Grand Hyatt and Andaz brands and two Alila branded resorts, boosting Hyatt’s luxury portfolio in the region by more than 25%. Additionally, the Grand Hyatt brand continues its steady growth momentum with new openings in emerging cities in China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Planned openings in 2019 are- • Andaz Dubai The Palm in the United Arab Emirates • Andaz Gangnam Seoul in South Korea • Grand Hyatt Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia • Grand Hyatt Gurgaon in India • Grand Hyatt Hefei in China • Park Hyatt Auckland in New Zealand • Park Hyatt Doha in Qatar • Park Hyatt Jakarta in Indonesia • Park Hyatt Kyoto in Japan • Park Hyatt Shenzhen in China

SpiceJet will launch 20 new domestic flights from next week, mainly focusing on its Mumbai base. New services include flights to Tirupati, Vijaywada and Thiruvananthapuram from Mumbai and will be launched between May 26 and May 30. The airline has stepped into the slots vacated by Jet airways for all the latest launches out of Mumbai and so the flights will depart from Terminal 2 of the airport. The tickets are also available to purchase. SpiceJet in a statement said that out of 20 flights, 18 of them are connecting Mumbai with cities like Goa, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Kanpur, Patna with additional frequencies. All new flights will be operated daily on Boeing 737-NG aircraft expect the Mumbai-Kolkata flight, which will not be operational on Wednesday and Sunday.

Indian arrivals in The Netherlands grew by 22 per cent during Jan-Feb 2019 in comparison to the same period, last year. This year, 22,000 Indians visited the country as against 18,000 Indian arrivals in The Netherlands, in 2018.

Ajay K Bakaya, Managing Director, Sarovar Hotels and Resorts, in an exclusive conversation with Tourism Breaking News discloses the group’s robust plans for the India and Africa market. He says, “We chose Africa, besides India because we understand the continent more than our competition does and the potential is colossal. We would love to go to the Middle East; we’ve had very little success there but now we are working harder than before. In 2019, we will be opening close to 1000 rooms in India and Africa. The properties that will open this year are in – Rajahmundry, Dar Es Salaam, Katra, Dehradun, Dahisar, Jammu, Goa, Dibrugarh, Morbi, Junagadh, Dalhousie, Auxum (Ethiopia), Bodh Gaya and Jalandhar.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is all set fly from Bengaluru to Amsterdam, starting October 28, 2019. The launch of this new flight comes in line with the suspension of Jet Airways’ service to the route. The frequency of the flight will be thrice a week on Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with a configuration of 30 seats in business class, 45 seats in the economy comfort class and 219 seats in economy. It was in 2017 that Jet Airways made Amsterdam its hub and launched its flight on the route in cooperation with Air France-KLM and the latter’s US partner, Delta Air Lines. KLM has reportedly said that Jet’s suspension of international flights in April, the carrier has decided to increase its capacity to India in order to be able to offer “alternatives to our customers and to continue to meet market demand.

Domestic passengers will account for around 63 per cent of the total growth by 2037, or 228 million additional passengers, as per a recent ‘Project Rupee Raftaar’ report by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Foreign passengers will contribute less to overall growth, representing 37 per cent of the total market growth, equal to 131 million additional passengers. Of the 6.1 per cent average annual growth in Indian air passenger demand over the next 20 years, improvements in living standards (via higher incomes) are expected to contribute the major share, at 5.1 percentage points. Favourable population and demographic factors are forecast to contribute 0.6 percentage points to annual growth. Other factors, mainly future technological gains, will contribute 0.8 percentage points per year.

FCM Travel Solutions and KPMG’s recent whitepaper titled ‘The Digi-Smart Indian Business Traveller’ forecasts that amongst Asian business travellers, face-to-face interactions have become the least-popular option, except for hotel check-ins. They value the transparency of choice and information that autonomous digital channels, such as AI, can provide. Similarly, Indian business travellers are shifting to digital, with only 17 per cent of them preferring face-to-face interactions for process like flight check-ins. When choosing flights, convenient schedules and direct flights were consistently amongst the top-three priorities across all business travellers. Travel managers are aware of this and choose travel providers based on their ability to provide convenience and ease travellers’ journeys. Some these functions can be taken over by AI, which can process large about of data faster, and hence increase the efficiency and reduce cost.