Foreign tourist arrival in the Philippines continues to increase, with Indian arrivals in the archipelago witnessing a double-digit growth. According to an official statement by Department of Tourism (DOT), Philippines received 26,189 Indian tourists between January and February 2019, resulting in a 13.6 per cent growth. At least 1.49 million foreign tourists have visited the Philippines over the first two months of 2019. South Korea continued to be the top market for Philippines in the number of tourist arrivals, with a jump of 1.72 per cent from the same period in 2018.

To bring down flight cancellations and expand the airline’s international and domestic presence, SpiceJet has announced to induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease. The airline in a statement said, “SpiceJet will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease and has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to import the aircraft.Subject to regulatory approvals, the aircraft would begin joining SpiceJet fleet in the next ten days.” “The sudden reduction of aviation capacity has created a challenging environment in the sector. SpiceJet is committed to working closely with the government authorities to augment capacity and minimise passenger inconvenience,” said Ajay Singh, Chairman and MD, SpiceJet. Under dry lease, the lessor provides the airline with the aircraft but without any crew member, while under wet lease, the lessor provides the aircraft along with complete crew.

The recent grounding of aircraft of the Indian aviation industry has hit its total capacity, resulting in increased airfares and more inconvenience to the passengers, thereby affecting passenger traffic growth. According to Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency of India (ICRA), 98 of the total 670 aircraft in the industry have been grounded. These include 86 aircraft (75% of total fleet) of Jet Airways grounded due to non-payment of lease rentals to the aircraft lessors owing to its liquidity problems, and 12 aircraft (16% of total fleet) of SpiceJet grounded as required by a regulatory directive post technical issues reported with the flight control software of the Boeing 737 Max (B737 Max) aircraft. Elaborating further, Kinjal Shah, Vice President and Co-Head, Corporate Sector Ratings, ICRA, says, “These groundings have impacted ~15% of the total industry capacity. The consequent flight cancellations have resulted in ~30-40% increase in airfares over September 2018 to March 2019. However, India being a high price sensitive market, this has impacted the domestic passenger traffic growth from October 2018 onwards, with the Q3 FY2019 Y-o-Y growth reduced to 12.4%, as against the H1 FY2019 Y-o-Y growth at 19.8%. In fact, the domestic passenger traffic growth in January 2019 reached a 53-month low of 8.9% Y-o-Y, and February 2019 was further lower at 5.6% Y-o-Y. The passenger traffic growth for March 2019 is expected to be lower than that in February 2019. Moreover, these issues have raised concerns on passenger safety.”

In a recent report by JLL, Rajasthan is the leading state in brand signings and Goa leads in hotel openings in Q4 2018. International hotel operators dominated signings over domestic operators with the ratio of 57:43. Importantly, 25% of new signings are conversions of old hotels.

Justa Hotels & Resorts is all set to open a new property in Greater Kailash, New Delhi. The hotel would be a design hotel with a new concept, reveals Rohit Katyal, National Sales Head, Justa Hotels & Resorts. “The new hotel will have 30 rooms and it will be a design hotel. It would be on the lines of our property in Chennai, but not similar. It will be a modern property with an international feel to it. We will be opening the property in winter 2019.” The brand already has a property in the same vicinity. Last year. Justa Hotels & Resorts opened two properties. First was Justa Sajjangarh Spa Resort, Udaipur with 63 Keys close to Biodiversity Park. The other was to sign up Justa Atrio Resort in Delhi in close vicinity to Gurgaon and Aerocity. It was the first hotel for the brand on management contract in Delhi.

Dubai International Airport’s (DXB) runway will be closed for repair work from April 16 to May 30. Owing to this, Air India and Air India Express have announced a change in airport for some of their flights during the runway renovation period in Dubai International Airport. Some of the flights will be affected during the Dubai runway closure and operate out of the Sharjah International Airport. Affected flights are- AIR INDIA: Daily direct flights from Mumbai (AI 983) and Chennai (AI 906) to Dubai, daily flights in the route Visakhapatnam/Hyderabad/Dubai/Hyderabad/Visakhapatnam (AI 951/952) and the Bengaluru/ Goa/Dubai/Goa/Bengaluru flights on Thursday and Sunday (AI 993/994) AIR INDIA EXPRESS: (IX 813/814), (IX 383/384) — daily flights from and to Mangalore, IX 141/142 (Delhi/Dubai/Delhi on Sunday), and IX 435/434 (Kochi/Dubai/Kochi on Sunday). (Source: Gulf News)

The Association of Domestic Tour Operators (ADTOI) has recently opened its Northeast Chapter in Guwahati. Rajesh Arya, Vice President, ADTOI, says, “Recently we opened our 10th chapter in the Northeast. Further, we are likely to open two more chapters shortly after the elections- Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The timeline we are looking at is, July-August. Also, the convention is due this year, which we will conduct in August or September, most likely.

The Pride Group of Hotels, which manages 14 hotels and resorts across the country announces the inclusion of ‘Pride Resort and Convention Centre Rajkot’ as the 15th property under the Pride umbrella. Announcing the launch, SP Jain, Managing Director, Pride Hotels says, “We are extremely pleased to unveil Pride Resort and Convention Centre at Rajkot. This is also our third property in Gujarat. We are extremely upbeat on the growth prospects in the region having successfully managed our properties in Ahmedabad and Vadodara. The city of Rajkot has seen steady growth in inflow of travelers from India and across the world. Pride Resort Rajkot with its imposing ambience, banqueting and conferencing facilities and host of services will appeal to all segments.” Pride Resort and Convention Centre Rajkot offers 99 rooms that encompass 31 deluxe rooms, 31 Executive rooms, 31 Premium rooms and six suite rooms. The facilities include a specialty restaurant with global culinary choices, 24-hours room service, fully equipped business center, banquet and conference halls, four green party lawns and dedicated parking areas. The resort also offers settings for pre-wedding shoots, destination weddings, and pool parties.

Karnataka Tourism will be organising Karnataka International Travel Expo 2019 from August 25-27 in Bengaluru. The travel expo will feature around 350 international and domestic buyers interact, network and do business with exhibitors and stakeholders from the state. The event is supported by major travel trade and hospitality associations such as ADTOI, ATOAI, IATO, TAAI, SKAL, FICCI, Karnataka Tourism Forum, Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI), among others. Sharing details, Kumar Pushkar, MD, KSTDC and in charge Director, Karnataka Tourism said, “Karnataka International Travel Expo 2019 or as we call KITE in short, has been one of the long-standing demands of our private stakeholders in tourism. The need was to conduct a travel show for showcasing Karnataka on the international platform immediately. This year, we have planned to host the show on 25-27 August. The two-day show will mainly feature B2B roadshow and meetings between buyers and sellers, where 100 hosted international 250 hosted domestic buyers would be coming to Bengaluru to network, interact and do business with all our stakeholders. There will be post—fam tours for buyers as well. The show will help tourism achieve new heights in Karnataka and build relationships across the world.”   Karnataka International Travel Mart aims to create a platform that will offer the perfect environment for the like-minded people to interact and do business together. The show promises to provide an opportunity to tap into this market by bringing a forum of exceptional one-to-one business meetings.

According to a recent report by HVS ANAROCK, international operators are continuing to grow unabated, building larger format of hotels compared to majority of their domestic peers who continue to sign much smaller inventory hotels. In 2018, international hotel operators also signed more hotel keys than their domestic peers.