Philippine Airlines has launched four-times-weekly direct flights between Delhi and Manila, effective April 17, 2019. Tickets for the route can now be booked for as low as Rs 23,000 (Economy roundtrip base fare). The airline’s flight PR 727 will depart from Terminal 3 of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport at 1.45 am (all local times) and will arrive in Manila at 10:45 am the following day and the return flight PR 726 will depart at 20:45 pm and reach Delhi at 1:00 am. Airbus A321neo will be deployed for the new route from India to Philippines as this has better range than A320ceos/A321ceos and are much more efficient. The new service should help the Philippines attract more Indian visitors and lead to faster growth in what is now the largest unserved market for the Philippines. Manila-Delhi will be the fifth long haul narrowbody route for Philippine Airlines, along with Manila to Brisbane, Port Moresby, Sapporo and Sydney.

The Association of Domestic Tour Operators of India (ADTOI)  recently started a new chapter for the state of Maharashtra in order to garner more strength from the western India chapter. The new team will be led by Dharmendra Singh as the chapter Chairman. Yogesh Lele is the new Secretary General and Nilesh Sharma from Nasik is the Treasurer for the new chapter. PP Khanna, President, ADTOI, said, “We welcome the new team and can be rest assured that there will be some activity and engagement from the western region of India. We will look at opening more state-wise chapters in this region so that the association has a national presence.”

Air India Express will launch its first direct flight service from Surat to Sharjah on February 16. The flight will depart from Sharjah at 7:35 PM and arrive in Surat at 11:45 PM on Mondays and Saturdays. From Surat, the flight will depart at 12:30 AM with arrival into Sharjah at 02:15 AM on Tuesdays and Sundays. This service will be upgraded to four flights a week in the summer schedule. The airline will also expand services from Gulf to Kannur in Kerala in its summer schedule 2019, which shall commence on March 31, 2019. “Summer 2019 will witness additional capacity being deployed to strengthen the network between Gulf and Kerala. There will be two more flights on Mondays and Fridays,” the statement said. The airline will operate five flights on the Kozhikode-Riyadh sector in the Summer schedule’19 instead of the present four services per week. The additional flight will operate on Fridays at the existing timings. Operating with a fleet of 25 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft, the airline will have 653 weekly departures in the new schedule, as against 621 per week currently. The increase in operations will be achieved through capacity addition and by increasing aircraft utilisation, which is poised to go up from about 13.3 hours currently to 13.4 hours per day per aircraft in the summer schedule, the airline said. Source: PTI

The Global DMC Network by JTB group, which owns Europamundo Vacations, recently concluded a multi-city roadshow in India. A total of six DMCs under the JTB umbrella from Asia-Pacific, Europe, Japan and Korea participated at the JTB roadshow, namely—Tour East, Tumlare Destination Management, Kuoni Global Travel Services, Europamundo Vacaciones, JTB Global Marketing & Travel and LOTTE JTB. Aparna C Basumalik, Country Head, Europamundo Vacations, claimed that the roadshow was a great opportunity for JTB to show the solidarity of the vast product range that they have. “Not only are we doing the Asia Pacific, Europe and America region, but also Japan. Now that Europamundo is an integral part of JTB, it was great to participate in the roadshow. The roadshow began with introducing JTB as a group and all the companies under its umbrella, followed by the break-away sessions with every DMC, which gave each company an opportunity to showcase their product. This is unlike other roadshows where agents only listen to what the suppliers have. However, here the suppliers are listening to what the trade is looking for. It’s a two-way process and I am sure it’s going to be beneficial for both parties,” she added.

The Ministry of Tourism in collaboration with other central ministries is organising the fourth edition of ‘Bharat Parv’ showcasing the spirit of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat at Red Fort in Delhi from January 26-31, 2019. Inaugurated by Satyajeet Rajan, Director General, Ministry of Tourism, the five-day event is a part of Republic Day celebrations with an objective to generate a patriotic fervour, promote the rich cultural diversity of the country and ensure wider participation of the general public. Bharat Parv will be open for public from 12 noon to 10 PM every day. The entry will be free. However, identity proof is to be carried for entry to the event. The major highlights of this year are the replica of the Statue of Unity created by sculptor Ram Vanji Suttar and a Gandhi Gram in which 10 painting artists will create paintings on the theme of ‘Ideology of Mahatma Gandhi’. Organised by the Ministry of Tourism other highlights of this year are the display of Republic Day parade tableaux, performances by the Armed Forces Bands (Static as well as dynamic) and photo exhibition by the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP).

FITUR 2019 opens with a quest for specialisation and to promote key segments for the tourism industry. This year, the show contains a new B2B area focusing on MiCE tourism. This networking tool lays emphasis on incentives, meetings and business travel tourism and provides FITUR exhibitors the chance to establish contact with 100 highly-qualified international buyers. FITUR 2019 has become the global meeting point for tourism professionals and has once again become the leading trade fair for the incoming and outgoing markets of Latin America. The last edition brought together 251,000 participants, with over 6,800 business meetings. Madrid welcomed this international show with the launch of FITUR IS MUSIC, a new cultural event that was created within the framework of FITUR FESTIVALS.

Taiwan considers India as one of its focus markets, and from January to November 2018, it recorded 10.8 per cent growth in Indian arrivals to Taiwan, against 4.2 per cent growth in the previous year. Speaking at its recent roadshow in New Delhi, Trust HJ Lin, Director, Taiwan Tourism Bureau, said, “We feel great that we have double-digit growth from India and for the 2019-2020, we have a new strategy which is called ‘2 20:20’. In this campaign, the ‘2’ means that we focus on the top 2 per cent of higher income travellers who have the purchasing power to travel overseas. Then the first ‘20’ represents our aim to cooperate with top 20 tour operators in India, while the second ‘20’ in the campaign means that we want to reach 20 per cent growth by the year 2020.”

India once again earned the distinction of being the fastest growing inbound market for Australia. Arrivals for the year-ended November 2018 stood at 352,500 – a growth of 18 per cent over the previous year. During October 2017 to September 2018, Indian tourists spent $ 1.6 billion on their Australia trip, a growth of 10 per cent over the previous year. India is now on track to achieve fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth in arrivals, as well as spend. Over the past few months, TA executed few marketing activities to raise Australia’s appeal and attractiveness among the Indian high value travellers: launch of #UnDiscover Australia campaign on television and digital media, showcasing unusual and unfamiliar experiences that Australia has to offer; partnership with ESPN cricinfo with television presenter and model, Shibani Dandekar, visiting five Australian states, and interacting with five Australian cricketing talents, showcased their hometowns and Australia as a holiday destination to their Indian fans and followers through a series of 22 destination videos; leveraged the popularity of our Friend of Australia — Parineeti Chopra and Harsha Bhogle, and Indian cricketer Shikhar Dhawan, who showcased why there’s truly nothing like Australia among their followers; launched the fifth iteration of the Airline Marketplace campaign that delivered over 16,400 bookings in just 3 weeks; Strengthened relationship with the travel industry through the launch of the Premier Aussie Specialist Program, online webinars and face-to-face training initiatives.

EbixCash has announced that it has signed agreements to acquire the assets of Delhi-based Pearl International Tour & Travels and Mumbai-based Lawson Travels & Tours. The two companies cumulatively conduct a Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of approximately $140 million. Both these companies will be integrated into EbixCash’s Via travel Division. The acquisition of the assets of the two companies will increase EbixCash’s travel expanse across its two travels brands Via & Mercury, to a total GMV of $ 1.16 Billion. Besides increasing EbixCash’s travel foothold by 10,000 agents, it will also add 300 corporate clients and key B2C portals like www.sastiticket.com to the EbixCash travel spectrum of products and services. Ebix believes that the two acquisitions, once fully integrated into its Via division will generate operating margins of 30 per cent or more, over the next few months. Robin Raina, Chairman, President and CEO, Ebix, said, “We have set up a very simple goal for ourselves in 2019 as far as the travel industry goes. We want to be India’s most profitable travel company besides being a clear No 2 in terms of top line by the end of 2019. With GMV of approximately 8,000 crores ($ 1.16 billion) including Pearl and Lawson at present, we are clearly getting very close to that goal. We are in the unique position of having a rich portfolio of other services like travel insurance, health insurance, foreign exchange, outward remittances, visa services etc., that perfectly complement our travel portfolio leading to extensive cross selling opportunities for us and a one-stop service experience for our B2B and B2C travel clients across the globe.”

SpiceJet, which is all set to start its international operations, will reportedly start flying to London from Delhi and Amritsar starting this summer. According to reports, the airline will be operating its wide-body A330 planes on these long-haul routes, which would range between 6-12 hours in duration. It is believed that the Amritsar-London Heathrow flight may commence from March-end, the services to Gatwick are expected from May. Currently, SpiceJet has a fleet of 45 Boeing 737s and 737 Max planes. The airline flies to eight international destinations, which are of up to 4-hour duration.