The second day of FICCI Digital Travel, Hospitality & Innovation Summit 2018 focused on start-ups and what investors look for before they fund new businesses. Two sessions were held on investments, acquisitions and start-ups, followed by another start-up pitching session. The first panel discussion titled ‘The Future of consolidation, Merger & Acquisition & Foreign Investments in the Travel Industry’, was moderated by Alok Mittal, Founder & CEO , Indifi Technologies. The panel included Matt James,  Senior Manager, Corporate Strategy & Business Development, Amadeus Asia Pacific; Ankush Nijhawan, Co-Founder, TBO Group; Vikram Gupta, Founder & Managing Partner, IvyCap Venture; Tej Kapoor, Managing Director & Head, Fosun RZ Capital India; and Bhavik Vasa, Chief Growth Officer, EbixCash. The panelists discussed what it takes to attract investments and how they judge ideas to put money into them. The second panel, ‘Learning Through Peers : Case studies of  successful travel start-ups’, was moderated by Ashish Kumar, Co Chairman, FICCI Travel Technology Committee & Managing Partner, Agnitio Consulting. The panelists included Sakshi Vij, Founder & CEO, Myles; Anirudh Gupta, Co-Founder, Tripoto; Stephanie Strunk, Community Manager, Corporate Startegy, Amadeus Asia Pacific; Aishwarya Kachhal , Co-Chair, Harvard Business Alumni Angels India and Rajiv Malhotra, Founder, Hotel Launcher.

Tamarind Global has announced the launch of a wedding division at its Delhi office. After the exponential growth of its weddings and events division of Tamarind Global in Mumbai, the company now looks forward to tapping the flourishing wedding business in Delhi-NCR. Tamarind Global’s Delhi office already offers event management and MiCE services. The division will be led by Karan Malhotra, Head – Events and Weddings, Tamarind Global. Kunal Rai, VP, Events and Weddings, Tamarind Global, said, “This strategic expansion has always been on the cards for us. We are excited it is finally coming to fruition and we can have a dedicated presence catering to our already growing client base in Delhi. Delhi-NCR is prominent for the size and scale of its thriving wedding and events business, making the move of securing a strong presence in the region an inevitable progression. A team of 10 people has already successfully executed one wedding. This fully fledged team is geared to provide hospitality and logistics services as well as client servicing support for turnkey wedding and event solutions for Delhi and other North markets. The aim is to increase the team size to handle multiple weddings, and pitch for new weddings in the region.”  

Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) is conducting a 12-day guide training programme in Nagpur to train the local tourist guides. The inauguration of certified guide training programme was recently conducted at MTDC’s Regional office in Nagpur by Swati Kale, General Manager, MTDC in the presence of Arati Meshram, HOD-Government IHMCT College, Nagpur; Vilas Kale, Chairman-Cenin Travel & VED Council along with IITTM faculty. The aim is to make more than 900 guides available for tourists at various destinations across the state. MTDC has conducted guide training programme at various cities across Mumbai, Aurangabad, Nagpur and Sindhudurg. Programmes will be conducted in Pune, Nasik, Amravati, Solapur and Kolhapur in the year 2018-19. Madan Yerawar, State Tourism Minister, Government of Maharashtra, “I am delighted to announce that Nagpur and Vidarbha got certified local tourist guides for the first time and they are ready to offer services at various tourist destinations in the state to cater to the needs of tourists. They play a significant role in promoting the destination and thus, act as the representatives of the state and our country.”

Hyatt Hotels and Resorts aims to add approximately 1,400 more keys to its current portfolio of over 7,000 rooms by next year, reveals Harleen Mehta, Vice President, Sales Operations – India, Hyatt Hotels and Resorts. She says, “The Hyatt Place Hyderabad-Banjara Hills was launched in December 2017 that will be followed by our Grand Hyatt Kochi Bolgatty which is slated to open in April 2018. It will offer 265 luxurious guestrooms including 38 suites and four villas, and will mark our foray into the Kerala market. The two upcoming Hyatt Place hotels – Hyatt Place Bangalore Airport-Urbana is scheduled to open this year and Hyatt Place Jaipur is expected to open doors next year. These two hotels will add approximately 400 more rooms to our portfolio. Hyatt Regency McLeod Ganj that is set to open in 2018 in the Himalayas will establish us as the only licensed international hospitality chain allowed to build an eco-friendly hotel in the forests there. Apart from this, we are looking to expand in the market with our upcoming properties in Gurgaon and Agra.” Currently, Hyatt’s India portfolio includes 28 hotels across 17 key destinations in the country.

Preferred Hotels & Resorts recently kicked off the Asia Pacific series of its 50th anniversary celebrations at The Leela Palace New Delhi with a specially curated luncheon presentation at Le Cirque, hosted by the group’s CEO Lindsey Ueberroth and Executive Vice President Saurabh Rai. “As we commemorate the Preferred brand’s 50-year legacy of inspiring travel, we are more committed than ever to providing travellers with even more opportunities to embrace the spirit of independence and to making our pineapple logo synonymous with the ultimate hallmark in world-class hospitality,” said Ueberroth. “It is so exciting and humbling to see how far we have come as a company, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to celebrate this major milestone with our associates, partners and friends from around the world. “As the region’s largest independent hotel brand, Preferred Hotels & Resorts is entering its 16th year in India, and we are focused on continuing to build on the foundation of our company’s 50-year legacy of championing the independent hotel space. We are committed to forging ahead with more innovative and strategic consumer-focused initiatives to foster greater engagement in this market,” added Rai.

FICCI and KPMG India have jointly unveiled the knowledge paper ‘Expedition 3.0- Travel & Hospitality Gone Digital’ at the inaugural session of Digital Travel, Hospitality & Innovation Summit. The Knowledge Paper looks at unravelling the technology trends in travel and hospitality segment that will help better define the future of the industry, how digitalisation has impacted the evolution of this industry and what can be achieved by overall technology inclusion across stakeholders in the industry ecosystem. Some of the key highlights of the paper reveal that most travellers go online, and 67 per cent even use voice search for research; 71 per cent use smartphones for research and booking, and 82 per cent prefer digital boarding passes and e-tickets for convenience; 87 per cent use videos and photos posted by friends as part of their travel research while 83 per cent want to be connected while travelling; 85 per cent use price comparison websites to look for deals, and 58 per cent agree spending considerable time to find best price; 91 per cent use review sites; and 75 per cent choose hotels that do not charge for Wi-Fi.  

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) inaugurated the third edition of Digital Travel, Hospitality & Innovation Summit on March 21, 2018 at Federation House, New Delhi. The two-day summit is part of FICCI’s mandate to further enhance India’s digital drive in the travel and tourism industry. The summit saw in attendance the high flyers of travel and hospitality industry alongside the giants of travel technology from both India and abroad. The summit kick-started with an inaugural session where Ashish Kumar, Co-Chairman, FICCI Travel Technology Committee & Partner Agnitio Consulting, welcomed the delegates and attendees, followed by a special address by Dhruv Shringi, Chairman, FICCI Travel Technology Committee & CEO and Co-Founder, Yatra Online, where he stressed on the new innovations changing the face of the travel industry around the world. This was followed by keynote addresses by Jason Nash, Chief Storyteller, Travelport; Rajesh Magow, Co-Founder & CEO, MakeMyTrip and Pulkit Trivedi, Director Global Sales Organisation, Facebook India.

In an effort to expand its reach further in the market, Kolkata-based ‘A Travel Duet’ has moved its head office to Mumbai. Pritish Shah, Founder, A Travel Duet, who has also moved to Mumbai, says, “We had a branch office in Mumbai while being headquartered in Kolkata. But we soon realised that if we want to expand, Mumbai is the place to be, specially with the kind of products we offer. Mumbai is also a trendsetter in many ways. We also have a huge emphasis on having Preferred Partners such as Relaix & Chateau, Four Seasons, and Luxury Lodges of New Zealand and we are keen to expand that portfolio from about 10 brands right now to 100 this year. That is also one of the reasons why we wanted to move to Mumbai.” The Mumbai office will have a staff strength of about 15-20 people and will be located in Khar West. The company offers high-end, exclusive leisure holidays to couples. Speaking more about expansion plans for this year, Shah adds, “We want to make the company the best luxury travel brand for couples in India. At a later stage, we will also open an office in Delhi which will purely have a sales and operations team.”    

Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) this February were 10.53 lakh as compared to FTAs of 9.56 lakh in February 2017 and 8.49 lakh in February 2016, according to the latest data released by the Ministry of Tourism. The growth rate in FTAs in February 2018 over February 2017 was 10.1 per cent as compared to 12.7 per cent in February 2017 over February 2016. FTAs during the period January-February 2018 were 21.19 lakh with a growth of 9.2 per cent over the same period of previous year, as compared to the FTAs of 19.40 lakh with a growth of 14.6 per cent in January-February, 2017 over January-February, 2016. The percentage share of FTAs in India during February 2018 among the top 15 source countries was highest from Bangladesh (18.28 per cent) followed by USA (12.40 per cent), UK (11.75 per cent), Canada (4.36 per cent), Russian Federation (4.20 per cent), France (3.24 per cent), Malaysia (3.14 per cent), Germany (3.04 per cent), Sri Lanka (2.89 per cent), China (2.33 per cent), Japan (2.09 per cent), Thailand (1.92 per cent), Afghanistan (1.65 per cent) and Nepal (1.41 per cent).

The Fern Hotels & Resorts has added another hotel to its portfolio with the launch of KK Beacon Hotel in Rajkot. This is the eighth hotel which is managed by the company under the Beacon Hotels brand. Suhail Kannampilly, COO, The Fern Hotels & Resorts, said, “The 34-key hotel is the second property which the group is managing in Rajkot. We already have The Fern Residency. With this launch, we have further consolidated our position in Gujarat.” The other Beacon properties are located in Ajmer, Amritsar, Bhopal, Jodhpur, Mumbai and Udaipur. Beacon Hotels (brand owned by The Fern Hotels and Resorts) is positioned as ‘smart and efficient’ hotels in the economy segment. The new hotel comprises 34 air-conditioned rooms with amenities like internet facility, cable television, direct-dial telephone, multiple computer/mobile phone charging points, mini bar, hairdryer and multiple dining options. The hotel is located 3 km from the airport and in close proximity to the railway station and bus stand.