TAAI Office bearers were recently invited to visit Kunming, Yunnan province, in China and had meetings with top Chinese government officials. “Yunnan province is an excellent location to have TAAI Convention. The Managing Committee will be meeting soon to discuss various offers available with TAAI and decide on the next convention venue soon. The Managing Committee is keen to announce the Convention destination during May/June 2017. The Visit to Kunming yielded several surprises with the outstanding location that Kunming is and with the top quality venues,” said Bettaiah Lokesh, Hon. Secretary General, TAAI, in an official statement. The TAAI Managing Committee had its 14th Managing Committee meeting on board the Royal Caribbean vessel, Mariner of the Seas. The Managing Committee reviewed the approval of TAAI’s application to Income Tax Authorities to grant Section 80G.”The Managing Committee committed will go all out to offer scholarships to meritorious students who are pursuing their education in Travel; Tourism & Hospitality Industry. TAAI’s 80G will also support CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) participation. Several Members of the Managing Committee offered their contributions to commence this most important task of offering scholarships,” Bettaiah said.

India has been participating at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) since its inception 24 years ago and this year is no different. Speaking at a media briefing held at ATM 2017, HE Vipul, Consul General of India, Dubai said, “We have 54 participants in total from India who are here at ATM including goverment agencies like IRCTC, ITDC, as well as a number of private tour operators. Two state governments Jammu & Kashmir and Kerala have put up stalls while officials from Madhya Pradesh are also participating. The theme this year is yoga and wellness and Dubai particularly has embraced yoga in a big way. There has been a consistent and positive growth from this region to India over the last 3 years with 2016 having registered an overall growth of around 17 per cent over the previous year. India is today the biggest source of tourist arrivals in UAE with the numbers increasing every year and with the simplification in e-Tourist Visa and introduction of e-business and e-medical visa, we expect more tourists to travel to India.” Gyan Bhushan, Economic Advisor, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, highlighted the country’s growing tourism figures, and said, “India registered a growth of 10.6 per cent in 2016, which is higher than the global average of about 4.3 per cent. It is an all round destination and offers diversity throughout the year since we have the Himalayas, the desert, beaches, plains and much more. Our focus on health & medical tourism, wellness, cruise tourism, among others has grown as well since these are booming sectors.” Saket Saran, Country Head, Air India, reiterated the fact that traffic has been strong between Dubai and India and said, “The …

Tourism Ireland in association with Etihad Airways hosted top 10 travel agents from across India to Ireland’s largest tourism trade fair, Meet the Buyer and Mietheal 2017, which was organized by Tourism Ireland. Huzan Fraser Motivala, India Representative, Tourism Ireland who accompanied the group for this key trade fair said “India is an important developing market for Tourism Ireland and one that we are committed to growing. We have been seeing a steady growth of 12-15 % in Indian visitor arrival numbers to the island of Ireland. “The Irish Visa Applications YTD 16 have also seen a 33% increase in visa applications compared to the same period last year. Factors in our favour include increased air access to Ireland, particularly by Etihad Airways and Emirates via the Middle East. Qatar Airways will be launching an additional flight starting June 2017, which we believe will further aid connectivity.  We hope that this FAM trip will help the travel trade to create customized itineraries to promote Ireland to their clients. Going forward, we will look to organize more such activities through 2017 and are confident of witnessing a growth in the number of Indian visitors to Ireland.” The workshop brought together over 310 overseas buyers and 455 Irish tourism businesses for three days of negotiating business deals. There were approximately 12,000 face to face meetings organised over the duration of this event – allowing international and Irish operators to meet and agree business for the 2017-2018 seasons. India is one key emerging market for Ireland and we see great potential from this region. In the last few years there has been greater interest and numbers being generated from the India as more …

Amadeus has partnered with Wingify to offer Online Travel Agents (OTAs) customers access to Visual Website Optimiser (VWO), the company’s A/B testing and conversion optimisation platform. The platform helps customers analyse how consumers interact with their website and make data-driven decisions. This will help improve conversion rates at every touch point within their travel website and ultimately optimise the look-to-book ratio, a crucial part in securing more bookings through their site. Today, online travel is bigger than ever, with 148.3 million travel bookings made over the Internet each year.  India-based Wingify is one of the world’s top three software providers that specialise in A/B testing and conversion optimisation. A/B testing is a process that compares two versions of a webpage to determine which one performs better for a defined conversion goal. VWO, Wingify’s A/B testing and conversion optimisation platform, has been used in various use cases, delivering strong results to organisations across diverse industries including Virgin Holidays, KPMG, Samsung and Toyota. Sparsh Gupta, CTO of VWO, said, “Website testing and optimisation can be a significant differentiator for companies in highly competitive markets, such as the travel industry in Asia Pacific. An A/B testing and optimisation programme helps OTAs get a better understanding of how consumers engage with their websites, so businesses can pinpoint where customers are dropping off along the online purchasing journey. By using the insights and proven statistical results to address the leaks and improve their websites, businesses can see returns in the form of higher conversion rates and increased revenue.” Sebastien Gibergues, Global Head of Online Travel at Amadeus, said, “We are committed to adding greater business value for our OTA customers, by equipping them with the …

The 11th edition of GITB will be held from April 22-24, 2018, at Jaipur, announced Jyotsna Suri, Chairperson, Tourism Committee, FICCI. “GITB has become the biggest show for inbound tourism in India and the most exclusive one that promotes all segments of tourism in the country. It has grown over the last 10 years from 260 buyers to 275 buyers, from 3000 to 10,800 meetings over the last few years. It has played a vital role in the influx of foreign tourists to India and Rajasthan. Since it is held in Jaipur, it gives maximum exposure to the state of Rajasthan. We hope that the foreign buyers attending the show become our ambassadors and bring more and more tourists to the country.”

The Great Indian Travel Bazaar opened with 275 foreign buyers and 288 exhibitors at The Lalit Jaipur on April 23. The inbound show committed to boost tourism in India and in Rajasthan was inaugurated by Suman Billa, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, and Krishnendra Kaur, Tourism, Art and Culture Minister, Government of Rajasthan, Jyotsna Suri, Chairperson, Tourism Committee FICCI, Nihal Chand Goel, Additional Chief Secretary (Tourism, Art & Culture), Bhim Singh, President, Federation of Hospitality and Tourism of Rajasthan, and Rahul Chakravarty, Senior Director and Head-Tourism, FICCI. Addressing the show, Billa said, India is truly on a growth path. We have grown at a rapid pace of 11 per cent in 2016 and since January to date we have grown at a staggering rate of 16 per cent, there is nothing in the market to suggest that it will slow down. Domestic tourism forms a key part of Indian tourism. Last year we had 1.7 billion domestic travellers and we are growing at 8-9 per cent Y-o-Y. Admittedly we are growing on a narrow base but the potential of tourism in India is immense. All of you here are at the right place to lay the seeds for what will become a great engagement for a market that has huge potential. He also informed that accordingly to the World Economic Forum report, India improved its tourism competitiveness by 25 places over three years and tourism is the government’s main agenda.

Israel has witnessed a positive growth of 49 per cent in Indian arrivals from January to March 2017 vis-à-vis the same period in 2015. More than 8,300 Indians have already visited Israel in the first three months of 2017 as per statistics released by Israel Ministry of Tourism (IMOT). Speaking about this growth, Hassan Madah, Director, Israel Ministry of Tourism India office, said, “India is one of the world’s fastest-growing outbound tourism markets and an important emerging market for us. Keeping this in mind, we have increased our investments heavily in India. We are certain that our continued efforts in targeting the Indian holiday planners through our specially designed advertising campaign for India, ‘Begin your journey to Israel now’ will yield even better results by the year end.” The statistics also revealed almost 93 per cent growth in Indian arrivals to Israel merely in the month of March 2017 as compared to the same time in 2015. Madah adds, “We have seen a steady growth in tourist arrivals from India over the years and are confident that this trend will continue. Currently, El Al flies nonstop between India and Israel while Air India has also announced that they will begin operations on the New Delhi-Tel Aviv route in 2017. Increased air connectivity will surely act as an added impetus for more Indians to visit Israel for a holiday.”

Over 2,600 exhibitors and an expected 30,000 visitors will participate at the 24th Arabian Travel Market (ATM) 2017, the largest travel trade event in the Middle East taking place at Dubai World Trade Centre from April 24-27. Over 150 countries are participating, with more than 100 new exhibitors set to make their ATM debut. New to ATM 2017, ILTM Arabia will play host to one-on-one, pre-scheduled appointments, between suppliers of luxury products and destinations from around the world to an audience of high net-worth individuals. Meanwhile marketing to experiential travellers will be an integral part of the ATM Travel Tech seminar programme. The UNWTO & ATM Ministerial Forum returns, uniting more than 20 ministers with industry leaders in the MENA region to consider methods of capitalising on tourism growth and building a sustainable ecosystem for the sector to unlock its potential within each country’s national agenda.

Passengers carried by Indian domestic airlines during Jan-March 2017 were 272.79 lakhs as against 230.03 lakhs during the corresponding period of 2016 thereby registering a growth of 18.59 per cent, informs the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). SpiceJet recorded the highest passenger load factor (PLF) during March 2017 at 91.4 per cent followed by GoAir at 84.8 per cent and IndiGo at 81.6 per cent. According to the data released by DGCA, domestic air passenger traffic passenger load factor in the month of Mar 2017 has declined slightly when compared to previous month, due to lean period. IndiGo recorded the highest punctuality rate at 88 per cent at four major airports of Bangalore, New Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai followed by SpiceJet (85.7), Vistara (85.1), Go Air (81.8), Jet Airways+JetLite (80.7) and Air India (79.7).

With a fleet of about 50 aircraft globally, Oman Air is growing by 21-22 per cent Year-on-Year. “In India we have just increased our capacity by 6000 seats which includes for metropolis and Calicut in Kerala. And in Goa, the moment we see we are ready, the connectivity will be tweaked. We have a split schedule in Goa as some flights leave at night while others leave early morning,” says Ihab A Sorial, Global Senior Vice President, International Sales, Oman Air. Very soon, in about a month’s time, Oman Air will be opening up in Manchester too. Only last month they made their presence felt at Nairobi in Kenya. Sorial was in Goa to attend a conference which Oman Air conducts every quarter for India. This conference is to discuss the business strategy and how to maximise the revenue, sales and stress on the focus points. “India is very big for Oman Air and it is the third biggest point of sale in terms of revenue,” added Sorial. On a question why they not fly for USA and Australia, Mr Sorial felt that the strategy is to focus on what they have. “We do not want to stretch ourselves thinly on all the points. The Board and the senior management is of the view that to consolidate first on what we have. Then after that may be will look at other sectors. Our business is very competitive and margin of profit is very limited. We have to do careful expenditure,” said Sorial.