As part of Tourism New Zealand’s virtual road trip series, the region to be covered this month is Auckland. The webinar is scheduled for today, February 18, 2021, at 11 am and will be similar to what it did with Christchurch, West Coast, Nelson Tasman, Queenstown and Wellington wherein pre-recorded video content from the New Zealand product operators will be shared. Auckland is New Zealand’s most populous city and is a multi-cultural hub of food, music, arts and culture. To experience this road trip, contact Jaspreet Kaur at jaspreet.kaur@ddppl.com or 9650196532

The Jammu & Kashmir Tourism Department has restarted the online mode of registration of tourism units. Secretary, Tourism of the state, Sarmad Hafiz formally kick-started the online service by handing over the registration to two unitholders. He said the portal is very dynamic and user-friendly which will streamline the registration process by a great measure.  

Amritara Hotels & Resorts is hosting an informal gathering of top inbound tour operators in New Delhi on 19th February. “We have been known as an experiential brand. The idea is to thank our partner associates for standing by us and assure them of our support when business restarts”, said Ruchi Uberoi, Director, Amritara Hotels & Resorts.

New luxury cruise brand, Cordelia Cruises is all set to start its maiden sailing from 7th May, 2021 from Mumbai to various destinations including Goa, Kochi and Chennai with its first ship that has a capacity of 2,000 individuals. The ship was earlier owned by Royal Caribbean. Waterways Leisure Tourism had bought over the cruise brand Jalesh Cruises.

Etihad Airways and Gulf Air have signed a Strategic Commercial Cooperation Agreement (SCCA) including expansion of existing codeshare agreement to deepen their partnership between Abu Dhabi and Bahrain, strengthen both airlines’ network beyond the respective hubs. Also Schedule optimisation and connectivity improvements on Abu Dhabi – Bahrain route.

TAFI’s Western India Chapter organised a meet-up at Sula Wines, Nashik with about 45 members attended the event, led by Chapter Chairman Jitul Mehta, where they tasted wine and learnt about wine making and bottling from Sula experts. The team also discussed its agenda on the future of travel and the update on current scenario in terms of business.

Tourism Minister Prahlad Singh Patel in a written reply to a query in Lok Sabha said that no plan for setting up a vaccine certification programme for foreign tourists has been announced yet by the Government or the Ministry of Tourism. In response to another query, the minister asserted that no MOT project or scheme has been deferred or stalled due to COVID-19.

Karnataka’s luxury train Golden Chariot, which remained off the rails for over three years, is all set to run again on track since a complete overhaul, from 14th March. This will also be its inaugural run after the operations were taken over by IRCTC from the Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation (KSTDC). The second run would be on March 21.

With the pandemic highlighting the need for greater sustainability in the travel and tourism supply chain, TOFTigers has relaunched its internationally-recognised PUG and Footprint certification programme to help accommodation providers improve their businesses, now that travel is slowly resuming. It is a globally-recognised standard, to show their operators, OTAs, agents and to clients that their business is a world-class operation that is conscious of its responsibilities to people and the planet. TOFTigers is also running tutorials on understanding sustainability and how to build better itineraries, the fourth in the series is today at 2pm led by Julian Matthews, Founder and Chairman, TOFTigers. To join, sign up at https://www.toftigers.org/toftigers-event.

According to the ‘Asia Pacific Visitor Forecast 2021-2023’ report released by PATA, growth prospect for international visitors arrivals reveal that the Asia Pacific region is expected to return to 96% of the volume of foreign arrivals received in 2019. Of immediate concern, for all of the Asia Pacific destination sub-regions, 2021 is likely to be another difficult year for international travel movements.