Category Archives: Agents

Corporate travel in India is making a comeback with 100% recovery across Pharma, Healthcare, Real Estate and Biotech sectors on MakeMyTrip. There is significant recovery in sectors including Manufacturing, Defense & Space, Logistics as well as utilities with professionals returning to travel for work. MakeMyTrip’s recent market study on the recovery trends for the corporate travel segment further indicates that sectors including Financial Services, IT, Consumer goods and Automotive will see relatively slower recovery and are likely to be the last to see a complete recovery as far as corporate travel is concerned.

The resumption of short-stay entry visa processing for Ireland has been announced and has come into effect from 13 September, 2021. Indians fully vaccinated with COVISHIELD can now apply for short-stay entry visas to Ireland. There are no quarantine requirements for fully-vaccinated Indians with COVISHIELD or recently recovered travellers to Ireland. Travellers must fill out a Passenger Locator Form before departure.

In a recent webinar, Kimarli Fernando, Chairperson, Sri Lanka Tourism, revealed that the island nation has launched a US$12 (Rs890) mandatory insurance for a policy of US$50,000 (Rs37 lakh) valid up to one month. “We are using this opportunity to shift gears in tourism. Despite COVID, 2021-2030 has been declared as the tourism decade for Sri Lanka and we see this as a time to do things we did not do in the past. We are creating a strategic development plan.”

The Adventure Tour Operators Association of India (ATOAI) is organising a webinar titled ‘The Great Indian Outdoors at the threshold’ today at 11am. Guest speakers include Dr. V Venu, Additional Chief Secretary, Tourism, Government of Kerala; Rupinder Brar, Additional Director General, Ministry of Tourism; and Brig Ashok Abbey, President, Indian Mountaineering Foundation. The webinar will focus on how the sector can keep up with the growth, and guidelines and regulations that need to be implemented to curb accident rate.

The Indian Railways has recently started two Vistadome train services in Assam and North Bengal. The Vistadome tourist special trains will run between Guwahati and New Haflong in Assam and New Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar Junction in North Bengal. There are jungles, wildlife and tea gardens on the route between NJP and Alipurduar, thus providing a tourist with the opportunity to view the natural beauty of Dooars during their travels.

Air Tanzania has announced the resumption of its services between India and Tanzania. The first flight out of DAR was on 30th August, 2021 and return from Mumbai was on 31st August 2021. To start with, this will be a bi-weekly service every Tuesday and Saturday out of Mumbai with convenient departure timings of 05.50 hours arriving in Dar es Salaam at 09.20 hours. It will operate B787-800 new Dreamliner aircraft. Once the situation normalises, the flights are likely to increase to thrice a week.

The Karnataka Chapter of TAAI, in collaboration with the MSME Development Institute, conducted a virtual workshop to educate members about various schemes of Ministry of Micro, SME. This is part of the series initiated by TAAI at pan-India level to educate its members about the benefits and reliefs extended by the Ministry of MSME. Gopinath Rao, Deputy Director, MSME Development Institute, Bengaluru shared various schemes and initiatives of MSME and explained how it can benefit businesses at large. He specifically mentioned the schemes which attendees may avail finance, both at micro and macro levels.

In a recent awareness session conducted on the opening of Sri Lanka for Indian traveller, Sanath Ukwatte, President, The Hotels Association of Sri Lanka, said “Sri Lanka is now open for Indians. We are getting about 1,000 requests a day for visas from Indians which is a huge surge.” Indian travellers travelling to Sri Lanka should have the Indian government approved vaccination certificate that is the mandatory guideline issued by Sri Lanka.

Switzerland Tourism will conduct a webinar on Friday, 9th September 2021, focusing on Swiss Travel System (STS), Switzerland’s public transport network. STS offers comfortable, convenient, and scenic travel across Switzerland by rail, bus or boat. This webinar will highlight STS’s various products and services for the Indian market, as well as showcase the hassle-free booking experience of these offerings on RailEurope’s distribution network. To register, contact jaspreet.kaur@ddppl.com or 9650196532.

Travelbullz has set out a mission to make them the largest market place in the world that will connect supply to the distribution and make both sides tech savvy. They also aim to empower the traditional DMCs and the travel agencies and plan to shift from an offline model of buying and selling to digital. “All our customers are tech savvy, thanks to COVID, what would have happened 5 to 7 years later has already happened” says KD Singh.