Category Archives: Agents

Subhash Goyal, Hony. Secretary, FAITH, has revealed that they will have an urgent meeting with the hoteliers and stakeholders of the industry on promoting India as an attractive destination internationally, for which they will launch a common logo that can be used by everyone in the industry (tour operators and hoteliers) on their websites. He also revealed that Chander Mansharamani, Vice- Chairman, ICPB, will be the Chairman of India Tourism Mart 2020. He said that the idea is to double the number of tourists in the next few years and that the benefit of reduction in GST is passed on to the final customer so that the Indian package becomes cheaper than what it is currently.

Harmandeeep Singh Anand, Managing Director, GPS, in a recent interview has mentioned that GPS will be launching EDWIN@Amazing Thailand in association with ATTA (Association of THAI travel Agents), TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) , THA (Thailand Hotel Association). He also said that, Trawelltag – Covermore will be the insurance partner. The itinerary will cover the less explored region of Kanchanaburi and Khao Yai in addition to Bangkok and Pattaya over a duration of 4nts/5days from 25-29 Nov 2019. Regional stake holders will showcase their products to all the attendees. Registrations will open exclusively from 31Oct for GPS 10X members with limited spaces.

Ark Travels has successfully completed a 21-city roadshow in India. The roadshows planned and executed in association with Genting Cruise Lines and Dream Cruises was to educate travel trade about the services, new offers, value-add-ons and benefits of cruising. Events were organised in major metro cities like Delhi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai (seven events including Thane and New Mumbai) and Chennai, along with tier two cities such as Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Lucknow and Mangalore. The company primarily in business of selling international cruise vacations to Indian travellers, is also the first to touch base with travel agents by hosting cruise specific roadshows in cities like Dehradun, Agra, Pondicherry, Coimbatore and Madurai. To further reward its travel partners, Ark Travels organised a familiarisation trip onboard Dream Cruises’ newest cruise ship – Explorer Dream. To add on to their experience, agents were hosted in Singapore and were taken to Hong Kong on a Jetstar chartered flight by Genting Cruise Lines to board the cruise. In total, 64 travel agents were hosted from across India for the inaugural five-night-sailing itinerary on Explorer Dream giving agents opportunity to explore destinations like Hong Kong – Nha Trang – Ho Chi Minh City – Singapore.

Gurgaon-based travel fintech company SanKash and Travel Boutique Online has entered into a strategic partnership. The association will enable the travel agents operating both online and offline to fast track the processing of their travel packages without any hassle and drive double-digit revenue growth. While TBO will bring its reach and distribution, SanKash will contribute its entire payment know-how, operations and technology to the travel agents associated with TBO. They can adopt SanKash’s Monthly Payment Plan and help customers book their dream vacation packages, which will eventually increase their customer uptake and upsell services without money becoming an issue. Aiming to make holiday trips a part of the simple and accessible pleasures of life, SanKash comes as a revolutionary travel fintech company that focuses on helping Travel Agents and Tour Operators provide pay-in-parts / monthly EMI solutions for their travellers. Through this unique value proposition, it intends to create best-in-class customer and partner focused affordability solutions for the travel industry. Sankash is a B2B service that makes payment (loan disbursement) to travel agents bank account instead of customers account, thus empowering the travel agent but enabling customers to travel.

According to the Annual Travel Monitor 2019 Final Edition (ATM) released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), over the five years between 2014 and 2018, the 46 Asia Pacific destinations covered in the report have collectively seen their International Visitor Arrivals (IVAs) increase by almost 24%, adding more than 136 million additional arrivals to the collective foreign inbound count in the process.

The India Convention Promotion Bureau (ICPB) has elected its new team for the upcoming term at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the association held in New Delhi. Amaresh Tiwari, Director, A T & Seasons Vacations Travel has been elected unopposed as the Vice Chairman. Earlier, the position was held by Chander Mansharamani, Alpcord Network Travel & Conference Management. Girish Kwatra, CEO, Meetings & More, who was earlier the Hon. Treasurer, has been elected as the new Hony. Secretary. Whereas, Anuj Wadhwa, CEO, Plan It! Meeting and Conferences India has been elected as the new Hony. Treasurer. He was earlier the Member in the Governing Board. Other elected members in board includes, Abinash Manghani, Area Manager & Head Travel Industry Sales, ITC Hotels, Shampa Dhali, Area Director, National Sales India, Marriot International, Sudeep Sarkar, CEO, India Exposition Mart, Mausam Bhattacharya, Director of Sales and Marketing, Grand Hyatt Kochi Bolgatty, Madan Kak, CEO, Minar Travels, Director, Amit Saroj, Attitude Events, Lalitha Rai, Partner, ‎Marundeshwara Enterprises, Neeraj Dhawan, Director, Falcon Exhibitions, Riyaz UC, MD Spiceland Holidays, Ripudaman Singh Chauhan, GM, Translink Express India and Avinash Browne, Director, Sun Business Machines.

PATA India Chapter will organise the second edition of its Tourism Powerhouse on December 6, which will see a variety of speakers from the travel industry in India and abroad, revealed Runeep Sangha, Executive Director, PATA India Chapter. He adds, “The theme of the event is ‘The Big Leap Forward’ and the speakers at the Tourism Powerhouse will be sharing their experiences and suggestions to accelerate growth.”

Robin Raina, President & CEO, Ebix Inc and EbixCash has said that EbixCash Travel will be taking over all the inbound holiday business of Cox & Kings and the company has got the former COO of Cox & Kings, JP Singh on board for that, who will also lead one of the division of the company. He also announced that the travel vertical of his company is gearing up for aggressive marketing initiatives to promote and popularise itself in the Indian market. During an interaction organised for industry stakeholders after the conclusion of company’s two-day global conference in New Delhi, Raina said that EbixCash will do advertisement campaigns on Radio and TV. “We have partnered with Republic TV for exclusive branding via its studio. We are also sponsoring the IPL team Kings XI Punjab and Delhi Capitals. Many more exciting updates are yet to follow,” he said. He also announced at the event that Arjun Seth, formerly associated with Pearl Travels is going to lead the B2B operations at EbixCash Travel in India. While, Swaminathan Vedaranyam will continue to look after international B2B operations and Via.com (B2C). Similarly, Naveen Kundu will continue to look after Mercury- A Luxury Initiative by EbixCash and the corporate, luxury & MiC travel business of the company. Sharing his vision, Raina further said, “We like to integrate very tightly, we value human capital, we value the people who understand the industry. We want to cohesively build an end to end travel solution in the industry. You have seen us make acquisitions, we were not just buying travel agents, we are looking to empower them. In the coming days, you will see us enter into stock …

Ebix has announced that its EbixCash Indian subsidiary has signed an agreement with Cox and Kings to transfer its Business Travel agreements with corporates in India, to EbixCash’s corporate “Mercury” Travel Division. This announcement comes as a part of EbixCash’s initiative to aggressively grow its corporate travel business in India.Each of the transferred corporate clients of Cox and Kings will now be serviced by EbixCash’s Mercury Division across the length and breadth of the country. Under the agreement some key core employees of Cox and Kings will also be transferred to the EbixCash payroll with immediate effect. This transfer agreement is part of EbixCash’s efforts to double its revenues as compared to the last year, from the corporate travel sector by the end of this Financial Year. (Source: globenewswire.com)

Cholan Tours, part of Lufthansa City Center, is set to launch a new mobile application, which will help connect the tour operators, travel guides and guides for better co-ordination and support. Sharing details, Pandian, Director, Cholan Tours said, “We have been thinking about coming up with something like this from last 5-7 years and now we have found right people and the work is going on for the launch of the App. We have scheduled a launch on November 15 this year. The app will help connect the tourist with guides, which is very tough to pre-book for tourist travelling to India. They can book flights, hotels and other services but now with the new app, they will be able to book guides as well. With this, more employment for guides will be generated throughout the year and guide services in the country will also improve.” He went on to say that around 88 per cent of tourists coming to India travel to the country on their own or through unorganised sector while the rest 12 per cent take services of organised travel agencies. “My intention of creating this App is not to disturb the 12 per cent share but tap the 88 per cent share of the market to book travel guides. If we are able to get even 10 per cent of the share, it will be phenomenal boost to bookings,” he added.