Category Archives: Agents

Travel Tours, the flagship leisure travel brand of FCM Travel Solutions – Indian subsidiary of Flight Centre Travel Group Australia, recently inaugurated its fifth store in Bengaluru. The store was inaugurated by Rakshit Desai, Managing Director, India at Flight Centre Travel Group. With the launch of this store, FCM Travel Solutions now has 30 operational Travel Tours stores across India. The new store in Bengaluru aims to fulfill the diverse needs of travellers in the city by offering both personalised vacations and group tours. The store will cater to the needs of high-end urban consumers such as families, business travellers, honeymoon couples and large groups of travellers. Expressing his thoughts on the launch, Desai said, “The launch is a further development of our expansion and strategic intent at Travel Tours across the Southern India. Bengaluru contributes to 22 per cent of leisure travel at Travel Tours overall and 35 per cent in South India. This year has been exciting for us and as we expand rapidly into the year, we plan to open 50+ stores by 2020.” Travel Tours current footprint extends to a total of 30 stores across Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kochi, Anand and Nagpur via a combination of owned branches and newly opened franchise outlets.

Treebo Hotels has come on board as a preferred hotel brand on Atlas Travels Online platform offering exciting deals to Atlas’s 20,000 agent network. The campaign kick-starts with roadshows for travel agents across the country with Treebo hosting lucky draws where winners get four-days and three-nights stay at Treebo properties. Atlas Travels is running a month-long campaign for its agents network offering 5 per cent cashback for booking Treebo properties through Atlas’s platform. Vikas Mulchandani, Business Head, Treebo Hotels, says, “With Treebo’s widespread reach in more than 80 Indian cities with 400 hotels and Atlas’s large network of travel agent partners, this partnership is just the beginning of many exciting things which can be done together to create value for the guests and travel partners alike. There is a great fit between the two brands where both Treebo and Atlas are committed towards delivering superior service level without compromising on the quality and I truly believe that the two brands coming together provides a great platform for the B2B agents to cater to the customer’s both travel and accommodation needs. I would like to congratulate both the teams and wish all the best for the success for the campaign.” Talking about their relationship with Treebo, Param Sidhu, COO Atlas Travels Online, says, “Our constant endeavor is to bring best deals, bouquet of varieties across the verticals of air, hotels, visa, foreign exchange that we offer to our agents network helping them to expand and grow their business. Our excellent tech and process driven support helps agents and suppliers to transact seamlessly. We are excited about our alliance with Treebo, with whom we are expanding our existing hotel inventory and running a …

BigBreaks.com has announced the launch of its B2B hotels interface, agents.bigbreaks.com, enabling its B2B partners to gain quick access to wholesale hotel rates across India. Ashish Agri, Business Head—Domestic Leisure, Bigbreaks said, “This was a much needed addition to cater to the ongoing demand from partners and facilitate easy bookings and near instant turnaround times. This state-of-the-art system will not only enhance the overall productivity of our partners but also ease out the overall process of checking rates and processing reservations.” The list of hotels available currently, is close to a 1000 across India, and is expanding everyday, according to Agri.

Travelport has become the first GDS operator to manage the live booking of flights using the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) New Distribution Capability (NDC) technical standard. The first transaction was made by a British agency, Meon Valley Travel, on October 19 for a short-haul low-cost flight from London to Milan issued by a major European carrier. The new capability allows bookings to be made for any services on the airline without incurring a surcharge. Travelport’s new NDC capability is enabled using similar XML connections to those Travelport already deploys with APIs for over 20 low-cost carriers. The company published a roadmap for its initial range of NDC products in February, having been the first GDS operator in December 2017 to acquire Level 3 certification from IATA as an aggregator. It will also be followed by a series of product enhancements, including a version for online agents in 2019. Gordon Wilson, President and CEO, Travelport, said: “We are delighted to have taken a lead in bringing the NDC era to life. It has required an extraordinary amount of skill and expertise to make this happen and I want to thank my own colleagues at Travelport as well as our partners. We are still at the earliest stages of NDC deployment. Its evolution will continue to take time as we learn from the practical experience of its first use. Meanwhile, we continue to offer a comprehensive global travel commerce platform capable of handling mass volumes of searchable and bookable content at speed for the world’s travel providers and agents.”

EbixCash has acquired assets of Business Travels and has appointed its owner Praveen Chugh as the Chief Operating Officer of Via agency sales. The company announced that it has decided to further invest in the growth of its B2B business under Chugh, who has immediately taken over as Chief Operating Officer of Via. As a part of the hiring, Chugh’s existing travel company Business Travels Private Limited assets was also acquired by Via. Chugh has been empowered by the company to recruit as many as one hundred domain specific travel sales executives, besides opening up new travel locations across the length and breadth of the country. Robin Raina, Chairman, President and CEO, Ebix, said, “We are excited to have Mr Praveen Chugh on our side. His vast experience, success record and contacts in the world travel industry provide us with an industry veteran who can lead Via B2B Sales to new heights. He has the ability and drive to grow our Via travel division business at high double-digit rates. We believe that the strength of our vast retail network, end-to-end enterprise travel technology and functionality, coupled with strong sales leadership, positions us to grow our travel business aggressively internationally.”

Thomas Cook India has opened its new franchise in Delhi’s Kamla Nagar. Inaugurated by Romil Pant, Sr Vice President, and Jatin Sharma, Associate Vice President, Thomas Cook India, the expansion augments Thomas Cook India’s distribution and reach in Delhi-NCR to 17 consumer access centres: six owned branches and 11 Gold Circle Partner (franchise) outlets. The Gold Circle Partner outlet offers consumers end-to-end travel solutions with a bouquet of travel and travel-related financial services, including international and domestic holidays value-added services like travel insurance, visa services, etc. Rajeev Kale, President & Country Head, Leisure Travel & MiCE, Thomas Cook India, said, “The North market continues to feature strongly as a prime driver, delivering significant growth of 32 per cent YoY for our leisure travel business. We have selected Delhi-NCR as it has a strategic market basis. The Thomas Cook Gold Circle Partner programme increases the brand’s reach across the country, giving consumers access to the company’s products and services in metros/mini-metros and strongly emerging Tier II and III markets.  

Sabre Corporation has announced a renewed, full content distribution agreement with Jet Airways effective April 2019. Sabre’s extended agreement with Jet Airways provides Sabre-connected agents across India and the world a path to access the full content of Jet Airways into year 2024. With over 100 million passengers choosing Indian carriers for their travel since the beginning of the year and domestic air travel growing by 21.2 per cent over the same period, in less than 10 years the World Travel & Tourism Council expects India to become the world’s fourth-largest travel and tourism economy behind China, the United States and Germany. Rakesh Narayanan, Vice President, Air Line of Business, Sabre Travel Network Asia Pacific, said, “As a long-term technology partner to Jet Airways, providing the airline with unmatched solutions that enable superior passenger services, Sabre is well positioned to support the carrier’s growth objectives. Today, we are pleased to provide Jet Airways with the ability to share their content through Sabre’s leading global travel marketplace, which will in turn contribute to their ongoing business success.”

Trafalgar has launched its new 2019 brochure that will include some new itineraries and elements. It recently organised an exclusive meeting between its top agent partners in Mumbai and Gavin Tollman, CEO, Trafalgar & CostSaver. Tollman flew down to Mumbai from Geneva to meet the travel agent partners and exchange ideas and get feedback from them on the India market. He was accompanied by Nicholas Lim, President, Trafalgar Asia, and the India team during the networking event in Mumbai. After that, the team visited Pune, Bengaluru and Chennai to launch the 2019 brochures. The new brochure will have a new destination – Africa, which has been launched recently. Trafalgar’s in-house survey has revealed that India delivers a repeat booking rate of 58.3 per cent and these guests are choosing to travel to further destinations like South America and other exotic destinations.

Star Alliance Invitational Golf tournament 2018 was organised for corporate clients at Delhi Golf Club recently. The event was a great opportunity for the 28 Star Alliance member airlines to network with the corporate community and educate them about benefits of Star Alliance. The game of golf was followed up by an awards function in various categories with a gala lunch. The pleasant weather, great food and great sitting at the Delhi Golf Club was a treat to the players. Also seen playing golf was Suman Billa, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India. The championship prizes were given away by the Star Alliance members.

Travelport has signed a long-term supplier agreement with India’s Jet Airways that will be effective from April 2019 and enable online and offline travel agencies around the world to shop, book and manage itineraries for leisure and business travellers. Jet Airways will also deploy Travelport’s Rich content and Branding, from which over 270 airlines now benefit by displaying graphical content, their fares families and a full range of ancillary products. Damian Hickey, Head, Air-Travel Partners, Travelport, commented, “Travelport’s commitment to the Indian travel market and the provision of the widest range of content has been further evidenced today with the announcement of this new mutual commitment between Jet Airways and our company beginning April 2019. Furthermore, our position in the rest of Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas means that we are able to deliver to them a wide mix of international travellers. This is in addition to the millions of outbound and domestic Indian travellers they serve.”