Category Archives: Agents

STIC Travel Group recently organised a ship orientation program for their travel partners in Mumbai. Seabourn Encore docked in Mumbai on 16 November which was on a 37 days voyage from Athens to Singapore. All agents who visited had a full ship tour. Their world wide sailings can be booked by all the agents in India.

The Travel Agents Association of India has received the nominations for the election of its new Managing Committee (2019-20). Jyoti Mayal from New Airways Travels and Sanjay Narula from Apex Travel and Tours have filed nominations for the position of President. However, Jay Bhatia from Tulsidas Khimji Holidays is unopposed for the position of Vice-President. For the position of Secretary General, valid nominations have been received from P. Sarvanan of Viking Tours & Travels and Bettaiah Lokesh of Triway Travels. For Hon. Secretary General, valid nominations have come from Devaki Thiyagarajan of Avocet Tours & Travels; Imtoaz Qureshi of Viceroy Travels and Shreeram Patel of Unicorn Travels.  

Data from the Annual Travel Monitor 2019 Final Edition (ATM) released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) last month shows that Asia continued to dominate the supply of international visitor arrival numbers (IVAs) into Asia Pacific in 2018, generating close to 63% of the 696.5 million IVAs into the region. In percentage growth terms between 2017 and 2018, Africa outbound into Asia Pacific had the strongest annual increase at over 13% year-on-year, followed by Europe at almost 11% and then Asia at 7.3%. The nondescript ‘Others’ category increased by 7.5% in 2018, year-on-year.

Minar Group received the TravTalk-WTM World Travel Leaders Award at the recently held World Travel Mart London. The World Travel Leaders Awards honours companies and individuals for their outstanding contribution to the industry over the last 24 months voted for by the WTM partners. Speaking on the occasion, Gren Pacheco, VP, Business Development, said, “It’s a pleasure to be at WTM London. I want to thank TravTalk for this award and it feels great to have received it at such a big international forum.” 

The Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism and Hospitality (FAITH) board members are all set to visit Jammu & Kashmir on November 7, 2019 to show their solidarity with the tourism industry in the UT, revealed Subhash Goyal, Hony. Secretary, FAITH. “On November 7, 2019, FAITH, along with FICCI are going to Srinagar to express  our solidarity with the tourism industry of Jammu & Kashmir. We have circulated the information regarding the same amongst all our members and we are getting a good response.”

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.