Category Archives: Associations

The Travel Agents Association of India has relaxed its rules for Active Category Membership and will be offering active membership to all IATA affiliated agents with or without having completed a year from the company operations. This was decided at the recently held TAAI Managing Committee Meeting, where it was discussed that in order to increase the Active Category Membership of our esteemed Association, prospective members who have got IATA can immediately apply for Active Category Membership With TAAI within one year itself and no need to complete one year from the company operations. According to a statement from TAAI, while applying for new Active Category Membership With TAAI, such members can attach the financial documents which they had submitted to IATA along with the other relevant documents pertaining to new membership.

The Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) held an interactive meeting with a number of airlines in New Delhi to address the issues of its members. The interactive meeting saw in attendance representatives from all the major airlines including Air India, Lufthansa, Emirates, Etihad, Malaysian Airlines, Thai Airways, Singapore Airlines, Oman Air, Air Cananda, Jet Airways as well as IATA and the GDS’s as well. TAAI, along with its members had put forth the issues like web parity; credit card acceptance, service tax, unethical practices by OTAs etc. and extended a hand to the airlines to come to a solution for these. Marzban Antia, Vice President, TAAI, said, “This being the inaugural meeting of TAAI with the airlines. After this we will have independent meetings with all of them. We at TAAI are being very aggressive and have taken a number of initiatives for our members, and this is another step in the direction of empowering our members.”

India is the fastest-growing business travel market in the world along with Indonesia and will average double-digit growth in business travel spending over the next five years, According to the GBTA BTI™ Outlook – Annual Global Report & Forecast, a new report released today by the GBTA Foundation, sponsored by Visa. However, at $291 billion, China has surpassed the United States as the largest business travel market in the world in 2015.

The election for 13 posts of Office Bearers and Executive Council Members of the Association of Domestic Tour Operators of India (ADTOI) will be held on August 10. Harbans Singh, retired Secretary, Election Commission of India, has been appointed as the Returning Officer. The 13 posts include President (one), Vice President (one), General Secretary (one), Treasurer (one), Joint Secretary (one) and Executive Council Members (eight). Office Bearers and members of Executive Council of ADTOI shall be elected by secret ballot in person or postal ballot.Nominations can be filed before the Returning Officer during July 16-20, 2016 between 2.30 pm to 5.00 pm. Scrutiny of nominations by the Returning Officer will be held on July 21 at 3.00 pm. The period for withdrawal of candidature is July 22-23 from 2.30 pm to 5.00 pm and the final list of contesting candidates will be published on July 23. The result is expected to be announced on the same day as the election, on August 1o.

The Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) concluded its national elections on June 30 in Ahmedabad and the new team thus elected will take over office from today. The unopposed Office Bearers include Praveen Chugh as the President, Pradip Lulla as the new Vice President, Aditi Bhende as Secretary and Jayesh Tharani as Treasurer. Zakkir Ahmed is now the Immediate Past President. The seven Committee Members for whom the elections were held include: Basheer Ahmed, Darshan Shah, Rajat Bagaria, Urvashi Gupta, Bharat Shah, Teddy Thomas and Sanjay Gupta. All of them have been re-elected except for Bharat Shah who replaces Jayesh Tharani as the Managing Committee Member.

Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) will hold its first educational seminar and exhibition in Delhi on September 6, 2016 at Pullman Aerocity Hotel New Delhi. Gaurav Sundaram, Regional Director – India, GBTA said that the event will address the best practices of business travel through discussions on topics like the role of technology in business travel, expense management, to name a few. “We are expecting almost 150 buyers which include travel managers, heads of business travel with leading corporate entities, finance leaders, procurement heads, among others, at the event. There will also be a trade exhibition side-by-side with the seminar,” he added.

Association of Domestic Tour Operators (ADTOI) has started its preparations for elections. Jyoti Kapur, President, ADTOI, has revealed that the election process has been initiated and they have also appointed the Returning Officer (RO) for managing the voting process. He said that Harbans Singh, Retired Secretary, Election Commission of India, has been appointed as the RO. While he did not reveal the election date, he said that they will be sending the notice for the same to the General House next week.

Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) Northern Region members are going to Colombo, Sri Lanka from July 8-11, 2016, for their monthly meeting, reveals Rajan Sehgal, President, TAAI-NR. “We are taking a total of 60 members from the Northern Region to Colombo, Sri Lanka, for our monthly meeting. We will be meeting the hotel associations as well as the Sri Lanka Tourism Board to educate our members about the destination. This will be followed by an excursion to casinos and other attractions in the city,” he said.

Bharat Dev of Dev Travel has been elected unopposed as the new Chairman of Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) Chhattisgarh Chapter. His nomination was proposed by the outgoing team of the chapter. In addition, Raman Jadhwani of Ajay Travels is the new Secretary of TAFI Chhattisgarh Chapter.

In a first, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has partnered with State Government to set up separate tourism bureaus for Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Tirupati. Besides tourism promotion, CII wanted to play a facilitator’s role to woo investments in industries, IT and promote MSME and skill development in a big way in AP post-bifurcation. This figured prominently at the strategy session of CII to finalise its roadmap for 2016-17. CII-AP chairman G.S. Shiv Kumar and vice-chairman J.S.R.K. Prasad told reporters on Saturday. CII committee on tourism convener Neeraj Sarda said the first bureau would be set up for promoting tourism in Visakhapatnam in September. He said a comprehensive website would be created by involving all the stakeholders in the bureau to woo investors and facilitate development of a complete ecosystem. Sarda said building brand image for Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Tirupati was their top priority. A CII team comprising Shiv Kumar and Sarda recently visited Puducherry to find out the reasons for their success story.