Category Archives: Associations

OTOAI in association with VisitBritain, conducted a VISA workshop at the British High Commission, New Delhi, during which OTOAI recommended that the UK Visa immigration develop a portal which provides a login ID and password to tour operators to apply for visas for their customers online. 

Global airline capacity will be lower than expected this year and stay constrained until 2025 at the earliest, warned IATA director general Willie Walsh, due to delays in new aircraft deliveries and a lack of availability of spare parts. “I can’t see anything really improving or significantly improving probably until 2025 at the earliest and it may even go beyond that,” Walsh said.

Educational trips are a great learning tool for travel consultants and first-hand experience gives them a better understanding of the destination. Keeping this in mind, ETAA organized an educational trip to Nepal in association with The Travel Cube Bangalore and Nepal office head. The Travel Cube have their own set up in Nepal and ensure that itineraries are designed as the requirements of the clients and deliver quality service. About 33 members from India joined the trip. Team ETAA is thankful to The Travel Cube for their efforts in taking good care of members and making the trip a memorable one.

Rajiv Mehra, President, IATO, thanked the membership for voting his Dream team at the elections and said that their focus going forward will be to serve them in the best way possible. “We will do our best to fulfil the needs of tourism fraternity,” he said.

IATO has elected its new team for the term 2023-25. The election for the post of Office Bearers and Executive Committee Members were at The Ashok Hotel, New Delhi. Total number of votes cast were 278 out of 378 eligible members to cast their vote. The office bearers were elected unopposed and voting took  place for  the  EC members. List of Office Bearers/EC Members who have been declared elected are: • President – Mr. Rajiv Mehra, Uday Tours & Travels Pvt. Ltd. • Sr. Vice President- Mr. Rajnish Kaistha, Paradise Holidays India Pvt. Ltd. • Vice President – Mr. Ravi Gosain, Erco Travels Pvt. Ltd. • Hony. Secretary – Mr. Sanjay Razdan, Razdan Holidays • Hony. Treasurer – Mr. Sunil Mishra, Cosmos Tours & Travels • Hony. Joint Secretary – Mr. Viney Tyagi, Uni Crystal Holidays Pvt. Ltd. • Immediate Past President – Mr. Pronab Sarkar, Swagatam Tours Pvt. Ltd. EC Members – Active (5 Posts) 1. Mr. Deepak Bhatnagar – Aamantaran Travel Company Pvt. Ltd. 2. Mr. E.M. Najeeb, Air Travel Enterprises (I) Pvt. Ltd. 3. Mr. Harish Mathur, Concord Travels & Tours 4. Mr. Manoj Kumar Matta, Oriental Vacations & Journeys Pvt. Ltd. 5. Mr. Tony Marwah, Indian Travel Promotion Company Pvt. Ltd. EC Members –Allied (3 Posts) 1.  Mr. Ashok Dhoot – Harsh Travels 2. Mr. P. Vijayasarathy – Benchmark Hotels Pvt. Ltd. 3.  Mr. Zia Siddiqui – Alliance Hotels & Resorts The Returning Officer for the elections was Homa Mistry.

Sudesh Kumar Poddar, President, FHRAI, has said that the key area of focus as the President for him is to urge the government to have more M!CE tourism on the lines of G20, or national & international games in India. “When such mega events happen in the country, direct benefit goes to the transport and to the hospitality industry,” he said.

Rajiv Mehra, President, IATO, has said that this year the states of Northeast will get good traffic because the road conditions and flights to some of those states has improved manifold. “Thus, I am hopeful, that this year people will focus on going to NE,” he added.

The Goa Tourism Department, in partnership with Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) India Chapter, is organising its first-ever Roadshow across Europe. The roadshow will start on 18 April from Frankfurt, 20 April Zurich, Vienna on 24 April, and will end in Paris on 26 April.

UNWTO shared global best practices for developing Tourism Investment Strategy (TIS) at the Chintan Shivir by MOT. The session highlighted the structured approach for developing a comprehensive investment strategy,

KB Kachru, Vice President, HAI and Chairman Emeritus & Principal Advisor, South Asia Radisson Hotel Group, speaking at a recent interaction chaired by Minister of Tourism and Secretary, Tourism, said, “Given the local pull factor & ability of our domestic market combined with recent government policies, we can showcase our diversity to attract foreign investment.”