Category Archives: Associations

IATA has enhanced its Travel Industry Designator Service (TIDS) and will also no longer charge travel agencies to use the service. TIDS is an IATA programme which provides a unique identification code for travel agents and sales intermediaries who are not IATA-Accredited agents and are located outside of the USA.

FHRAI has welcomed FSSAI’s enforcement rules making registration mandatory for home-cooked food sellers, whether operating from home or from dark kitchens. “FSSAI has responded to our plea and is taking to task any such unregulated and illegal dark kitchens. Quite a few of these are actually funded and run by the Food Service Aggregators (FSAs) to escape responsibilities attached to operating restaurants legally,” says Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, VP, FHRAI.

IATO in association with TravTalk is organising a webinar with Art of Living on the topic, ‘Redesign Your Itineraries- Wellness Tourism’ on Thursday, November 5 at 11:30 am. During the session, Rajeev Nambiar, Director, National Teachers Desk, The Art of Living, will be sharing his thoughts on the topic with the audience and inspire them to do better planning. To know more and register, contact Jaspreet Kaur at Jaspreet.kaur@ddppl.com or call 9650196532.

Multiple travel trade associations will come together on Saturday, October 31 to participate in a bike rally titled ‘Celebrate Goa’s Tourism’ to show the country as well as the global markets that the state is now open for tourism. Associations such as TAAI, TAFI, IATO, and SKAL Goa led by TTAG will be part of the rally that will travel from north Goa to south Goa. Goa Tourism will also be part of this.

IATO in association with TravTalk is organising a workshop cum webinar on personality development today at 11:30 am where award-winning Happiness Coach, Sakshi Mandhyan, Founder- Mandhyan Care will give a keynote address on ‘How is COVID-19 changing your personality’. The session will focus on motivation, mental wellbeing and behavioural adaptability. To register, write to Jaspreet.kaur@ddppl.com or call 9650196532.

PATA India Chapter is organising an interactive webinar titled ‘Unburden your Thoughts and Fear’ on November 4 at 10:30 am with Performance Coach & Mentor Munish Verma to help participants overcome day to day business challenges. Verma is an internationally recognised transformational program leader and expert in corporate training. Contact Poonam Rajput at manager@pataindia.org for registration.

In a letter to the finance minister, Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) has sought a complete review of Kamath committee suggestions on loan mortgage restructuring for the hospitality sector on a priority basis. The association stated that the industry is facing serious challenges in complying with the financial parameters suggested by the committee.

Sharing its views on the recent changes in TCS on Twitter, the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) stated, ‘TCS will kill the outbound tour market and the changes in LTC will kill the domestic tour market. Government actions are not in sync with our needs. No hand-eye coordination between government speeches and action.’    

The Department of Tourism & Culture, State Tourism of Maharashtra has created a task force to revive this sector and create an action plan. For this, it has appointed key members from the tourism and hospitality sectors including Harmandeep Singh Anand, Jt. MD, Jagsons Travels and GPS and the IATO President. This task force is led by the State Tourism Minister, Aaditya Thackeray. Other members of the team include President of NRAI, President of EEMA, Farhat Jamal who is the President of the Indian Merchants Chamber, Suneet Kothari from Aurangabad, and Valsa Nair Singh, the Tourism Department’s Principal Secretary, Government of Maharashtra.    

IATA is working with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to put in place scalable, affordable and fast testing systems, revealed Conrad Clifford, Regional Vice-President Asia Pacific, IATA. Alexandre De Juniac, Director General & CEO, IATA had also said last week, “We have a solution to open borders while mitigating the risk of importing COVID-19 through air travel. That is universal testing. There is testing technology that aligns with our requirements for speed, accuracy, affordability, scalability and ease of use in the travel process. And we are seeing momentum towards implementation.”