Category Archives: Breaking News (All Categories)

Ashutosh Salil (IAS) has been appointed as the new Managing Director of Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) from July 20, 2020. Salil is a Fulbright Scholar from Harvard Law School. Before this he was the Joint Commissioner of BMC. He will report to environment and tourism minister Aaditya Thackeray.

Celestyal Cruises, that sails to the Greek Islands and the Eastern Mediterranean, has added to its fleet the Costa NeoRomantica from Costa Cruises. Built in 1993 and extensively refurbished in 2012, the 1,800-guest ship has 789 cabins, 132 of which feature balconies, as well as a variety of dining and entertainment venues, bars and lounges, two pools, a gym and a panoramic spa. Celestyal Cruises’ CEO, Chris Theophilides, says, “While Covid-19 has brought a temporary pause to our operations, it is important that we look to the future with optimism and continue to deliver on our strategic plan to grow the business and enhance the Celestyal experience through investment. This mid-size cruise vessel is ideally suited to our business model.” Details of the ship’s delivery and deployment will be announced at a later date. Celestyal Cruises’ existing 2021 and 2022 itineraries that were recently launched remain unchanged.

IATA has reported that intra-EU passengers have used many vouchers, issued since mid-March 2020 in lieu of refunds, to pay for travel between 15-Jun-2020 and 15-Jul-2020. Airlines are now incurring the deferred cost of transporting these passengers against limited or zero new revenues. IATA stated, “Whilst the issuance of vouchers helped decelerate cash burn a few weeks ago, their use will now accelerate cash burn in the coming months’. The data is based on IATA’s Billing and Settlement Process, which underestimates the use of vouchers because it does not record vouchers as exchanges in all cases.

Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has set up a single-window clearance mechanism to expedite various investment proposals in the domestic aviation industry. “MoCA has an Investment Clearance Cell (ICC) for prompt assistance and clearance,” the ministry mentioned in a tweet recently. According to MoCA the setting up of the ICC was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in 2020-2021 Union Budget in February this year. The cell was also set up following an order from the Department of Promotion of Industry (DPIT) on July 1 in this regard. The 10-member ICC will be headed by Amber Dubey, Joint Secretary, MoCA. The ICC has been mandated to serve as a single-window system for attracting investment and its terms of reference include accelerating investments, bringing projects to the Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) which require special incentive, policy interventions, expeditious clearances and systematic references, among others, the MoCA order said.

After the recent news of Regional Transport Office (RTO) warning travel agents in Uttar Pradesh to obtain registration licenses within 10 days, Siddharth Yadav from the Assistant RTO (ARTO) Enforcement Office in Lucknow has clarified that this license is required only by those travel agents who are into car and bus rentals. Air ticketing agents do not fall under their purview. Interestingly, registration of travel agents and tour operators is part of the tourism policy passed by Uttar Pradesh but which is yet to see the light of day.

Prahlad Singh Patel, Union Minister of State (I/C) for Tourism & Culture, along with Chief Minister of Gujarat Sh. Vijaybhai Rupanion, joined the inauguration of project ‘Development of Pilgrimage Amenities at Somnath, Gujarat’ under the PRASHAD scheme. Sanctioned under the PRASHAD scheme in March 2017, the project has been successfully completed with the cost of Rs. 45.36 crores. High quality world-class facilities for parking, tourism amenities centre and solid waste management have been developed under the project.

The average lead time, i.e. the number of days between booking date and travel date (how far in advance travellers book their trips), for long- haul travel to South Asia is 73 days, according to ForwardKeys.

Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of Civil Aviation, has said that they will be able to resume 55-60 per cent of domestic flights by Diwali. Speaking at a press conference, he said, “We are assuming that by the time Diwali comes this year, we would have 55-60 per cent of pre-COVID domestic flights operating in India.”

Efforts put in by TAAI have finally borne fruit as the government has now permitted travel agents to book Vande Bharat flights. “We appreciate Air India, MoCA and NITI Aayog for supporting our initiatives, and look forward to more compliances to support the struggling industry,” says Jyoti Mayal, President, TAAI. As of now, flights to USA, Germany (FRA) and France (CDG) have been announced in the coming phase.

Thomas Cook India has signed an agreement with dnata Travel to operate as the Travel Management Company (TMC) to service dnata’s customers as it closes its TMC operation in India. The transition will be completed in the next few weeks. Mahesh Iyer, Executive Director & CEO, Thomas Cook India, says, “Our first focus will be ensuring continuity of service needs.”