Category Archives: Breaking News (All Categories)

Travelport Worldwide Limited has announced that it has received commitments for $500 million in financing from affiliates of existing owners, Siris Capital Group, LLC and Evergreen Coast Capital Corp., the private equity affiliate of Elliott Management Corporation, and an additional $500 million of available financing capacity. The investment provides Travelport with the liquidity needed to continue to exceed the expectations of its customers despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also allows Travelport to continue to invest in its industry-leading technology and next-generation platform to ensure it is positioned for growth as travel returns.

Meenakshi Sharma, Director General, Tourism, has said that after releasing the operational advisories in line with the SOPs by MHA and MHoFW, they are now working towards a certification for service providers to create confidence in tourists about their safety and health. Speaking at the 4th TravTalk Digital Conclave, she revealed, “We are working on some kind of certification, where we are going to say that a particular destination/ service provider/ facility is safe and hygienic, in order to create confidence amongst tourists.”

The Maharashtra government has allotted 54.40-hectares of land in Shiroda, Vengurla tehsil of Sindhudurg area to the Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL), which runs Taj Hotels, for developing a five-star tourism centre. The land has been given at 90-years lease at a nominal rent for the construction of cottages in Vengurla for tourism development. The proposal of the allotment of land for the construction of the hotel by IHCL was taken after the state government announced Sindhudurg as a tourism district more than two decades ago. After a decision of allotting land to the Taj Group was taken in 1994, the land was acquired in stages till 1998 by the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC). Part of the land is in the group’s possession, while it has been pushing for possession of the remaining land. The government has now decided to hand over the remaining part of the plot, which is a connecting track of land to other two plots handed over to the company.

Virtual products may soon become a new reality for the travel industry. Riyaz UC, Managing Director of Spiceland Holidays, has found an innovative way to survive in the COVID-19 struck industry. He has launched a seven-day virtual wellness package that is a blend of authentic Kerala ayurvedic concepts and yoga. The retreat has a panel of experts who will guide people on various things such as meditation, yoga asanas, and the right diet with live cooking demos. Riyaz explains, “People around the world are mentally and emotionally depressed right now. They want to get rejuvenated but there is no way they can travel to Kerala or any of the wellness destinations. I have created a seven-day wellness retreat that has a panel of experts who will guide people on various things such as meditation, yoga asanas, and the right diet with live cooking demos. It has guaranteed results.” Riyaz adds that this is also an opportunity for agents to earn some commission. “This product is for the global market. We are selling this package at Rs 10,000 or USD 150 and travel agents can earn a commission of up to USD 40 per package. This is a new source for earning revenue for them,” he says. Spiceland Holidays is a Kerala-based destination management company and one of the largest in South India and Sri Lanka.

A NITI Aayog working group under the chairmanship of Amitabh Kant has presented an action plan for heritage management of monuments in the country. The group in its report pitched for adopting revenue generation model through PPP schemes and voiced its views that the central and state governments should leverage India’s massive network of heritage sites as a tool for development and employment generation by providing improved services to domestic and international tourists. It also said that each ASI heritage site should be a profit centre by generating more revenues from ticketing, souvenir shops, food and beverage outlets. The report also suggested that International Heritage Circuits should be developed jointly with other countries, especially where shared heritage is evident, such as the Buddhist circuit and Hinduism circuit with South Asian and Southeast Asian countries. Among other recommendations, the working group suggested restructuring of ASI, creating a National Archaeological Database, defining bye-laws for prohibited and regulated areas around monuments, support to state governments and other organisations such as temple trusts to boost the tourism sector.

The Ministry of Tourism (MOT) has launched a list of advisories for tourism stakeholders, in line with the SOPs released by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), reveals Prahlad Singh Patel, Minister of State (I/C), Tourism & Culture, which will be separate for monuments, hotels, travel and tour organisations, restaurants, libraries, etc. He further added that the MOT is open to make changes in these advisories, even thrice a month, if the stakeholders come up with more ideas and solutions.

During the second session of the 4th TravTalk Digital Conclave that focused on Revenge Tourism, Kamal Hingorani, Chief Customer Officer, SpiceJet, said that he expects leisure and corporate travel to resume by end of this year irrespective of whether a vaccine for COVID-19 is available or not. He added that there is a need for industry collaboration with a harmonised approach. “Let’s not waste a crisis. Invest in extreme hygiene and sustainability, and ROI will follow,” he commented. Hingorani also looks after inflight services, customer touch-points and corporate and industry affairs for the airline.

Speaking at the 4th TravTalk Digital Conclave on June 9, 2020, Meenakshi Sharma, Director General, Ministry of Tourism, said that one of the biggest challenges they faced as the government was with the unorganised workforce. She said, “This sector has no structure and they are not part of any regulation. This pandemic has shown us that the way we are doing things is not the best. We need to have more cross collection of data. We should have a structure to deal with the problems without making it regulatory. One thing we must have, and the industry agrees, is to be able to support without having the regulation. In any industry, a lot of engagement with the government comes with its partnership on regulation. This is not good for a sector which is ever-changing.”

A day after Yatra Online announced to terminate the merger agreement,  Ebix Inc, who was supposed to acquire the online travel company has issued a statement where it has expressed its strong disagreement with the allegations set forth by Yatra. Ebix intends to enforce all of its rights under the Merger agreement and is currently considering all options, including a countersuit against Yatra, on account of multiple breaches of the merger agreement. In the statement, Ebix said, “On May 14, 2020, Yatra Online, Inc., a Cayman Islands exempted company limited by shares (“Yatra”), entered into an agreement (the “Fourth Extension Agreement”) with Ebix, Inc. (“Ebix”) extending the outside date of the Merger Agreement (the “Merger Agreement”), dated July 16, 2019, by and between Yatra, Ebix and EbixCash Travels Inc., a direct, wholly-owned subsidiary of Ebix (“Merger Sub”) to June 4, 2020 (the “Outside Date”). The Merger Agreement contained certain termination rights for Ebix and Yatra, including, among others, the right of either party to terminate the Merger Agreement if the Merger has not been consummated on or prior to the Outside Date. The Outside Date was extended to June 4, 2020, in order to provide the parties with time to determine whether they could reach mutual agreement on an amendment of certain terms of the Merger Agreement. After the expiration of the Outside Date and the failure of the two parties to agree on the terms of an amended Merger Agreement by the Outside Date, Yatra terminated the Merger Agreement on June 5, 2020, and filed suit against Ebix in the Delaware Court of Chancery for breach of contract. Ebix worked diligently to fulfil its obligations under the Merger Agreement …

Virgin Atlantic has announced its plan to restart passenger flying, with services from London Heathrow to Orlando, Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York JFK and Los Angeles set to resume from 20th and 21st July 2020. As countries around the world start to relax travel restrictions, Virgin Atlantic will resume some routes on 20th July, while steadily increasing passenger flying throughout the second half of 2020, with a further, gradual recovery through 2021 in line with customer demand. On this Juha Jarvinen, Chief Commercial Officer, Virgin Atlantic said, “As the CVOID-19 crisis stabilises and demand slowly returns, we are looking forward to welcoming our customers back onboard and flying them safely to their favourite destinations. To ensure the health and safety of our customers and our people, we’re introducing new measures at every point in the journey to offer peace of mind when taking to the skies with us.” “Our planned first flights will be to Orlando and Hong Kong on the 20th July, however, we are monitoring external conditions extremely closely, in particular the travel restrictions many countries have in place including the 14-day quarantine policy for travellers entering the UK. We know that as the Covid-19 crisis subsides, air travel will be a vital enabler of the UK’s economic recovery. Therefore, we are calling for a multi-layered approach of carefully targeted public health and screening measures, which will allow for a successful and safe restart of international air travel for passengers and businesses. We are planning to announce more destination restart dates in the next two weeks for the month of August.” Virgin Atlantic planned return to flying from London Heathrow Terminal 2* Flights will be loaded into systems …