Category Archives: Exhibitions

GPS has partnered with EASEBUZZ to bring a contactless payment collection solution for travel agencies, with payment link and payment gateway options available free of cost and with competitive TDR rates. Solutions like webstore and invoicing will also be offered, and agents can get activated and start collecting payments within 24 hours and with minimum documentation.

IFTM Top Resa will now be held from 17 to 20 November 2020 in Pavilion 1 of Porte de Versailles. Explaining the reason of pushing back the annual event by two months, Frédéric LORIN, Trade Show Director, says, “After this unparalleled crisis, we believe more than ever that it is essential to bring together professionals from the tourism industry.At the same time, as organisers, IFTM Top Resa must be able to provide a safe and stress-free environment for the trade show. We contacted around one hundred of our institutional partners and loyal exhibitors to listen carefully to their expectations and needs, and think about practical possibilities. Around 95% of them requested that the trade show be postponed until November; most producers and tourist destinations need time to work on their offerings, as many of them have been reduced to part-time work, following a 3-month lockdown and a huge slowdown in their business. More generally, everyone in the industry wants more time before financially committing to attending the trade show. I am delighted to officially announce that this essential event will be taking place – it is the only annual trade show in France that brings together all segments of this industry that has been so heavily impacted by the crisis –  with a focus on returning to business as usual in 2021.” The show this year will propose 10 separate zones (Africa, the Americas, Asia & Pacific, Caribbean, Destination France, Europe & Mediterranean, Generalists, Middle East, Indian Ocean, Tech Zone) and 10 thematic villages (Coach Operators, Business Travel, Parks, Cruises, Networks, Tour Operators, Mountain, and Influencers, Innovation and Start-up in the Tech Zone). IFTM Top Resa has already worked on …

An international convention centre ‘Rudraksh’ is being built with Indo-Japan collaboration in Varanasi, which is part of 100 major projects within the financial out flow of around Rs.8000 crores being undertaken in the city. Other projects include hospital buildings, national waterways, ring roads, by-pass, etc. The same was revealed in a statement by Prime Minister’s Office, where the PM reviewed development in Varanasi, which is his parliamentary constituency.

Having updated its event calendar for 2020-2021, PATA has announced that the upcoming PATA Travel Mart 2020, originally to be held in Leshan, Sichuan, China from September 3-6, will now be organised as a virtual event in late September of this year. The event, held in in conjunction with the Sichuan International Tourism Expo and with the support of the Leshan Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau, will include webinars, virtual exhibition space and one-on-one virtual meetings.

Rajeev Jain, Director, Rashi Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, has said that after reading the ‘Atmanirbhar’ presentation by Hon. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, he has a couple of humble wish list for the government. He says, “Our FM has stated that all tenders below Rs 200 crore will be executed by Indian companies only. This is a good decision and will definitely increase our economic power. But I feel all government events should be done by Indian agencies only. Further, the Central government should allocate resources to state governments annually to conduct events for public awareness and welfare, and these should be executed locally. I believe 2021 will be the silver lining of the dark clouds for the entire industry.”  

After receiving overwhelming response in the first three editions of its digital conclave, TravTalk is back with its Digital Conclave 4.0, which is scheduled to take place on 9th June where attendees can learn about reducing fear and establishing confidence in the tourism landscape again. The theme of the conclave is based on re-engineering tourism and will feature speakers such as Meenakshi Sharma, DG, Tourism, Government of India, Arjun Sharma, Chairman, Select Group and other during the course of three sessions starting at 10 am. The first session is titled as ‘Building and Enabling Tourism: What will the Restart Look like? The second session is based on ‘Revenge Tourism- When do we Restart’, while the third one is named as ‘PPP based, India Tourism Board? A practical vision for the future’. These sessions include eminent speakers such as EM Najeeb, Kamal Hingorani, Guldeep Singh Sahni, Riaz Munshi, Sunil VA and Arif Patel.

Tim Clark, President, Emirates, has said that the UAE flagship carrier could take around four years to resume flying to its entire network. The airline has grounded passenger flights owing to the Coronavirus pandemic and has only operated a few flights since then. “I think probably by the year 2022/23, 2023/24 we will see things coming back to some degree of normality and Emirates will be operating its network as it was and hopefully as successfully as it was,” Clark said in an interview at ATM Virtual 2020. Clark further added that the airline can activate its fleet within 48 hours if they must, but he feels domestic and international flights will start looking up only fort quarter 2021 once global inoculation starts. He doesn’t expect corporate or business travel will go down.

Global Panorama Showcase (GPS) will be held virtually across the world this year. GPS Virtual will be held at a global stage in July or August, instead of physically going to different Tier II, III cities because of the COVID-19 crisis. Harmandeep Singh Anand, MD, GPS, revealed that the event will be attended by around 10,000 people and that it will be an annual feature apart from the physical event, which will be further fine-tuned. “We have developed the technology to host the virtual event. In fact, we already had the tool in place. There will be around 200 exhibitors, which would come from India and across the world. The prices will be competitive and GPS members would also be benefit,” he shared.

A survey conducted by SOTC Travel to understand the M!CE plans of key corporates in India reveals that 39% of the respondents said their M!CE budgets would remain unaltered. This spells well for the M!CE sector which is directly influenced by the business health of corporates. The survey also suggests that 32% of the respondents pegged August to September as the right time to restart discussions and operations on M!CE, more than half (or 55%) felt the right time for this would be between October and December.

Speaking from the corporate’s perspective during the 3rd TravTalk digital Conclave, Rajdev Bhattacharya, General Manager, Global Travel & Hospitality Services and Way2go, Digital Operations & Platforms for Wipro Limited said, “Virtual meetings are here to stay. Corporates will cut down on international travel in the short term, at least till April 2021, and airfares will go up as well. A lot of factors are fluid at this point of time but we can be sure that corporates will not buy travel the same way as before. To be able to cater to this, travel companies will definitely have to relook at the mix of people they will hire, depending on their skill sets. The entire travel industry is going to move to IT. They will also have to learn how to close deals on the phone. We will need to change the narrative of the crisis. The mindset is important. We are going to look at 2020 and say that it made us more resilient.”