Tag Archives: Mercury Travels

Mercury Travels, based in Mumbai and Leisure Corp from Delhi has been acquired by one of the Indian subsidiaries of Ebix. Agreements have been signed for a cumulative amount of approximately $14.2 million. The acquisition has been done with an aim to create a new travel division by Ebix, which will focus on a niche segment of the travel market, and the new Travel Exchange will be called Mercury – An EbixCash Luxury initiative, to be headed by Leisure Corp Founder Naveen Kundu. The Mercury Exchange will have three tightly integrated components— Mercury Travel’s entire corporate, leisure & adventure related travel business with the exception of its Forex business; Leisure Corp’s entire sports and events related travel business (MICE) and Via.com’s events based travel business (MICE). Naveen Kundu will hold 15 per cent of shares in the new entity, while Ebix will have a controlling 85 per cent share in the venture. Mercury’s Forex business will be integrated into EbixCash’s existing CDL Forex exchange business. Ebix is an international supplier of on-demand software and E-commerce services to the insurance, financial, healthcare and e-learning industries.

India is the eighth best source market for Tourism Australia, said Nishant Kashikar, Country Manager, India & Gulf, Tourism Australia. He added, “We crossed the 200,000 arrivals landmark in 2015, A$ 1 billion spend, and improved our ranking to be the eighth-largest inbound market for Australia from 11th rank in 2014. The Tourism Forecasting Committee (TFC) is predicting 245,000 visitors from India for 2015-16 and a 12 per cent increase over 2014-15.” There were 187,000 visitors from India in the first 10 months of 2015, bringing the total for the year-ended October 2015 to 2,27,000; an increase of 18 per cent relative to the same period last year. For the year ended September 2015, Indian visitors contributed A$ 1.1 billion to the Australian economy; an increase of solid 34% over the previous year. Tourism Australia has unveiled its latest advertising campaign in collaboration with its key distribution partners – Cox & Kings, Mercury Travels, Kesari, MakeMyTrip, Yatra, TUI, Vacations Exotica, Kulin Kumar Holidays and SOTC. The integrated advertising campaign will retain the brand theme ‘There’s Nothing like Australia’ and put the spotlight on the country’s attractions.