Tag Archives: New Delhi

HeyBnb (HeyBednBreakfast), a global company in the short stay accommodation space, has announced its entry into India with presence in cities like New Delhi, Bengaluru, Goa and Cochin. Headquartered in Singapore, the company works on the concept of shared economy of home sharing concept. It provides an online marketplace connecting hosts who want to make their extra rooms available and travelers who are looking for comfortable yet affordable short-term accommodations. Commenting on this, Kenny Blatt, Co-Founder, Head strategy, HeyBnb said, “We at HeyBnb are bullish about our expansion plans and we want to rope in as many guests & hosts as possible. We are focusing largely on key cities across Asia, Europe, US and Australia. In India alone, we started our operations this year with 17 cities and expect to increase our room count to 60,000 by end-October. The global size of the vacation stay market is expected to reach $170 billion by 2019, out of which five players own less than 10 per cent share, namely Home Away, Airbnb, VRBO, One Fine Stay and Tujian.”

Come August, TravelShop Turkey is organising workshops for the travel trade in New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, and Bengaluru. The 6-city workshop will begin with New Delhi on August 1, then move to Ahmedabad (August 2), Mumbai (August 3), Kolkata (August 4), Chennai (August 5), and Bengaluru (August 6). The workshops will showcase Turkey’s latest programs for the Indian market. Participants will also get an oopportunity to learn how to sell Turkey as destination, meet with Culture & Tourism Counsellor, TST staff, Turkish Airlines staff, meet with Turkish hotels, and win free Fam trips all around Turkey. “As we know Indian market is very sensitive, specially for food, jain, veg and non veg. thats why it would be good for you to come and get the latest information for visa, payment methods, guides, itineraries, activities, night life and transportation,” said Murtaza Kalender, General Director, TravelShop Turkey.

Dubai Tourism conducted a cruise tourism roadshow in New Delhi on July 21, 2016. The 6-city roadshow aims at fostering a close working relationship with key members of the Indian travel fraternity. Speaking at the roadshow, Jamal Humaid Al Falasi, Director, Cruise Tourism, said, “This is our second roadshow in India. Last year we did the roadshow in three cities, but since we see a huge demand from India, this year we are doing it in six cities. This would allow us to have more passengers opting for cruises from Dubai. The number of cruise tourists to Dubai has increased substantially over the years. From 6904 tourists in 2001, we recorded 463,055 cruise tourists in 2015 and are aiming to 1 million by 2020. India’s ranking as a cruise source market for Dubai was 21 in 2013 and it came to 14 in 2015.” The participating cruise companies included MSC Cruises; Costa Cruises and Royal Caribbean Cruises represented by Tirun Travel Marketing in India. Carl Vaz, Director, Dubai Tourism–India, said, “This time we are travelling to six cities for the Dubai Cruise Tourism Roadshow—Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Mumbai. We’ve been very fortunate in 2015 to have 1.6 million Indian overnight  visitors in Dubai, these include hotel and hotel apartments guests as well.”

Asiana Airlines is expanding its non-stop Incheon (Seoul) to New Delhi flight from three to five times a week starting July 3, 2016. The airline flies an Airbus 300-330 on this route with a configuration of 30 business class seats and 260 travel class seats. The flight on DEL-ICN route will operate every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday, whereas the ICN-DEL  flight will be operational on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. This additional flight demonstrates both the growing market for leisure and business travelers as well as Asiana Airlines ongoing commitment to expanding connectivity between Korea and India.

National carrier, Air India has become the first airline to launch self check-in kiosks for its domestic fliers that aims to make the check-in process expeditious. The exclusive service presently covers 26 domestic centers at Aurangabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Calicut, Coimbatore, Cochin, Chennai, Goa, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Jamnagar, Jodhpur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Nagpur, New Delhi, Mumbai, Mangalore, Raipur, Rajkot, Trivandrum, Udaipur, Visakhapatnam and Varanasi. Under this initiative, started on May 1, 2016, customers can procure the boarding pass by using the self-check-in kiosks also known as CUSS (Common Use Self Service) near the check-in area at the airport.

India’s low-cost airline GoAir has introduced two new flights from Patna to New Delhi and Bengaluru. The airline discontinued its Patna-Kolkata service and introduced these routes. According to Santosh Kumar, Assistant General Manager – Air Traffic Management, Patna airport, “The proposal submitted to director general of civil aviation (DGCA) was for additional eight flights. However, a few operators later withdrew their proposals.” With the introduction of the new routes, the Patna airport now operates 42 flights daily.

A total of 1,17, 210 tourists arrived in February 2016 on e-Tourist Visa (eTV) as compared to 24,985 during the month of February 2015 registering a growth of 369.1%. The growth could be attributed to the extension of e-Tourist Visa for 150 countries as against the earlier coverage of 43 countries. UK continues to occupy top slot for countries availing eTV facility with 27.86% of total arrivals. This is followed by USA (13.85%) and France (8.08%) amongst the countries availing E-tourist Visa facility during February 2016. New Delhi gets the maximum percentage share of tourist arrivals, receiving 40.96% of total arrivals in the country, followed by Mumbai Airport (20.62%), Goa Airport (13.42%), Chennai Airport (6.19%), Bengaluru Airport (5.42%), Kochi Airport (3.44%), Kolkata Airport (2.50%), Trivandrum Airport (1.88%,) Hyderabad Airport (1.86%) and Ahmadabad Airport (1.58%).

Visit Scotland gathered its top tour operators and travel trade associations for a roundtable discussion in Mumbai on the sidelines of its three-city roadshow to help push numbers and get feedback from them. Explaining the reason behind this initiative, Vineet Lal, Senior Market Manager (Long Haul & Emerging Markets), Visit Scotland, said, “We along with Etihad Airways met a lot of our top trade partners and travel trade associations in Mumbai to look at how we can increase the volume and value of the Indian market to Scotland. A lot of the conclusions were around the ability to communicate what Scotland has to offer, communicating Scotland’s top experiences and also working on a program of education both in Scotland and in India so that people on both sides understand how to do business with each other.” The Visit Scotland delegation, that includes seven Scottish suppliers, is in India on its India Business Development Mission to encourage the development of Scotland products among the travel trade in India. It was in Mumbai on February 22 and will travel to Chandigarh on February 23-24, followed by New Delhi on February 25-26. Mumbai saw around 100 attendees at Scotland workshop and around 50 at the networking dinner.

Delhi Tourism will organise the 29th Garden Tourism Festival from 19-21 February, 2016, at The Garden of Five Senses, New Delhi. The three day extravaganza will showcase variety of flora and fauna to charm garden enthusiasts. The major participants during the festival are the horticulture departments of NDMC, DDA, DJB, SDMC, EDMC, HUDA, Noida Authority, Northern Railways and others. With the theme “Garden for Environment and Health,” the main objective of this year’s festival is to encourage visitors to contribute in the cause for protection of environment as it is directly related to their own health. Soumya Gupta, Managing Director and CEO of DTTDC, says, “Special transport will be arranged from the nearest metro station to provide seamless experience to the visitors. A number of elements have been included to increase the number of visitors to the festival.” The festival will showcase terrariums, 3 day non-stop musical extravaganza, workshops, lectures, plays on environment and horticulture, cultural programmes in association with Sahitya Kala Parishad, Hindi Academy etc. A food festival to savor the taste of Delhi’s delicacies, activities like magic show, adventure activities will also be organised.

Indonesia received approximately 262,000 Indian arrivals in 2015, and are aiming for 350,000 this year, announced H.E. Rizali Wilmar Indrakesuma, Ambassador of Indonesia to India during the U&I Holidays Bali roadshow in New Delhi. The first day of the first ever 5-city roadshow saw the presence of 23 participants from Bali out of which 21 hotel properties, an Indian restaurant and the Bali Zoo were available to interact with guests and give out information. “We are here to promote Bali and to increase awareness about the variety of products Bali is well-known for,” said Shyam Upadhyay, Director, U&I Holidays. He furthered announced that the DMC would be launching their online portal this year. The roadshow began in Delhi on Feb 5, and will go on to Chennai on Feb 8, Bengaluru on Feb 9, Ahmedabad on Feb 11 and Mumbai on Feb 12, respectively.