Tag Archives: TAAI

The two biggest travel trade associations in India, the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) and the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI), in co-ordination with IATA, will be coming together to conduct joint training workshops in 16 cities starting from September 14 and ending on September 29, 2016. This will not just be for its members but for all IATA agents as well. These three-hour sessions aim to improve the participant’s overall understanding about the latest development and impending changes in the billing and settlement reports used in BSP. Interested agents are requested to register latest by September 9, 2016 to participate. Registration will  be limited to two representatives per agency. BSP India is scheduled to migrate its billing software to IATA’s single global software – IBSPs. This joint effort is aimed at getting all IATA-accredited agencies in India to get familiar with the new BSP reports.

The Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) has finally frozen on the venue and dates for its 63rd convention. Sunil Kumar, President, TAAI, revealed, “We have decided on Abu Dhabi as the venue for our next convention that will be held from October 14-16, 2016. We are in the process of blocking air seats now. It is one of the strongest destinations in the Middle East region and also an easy place to reach from India. “We want a strong convention this year with a strong focus, for our members as well as our partners. We will focus on both inbound as well as outbound. We are amidst signing contracts for this right now and have blocked rooms and convention space at the grandiose Emirates Palace,” he said. The team is now working on the convention theme, logistics and other details.

The Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) will be coming up with an web portal to provide an online selling platform to its members. Marzban Antia, Vice President, TAAI, said, “Small agents cannot afford a website or a travel portal. Hence, we at TAAI are forming a TAAI portal, under the proprietorship of the association, which will bring around 100-1000 agents together. When these many agents will be selling their products on that forum, it will certainly give a jerk to many existing OTAs. It’s in a very initial stage as of now, but once it is out it will empower many small agents.”

The Travel Agents Association of India has relaxed its rules for Active Category Membership and will be offering active membership to all IATA affiliated agents with or without having completed a year from the company operations. This was decided at the recently held TAAI Managing Committee Meeting, where it was discussed that in order to increase the Active Category Membership of our esteemed Association, prospective members who have got IATA can immediately apply for Active Category Membership With TAAI within one year itself and no need to complete one year from the company operations. According to a statement from TAAI, while applying for new Active Category Membership With TAAI, such members can attach the financial documents which they had submitted to IATA along with the other relevant documents pertaining to new membership.

The Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) held an interactive meeting with a number of airlines in New Delhi to address the issues of its members. The interactive meeting saw in attendance representatives from all the major airlines including Air India, Lufthansa, Emirates, Etihad, Malaysian Airlines, Thai Airways, Singapore Airlines, Oman Air, Air Cananda, Jet Airways as well as IATA and the GDS’s as well. TAAI, along with its members had put forth the issues like web parity; credit card acceptance, service tax, unethical practices by OTAs etc. and extended a hand to the airlines to come to a solution for these. Marzban Antia, Vice President, TAAI, said, “This being the inaugural meeting of TAAI with the airlines. After this we will have independent meetings with all of them. We at TAAI are being very aggressive and have taken a number of initiatives for our members, and this is another step in the direction of empowering our members.”

Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) Northern Region members are going to Colombo, Sri Lanka from July 8-11, 2016, for their monthly meeting, reveals Rajan Sehgal, President, TAAI-NR. “We are taking a total of 60 members from the Northern Region to Colombo, Sri Lanka, for our monthly meeting. We will be meeting the hotel associations as well as the Sri Lanka Tourism Board to educate our members about the destination. This will be followed by an excursion to casinos and other attractions in the city,” he said.

Sunil Kumar, President of the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) has revealed that the association has met and proposed to the Ministry of Tourism in Delhi to create a specialist programme for India for its inbound and domestic tour operator members. He said, “We have suggested to the MOT to create a programme called ‘India Specialist’ for our members like we have done for other countries like Turkey and South Africa. We have spoken to the Tourism Secretary Vinod Zutshi about this. We will send a detailed white paper proposal to the ministry and expect an agreement and confirmation to follow once the government has approved the programme. Since TAAI is the only travel trade association with 20 regional units with over 2300 members, we will be able to train around 2,000 agents and operators at one go. We want to launch this in a few months as government procedures take time. We have to set up the curriculum for this and invite the MoT to extend their blessings to us and certify this programme.” He added that TAAI will launch this in phases.

A national conference is going to be held jointly by IATO, TAAI, TAFI, ATOAI, FHRAI, and ICPB, on January 10, 2017. Subhash Goyal, Immediate Past President, IATO, informed that he has been elected as the Chairman of the Conference which will be called ‘Incredible India Calling’. Goyal also said, “We have requested the honourable Minister of Tourism to write to the Prime Minister to finalise the date. We are expecting around 15,000-20,000 people to attend the conference which will be the mother of all conferences. We hope it to be a grand success.”

Four members of the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) Managing Committee met in Mumbai yesterday to review  applications received by the association from its members for the Joint Bank Guarantee (JBG) Scheme. Sunil Kumar, President, TAAI, said, “We have received over 130 applications from members who are keen to join the guarantee.” Among the Office Bearers present were Marzban Antia, TAAI’s Vice President; Lokesh Bettaiah, TAAI’s Secretary General; and Imtiaz Qureshi, TAAI’s MC member who looks after Legal. Bettaiah added, “We are scrutinising each and every application received from 20 regions and chapters across India and the TAAI auditors will come out with a final list by May 20. After that, we will send them to IATA who will conduct their own verifications. We do multi-level checks and follow stringent procedures, which take a lot of time. It’s a huge responsibility on us to pick the right members. We will need to submit these applications to IATA by July 1, 2016. There has been a good response for it this year. TAAI has been successful in managing this scheme earlier as well and lot of members have benefitted from this scheme monetarily as well as for smoother day-to-day business as far as capping issues are concerned. If anyone else is interested to join, they can do so the following year.”

Highly dissatisfied with the Union Budget,  Sunil Kumar, President, Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI), says tourism has been again been put on the back burner. “It is a big tragedy for an industry that has so much to offer many countries of the world. Wonder when India will consider this industry as an important economic success strategy.” Kumar reiterates that the budget does not meet up to the expectations of the industry, which has been projecting innovation with wide reforms and a more dynamic India. “There were expectations on Service Tax reliefs; boost to tourism sector; incentives for foreign exchange earnings, and these appear to have missed out. The income tax relief should have been on most classes, but is only done for lower slabs. The focus on Voluntary Disclosure is not too strategic and may not yield good results. Whatever must happen in the areas of travel, tourism and aviation, will not be dependent on this budget at all. In fact, the new 0.5% cess is going to add liability to all. The new budget has hardly any positive impact on our industry, which is sad,” he says. “For Travel industry to grow, especially during a time when the challenges are too many and the industry does require a boost, government must address the issues concerned, including sustainability. For this industry being a very large employer of people and generator of huge revenues for government in the form of taxes, government’s attention is rather disappointing,” Kumar added. Unless the government firmly reviews the challenges of all stakeholders in this industry, it will not be able to support the growth that is available in plenty. The TAAI President says …