Volume VII l Issue 1 Pages 32 www.travelnewsdigest.in `50 / US $5 16-30 NOVEMBER 2017 Posted at NDPSO, New Delhi - 110001 on 5/6 & 20/21 of every month | Date of Publication 01/02 &15/16 every month | Postal Registration No. DL(S) - 01/3404/2015-17 | RNI No. DELENG/2011/40217 BLTM records 75% increase in new corporate buyers S ince its debut last year, BLTM has been very well received as India’s first full-fledged travel mart focused on sellers from business, MICE and luxury travel from all over the world. This year’s BLTM recorded an increase of 75% in new corporate buyers and 80% in new hosted buyers from travel trade. Over 250 highly qualified corporate and travel trade buyers, wedding planners and MICE planners from all over India vastly improved upon a 2:1 buyer to seller ratio this year, benchmarking BLTM with the best in class MICE focused trade fair. Hosted buyers at BLTM included corporate travel planners with purchasing authority, travel companies catering to business, leisure, MICE and luxury travel, MICE travel managers and buyers, MICE organisers and managers, business travel managers and buyers, film destination companies, associations, wedding planners and event management companies such as Music Broadcast, Alkem Laboratories Limited, Tenova India, Magma Fincorp, Tata Technologies, Amazon Development Centre India, ICICI Prudential Life, D-Link India, BCD Meetings and Events, Crowley Accord Marine Management, LIC of India, Adani Wilmar, Perkin Elmer India, H & R Johnson, Schueco India, Khaitan & Co, Colliers International, Axis Bank, Pernod Ricard, Gammon India, Corporate Events (I), IDBI Federal Life Insurance and many more. There were 150 individual sellers from more than 50 organisations from India and abroad, such as Taj Hotels, Palaces, Resorts and Safaris, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Air India, Air Arabia, Andaz Delhi, Ethiopian Airlines, Leisure Hotels, Pride Group of Hotels, The Fern Hotels & Resorts, Trulyy India Hotels and Resorts, KAP Computer Solutions, Dee Empresa Hotel, The Residency Group of Hotels, Vivada Corporation, Landscape Safari, India Tourism, Taiwan Tourism Bureau, Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, Royal Retreat, Westin and Le Meridien Bahrain City Centre, Abhiwadan Expedition Holidays, Hola China (Shanghai) Int’l Travel Service, etc. Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, with 11 local suppliers as co-participants was extremely satisfied with the outcome. Their Chairman, Prema Cooray was quoted saying that they achieved on the first day itself, what they set out to do in the span of two days! “This was my first time at BLTM and the two days at this trade fair were very hectic and result-oriented. We encountered so many sellers and we also did a number of meetings which helped us in networking with potential buyers here at BLTM,” he said. Taiwan, Korea, Bahrain and Peru were among the other National Tourist Organisations (NTOs) which participated at BLTM. Taiwan had a larger booth this time as compared to the last year. They had six Taiwanese suppliers and a ‘Guzheng’ (ancient Chinese music instrument) player, flown in from Taipei especially to entertain the buyers at BLTM. Peru and Bahrain were the first-timers in the show and were enthusiastic about their participation. Luis M Cabello, Trade Councillor of Peru, remarked, “It has been an amazing experience to associate with Fairfest Media and participate in BLTM. I would recommend this show to everyone who wants to explore MICE and luxury segment here in India.” Among the Indian State Tourism Boards, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal and Punjab were the feature states which participated in a big way. Sellers from all parts of India were represented. Shivdular Singh Dhillon, Special Secretary and Director, Punjab Heritage and Tourism Promotion Board (PHTPB), said, “The online meeting diary feature of BLTM was very well conceptualised in a very user-friendly manner. I will surely recommend this focussed trade mart to other people in the industry as well.” In another first this year, most of the suppliers at BLTM were accommodated within the event venue - Hyatt Regency, creating greater opportunities to network with the hosted buyers. The maiden launch of hi-tech and user-friendly online meeting diary system by the organisers – Fairfest Media, attracted rave reviews for further easing the buyer and seller matchmaking and appointment process. The Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE) was the Knowledge Partner at BLTM while Institutional Partners included Network of Indian MICE Agents (NIMA), Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI), Enterprising Travel Agents Association (ETAA), Association of Domestic Tour Operators of India Business and Luxury Travel Mart (BLTM) held at Hyatt Regency Gurgaon from October 26-27, 2017 garnered good response in its second year. 150 individual sellers in 50 destination pavilions and stands met over 250 qualified hosted buyers, by appointment. Sri Lanka Convention Bureau participated for the first time, with one of the largest pavilions in the show, with a dozen co-participants. 1,494 business meetings as per pre-scheduled and spot appointments were conducted between the buyers and sellers. Contd. on page 2 INDIA 13 ASIA 18 EUROPE 21 MIDDLE EAST 20 AMERICAS 23 CARIBBEAN 25 TECHNOLOGY 27 FILM TOURISM 30 EVENTS 28 OCEANIA 24 GLOBAL 26 AFRICA 22 RESPONSIBLE TOURISM 29
Transcript
Volume Vii l issue 1 Pages 32 www.travelnewsdigest.in `50 / us $5 16-30 nOVemBeR 2017
Posted at NDPSO, New Delhi - 110001 on 5/6 & 20/21 of every month | Date of Publication 01/02 &15/16 every month | Postal Registration No. DL(S) - 01/3404/2015-17 | RNI No. DELENG/2011/40217
BLTM records 75% increase in new corporate buyers
Since its debut last year, BLTM has been very well received as India’s first full-fledged travel mart focused on sellers from business, MICE and
luxury travel from all over the world. This year’s BLTM recorded an increase of 75% in new corporate buyers and 80% in new hosted buyers from travel trade. Over 250 highly qualified corporate and travel trade buyers, wedding planners and MICE planners from all over India vastly improved upon a 2:1 buyer to seller ratio this year, benchmarking BLTM with the best in class MICE focused trade fair.
Hosted buyers at BLTM included corporate travel planners with purchasing authority, travel companies catering to business, leisure, MICE and luxury travel, MICE travel managers and buyers, MICE organisers and managers, business travel managers and buyers, film destination companies, associations, wedding planners and event management companies such as Music Broadcast, Alkem Laboratories Limited, Tenova India, Magma Fincorp, Tata Technologies, Amazon Development Centre India, ICICI Prudential Life, D-Link India, BCD Meetings and Events, Crowley Accord Marine Management, LIC of India, Adani Wilmar, Perkin Elmer India, H & R Johnson, Schueco India, Khaitan & Co, Colliers International, Axis Bank, Pernod Ricard, Gammon India, Corporate Events (I), IDBI Federal Life Insurance and many more.
There were 150 individual sellers from more than 50 organisations from India and abroad, such as Taj Hotels, Palaces, Resorts and Safaris, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Air India, Air Arabia, Andaz Delhi, Ethiopian Airlines, Leisure Hotels, Pride Group of Hotels, The Fern Hotels & Resorts, Trulyy India Hotels and Resorts, KAP Computer Solutions, Dee Empresa Hotel, The Residency Group of Hotels, Vivada Corporation, Landscape Safari, India Tourism, Taiwan Tourism Bureau, Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, Royal Retreat, Westin and Le Meridien Bahrain City Centre, Abhiwadan Expedition Holidays, Hola China (Shanghai) Int’l Travel Service, etc.
Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, with 11 local suppliers as co-participants was extremely satisfied with the outcome. Their Chairman, Prema Cooray was quoted saying that they achieved on the first day itself, what they set out to do in the span of two days! “This was my first time at BLTM and the two days at this trade fair were very hectic and result-oriented. We encountered so many sellers and we also did a number of meetings which helped us in networking with potential buyers here at BLTM,” he said.
Taiwan, Korea, Bahrain and Peru were among the other National Tourist Organisations (NTOs) which participated at BLTM. Taiwan had a larger booth this time as compared to the last year. They had six
Taiwanese suppliers and a ‘Guzheng’ (ancient Chinese music instrument) player, flown in from Taipei especially to entertain the buyers at BLTM.
Peru and Bahrain were the first-timers in the show and were enthusiastic about their participation. Luis M Cabello, Trade Councillor of Peru, remarked, “It has been an amazing experience to associate with Fairfest Media and participate in BLTM. I would recommend this show to everyone who wants to explore MICE and luxury segment here in India.”
Among the Indian State Tourism Boards, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal and Punjab were the feature states which participated in a big way. Sellers from all parts of India were represented. Shivdular Singh Dhillon, Special Secretary and Director, Punjab Heritage and Tourism Promotion Board (PHTPB), said, “The online meeting diary feature of BLTM was very well conceptualised in a very user-friendly manner. I will surely recommend this focussed trade mart to other people in the industry as well.”
In another first this year, most of the suppliers at BLTM were accommodated within the event venue - Hyatt Regency, creating greater opportunities to network with the hosted buyers. The maiden launch of hi-tech and user-friendly online meeting diary system by the organisers – Fairfest Media, attracted rave reviews for further easing the buyer and seller matchmaking and appointment process.
The Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE) was the Knowledge Partner at BLTM while Institutional Partners included Network of Indian MICE Agents (NIMA), Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI), Enterprising Travel Agents Association (ETAA), Association of Domestic Tour Operators of India
Business and Luxury Travel Mart (BLTM) held at Hyatt Regency Gurgaon from October 26-27, 2017 garnered good response in its second year. 150 individual sellers in 50 destination pavilions and stands met over 250 qualified hosted buyers, by appointment. Sri Lanka Convention Bureau participated for the first time, with one of the largest pavilions in the show, with a dozen co-participants. 1,494 business meetings as per pre-scheduled and spot appointments were conducted between the buyers and sellers.
Contd. on page 2
INDIA 13 AsIA 18 europe 21mIDDle eAst 20 AmerIcAs 23 cArIbbeAN 25 techNology 27 fIlm tourIsm 30eveNts 28oceANIA 24 globAl 26AfrIcA 22 respoNsIble tourIsm 29
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 2 • COVER STORY
(ADTOI) and wedding planning portal - WedWise. Air India and Ethiopian Airlines were the partner airlines for BLTM.
“BLTM has ensured a unique platform for the stakeholders in the MICE and luxury travel segment. It has filled a much needed gap and the show is exactly what I was looking for. BLTM brings everything under one roof and it is the best trade show to boost one’s business,” mentioned a hosted buyer.
Xavier Peres, Managing Partner, Speedbird Travels, a seller from Goa mentioned, “The experience has been good for us as the footfall was overwhelming. BLTM is a good platform to garner new business and clients as it caters to luxury and MICE travel demands. This time as well the quality of buyers was good and we’re hoping to do business with them soon.”
Sri Lanka Convention Bureau organised the networking luncheon on the first day, preceded with a presentation that was appreciated by all.
Goa Evening - a cultural event showcasing the local Goan dance and music, followed by cocktails and dinner which was organised courtesy Goa Tourism Development Corporation. Many buyers and sellers
joined the dance floor. BLTM is organised by Fairfest Media Ltd., India’s
oldest and the leading travel trade show organisers since 1989. Fairfest also organises OTM, India’s largest travel mart with more than 1000 exhibitors from 50 countries and TTF is organised in nine cities every year.
For more information visit: www.bltm.co.in.
BLTM is aimed at filling a vacuum in India, with a sustained large format show focused on business and MICE travel. It is one of its kind where hosted buyers meet sellers based on pre-scheduled as well as on the spot appointments. Smaller table-top shows have been organised in the past, but they failed to do justice to the branding and privacy needs of the discerning sellers. With a yet another successful year, BLTM has been firmly established as the preferred MICE exhibition of India, with many more countries, hotels and states already looking forward to participate the next year too.
executivesKomal SolankiKhushbu ThakkarPriya DasPriyanka MandalKiran M
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TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 4 • COVER STORY
This was my first time at BLTM and I was really impressed by the dedication of the people around and the organisers. Many
countries have participated, and Peru, Korea and Ethiopia have come from so far just to attend the show. BLTM has played a vital role in placing India on the map of MICE and luxury tourism. I wish BLTM grows from strength to strength in the coming years.
VAssiLis skROniAsPlenipotentiary Ministry, Embassy of Greece
This was my first time at BLTM and the two days at this were very hectic. This year’s BLTM was loaded with new features as
well, amongst which the onsite buyer-seller meeting gave us a lot of exposure as a destination. Overall, our participation at BLTM was a grand success and we are looking forward to taking part in the future BLTMs as well.
PRemA COORAyChairman, Sri Lanka Convention Bureau
The USP of BLTM is that it is meant for meeting corporates and the direct interaction with the buyers adds more value. The
buyer’s pool at this year’s BLTM was evenly spread and we had a mix of buyers. The online meeting diary feature of BLTM was very well put together and the idea behind it was very well received. I will surely recommend BLTM to other people in the industry.
sHiVDuLAR singH DHiLLOn, iAsSpecial Secretary cum Director, Department of Tourism Punjab
This was our second time at BLTM and in the two days time, I observed that many people visited our stall and it was very
well received by the visitors.Taiwan is a new destination in the Indian market and BLTM was a great platform to showcase our tourism products. BLTM was a great show and I am very keen to visit BLTM again.
TRusT H.J. LinDirector, Taiwan Tourism Bureau
This was my first time at BLTM and Ethiopian Airlines had a very good association with BLTM. The event has set very
high standards and I am very keen to attend the future editions of BLTM. The online meeting diary feature of BLTM too was very user-friendly. I want to congratulate the organisers on executing such a focused show.
kiRuBeL sHiTAHunTraffic and Sales Manager, Ethiopian Airlines
It is our first participation in India as well as in BLTM. We are eyeing to promote awareness about Taiwan and that is what
motivated us to promote Taiwan as an ideal destination for MICE events among global companies in India. Thanks to the entire team of Fairfest Media Ltd. for executing the event so successful and making it a wonderful experience for us.
ROsA LiuManager, Taiwan External Trade Development Council
This was our first participation in this genre of travel mart and we would conclude it as a very fruitful experience.The on-site buyer-
seller meeting also gave us the opportunity to fill in the extra time slot. The efficiency of the organising team was evident in pulling off such a big event so professionally. I would like to congratulate them and look forward to work with Fairfest Media Ltd. in the future.
kumuDu HenneDigeManager, Marketing & Promotions, Sri Lanka Convention Bureau
It has been an amazing experience to associate with Fairfest Media Ltd. and participate in BLTM. I would recommend this
show to everyone who wants to explore MICE and luxury segment here in India. I would like to congratulate the entire team of Fairfest for hosting such a spectacular show.
Luis m CABeLLOTrade Councillor, Peru
This was my first time at BLTM and I was very much surprised by the quality of buyers. The B2B format of the show was also
commendable and was well executed. My participation in BLTM will help Korean Air in getting good business deals. This was indeed one of the grand exhibitions I have ever attended in India. I just hope BLTM keeps on doing the good work in times to come.
sAng WOOk HAnRegional Manager, Korean Air
This is our second year at BLTM and being only two years old, the show has garnered great response and stood up to our
expectations. The reason we are back because it really proved very helpful to meet the potential travel experts, tour operators, travel agents, hoteliers and the transporters. I would like to thank the entire team of Fairfest Media Ltd. for organising such a successful show.
sOmAn s. PATHyLiaison Officer, Gujarat Tourism
This was our second year at BLTM and we witnessed excellent response at the last year’s edition. This prompted us to
participate in this year’s BLTM. This edition was better conceptualised and the pool of buyers at this year’s BLTM was also very good.I think BLTM is one fine platform and I will always recommend it to the people who are associated with the industry.
DeePAk nARVekARSenior Manager, Public Relations and Marketing, Goa Tourism
BLTM was an excellent platform for buyer and seller’s meet-up. BLTM had a wide spectrum of buyers catering to MICE, luxury
and leisure demand of the travel industry. The online meeting diary was a very innovative technique with respect to keeping up with the fast demands. We congratulate the entire team for executing the event with sheer dedication and professionalism.
P.gnAnesHSenior Manager, Commercial - Sales, Air India
This is our first time at BLTM and undoubtedly our decision to participate was very right as it has been a very successful
event. BLTM served as an ideal opportunity to highlight Sri Lanka as an ideal MICE travel destination amongst them. We wish good luck to the entire team of Fairfest Media Ltd. for organising such an interactive event.
The experience has been good for us as the footfall was remarkable. BLTM is a fine platform to garner new business
and clients as it caters to luxury, leisure and MICE demands of the travel industry. Thank you to the organising team of BLTM for hosting such an event. We look forward to more of such events in the upcoming years.
This is our maiden participation at BLTM. Earlier we have participated in TTF events but as we continue to expand our
reach, we understand the potential of MICE business and BLTM has catered to exactly those needs. BLTM has adopted a smart way to approach in this field of luxury and MICE travel which is what makes it stand apart from others. We’ve had a wonderful experience this time and look forward to future participation for sure.
nOsHiR A mARFATiASenior Vice President, Ferns Hotels and Resorts
This is our first time at BLTM Gurgaon, but we’ve been associated with Fairfest Media Ltd. since its inception. Our experience at
this focussed trade fair has been amazing. BLTM was different from other events because it is focused on promoting MICE which has huge potential at the present time. Great job pulled up by the entire team of Fairfest Media. We look forward to future participation as well.
AJAy ARORAGeneral Manager, East Bourne Resort, Shimla
exhibitors speak
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 6 • COVER STORY
As a first-timer, our experience at BLTM has been very good. The footfall of corporate buyer has been very good. We were
happy to put forward our offerings and got to convert many into business. Hats off to the entire organising team for pulling off such a big trade fair so effortlessly. Needless to say, we are positive about our future participation.
I have attended other trade shows but BLTM stands tall and is pushing MICE, luxury and business tourism forward. The
buyer and seller meeting was a fabulous idea and it gave both of us a rough idea of what to look for. I want to congratulate the organising team for putting together such a grand show.
LuCky TAkDirector, ECR
I have been in association with Fairfest Media and had earlier participated in various events like TTF and OTM along with
BLTM last year. The kind of platform that is given from here where one can personally interact with various buyers and sellers is immense in entire India. We met a lot of people from national as well as international point of view and it was a great experience to communicate with them. Carry on the work! All the best!
AmiT kAuLHead - CRE & Administration, Canara HSBC OBC Life Insurance
I had a grand time at the BLTM 2017. I was really pleased to see new seller line here at BLTM. Sellers at this year’s BLTM had
potential and I am sure that we will deal with in future. BLTM is a great place to network and makes new contacts. I just wish that the organising team keep up the good work in future.
AmiTAVA ROyAssistant Vice President, Fullerton India Credit
Being a corporate country buyer, we do hotel RFPs and MICE business on a pan-India level and therefore BLTM was an ideal platform to
interact with other businesses. It was nice to interact with international companies like Taiwan Tourism, Ethiopian Airlines, Sri Lanka Tourism, Peru Tourism where one can think to expand as great business opportunities lie ahead. The entire event was taken care of very smoothly.
AniL kumAR DAsStrategic Travel Procurement - Country Buyer, Capgemini Technology Services India
This was my first time at BLTM and I am really very happy the way it was organised. For the first time in India, I have seen
that sellers are approaching the buyers instead of the other way around and such concept is very unique. All thanks to BLTM that such initiatives are now being taken in India.
AsCHOk JHAVeRiDirector - Sales & Marketing, Pratamesh Events And Holidays
This was my first time at BLTM and I must compliment the way it has been organised. Seldom do we have such events
in India where we can see a variety of quality sellers, buyers, their destinations and products, coming together. I was glad to see representatives from the tourism boards of Taiwan, Italy, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia which proves BLTM has gone global. Splendid work is done in executing the show. All the best! .
geRARD FeRnAnDesIndia Head - Facility & Procurement, DB Mudra
This was my second visit to BLTM Gurgaon and the way it has improved over the span of just two years is noteworthy. We
came across new products, new sellers and could do serious one on one business. We are very satisfied with the response we have received and look forward to attending upcoming events that Fairfest Media Ltd. will organise.
gOH HOCk ginManaging Director, Bel Travel & Tours Sdn Bhd
I have always appreciated BLTM because the meetings here are a lot more focused and they mean only business. One of the
great aspects of BLTM are the focussed onsite meetings as it really helps the sellers as well as the buyers to talk one on one and get their desired deal out of the meetings. My overall experience at BLTM was fantastic and great work has been done by the organisers.
gOPinATH nAiRFounder & CEO, Tourism DNA
This time’s BLTM has evolved a lot. The participants are much more open and the interactions have been very smooth, professional
and cooperative. BLTM is a fantastic platform for those who are interested in growing their business in the MICE segment. I hope we continue to associate with Fairfest Media Ltd. as it was a wonderful experience and I wish all the best for the forthcoming events.
HARsHAD DOnDeCountry Director - India, BCD Meetings and Events
This was my second BLTM event and the improvements I have seen at this year’s BLTM was just impressive. BLTM is a very
versatile and focused platform. Here at BLTM everyone meant serious business - be it sellers or buyers, everyone was focused to get the best out of every deal. I am too excited to visit the next edition of BLTM.
kAPiL PAnTRegional Sales Manager - West, IHHC
My overall experience at the BLTM was very pleasant. I have met more than 60 different sellers and the response from their side
was just fabulous. The onsite meeting was very well executed process as it gave everyone a square chance to pitch in the ideas. I would like to congratulate the BLTM team on organising such a grand show and I am really looking forward to visiting BLTM again.
m. LAksHmiPRAsAnnATravel Programme Administrator, Amazon Developement Centre India
It has been a great experience to be a part of BLTM this year. It was a wonderful opportunity for all the buyers and
sellers to get under one roof and associate with each other. We appreciate the level of efficiency with which the meetings as well as the entire show was organised and would like to look forward to more such events.
PRAmOD PATRAAssociate Director of Sales, Andaz Delhi
We have been into the Indian market for more than 20 years and handle the MICE and luxury demands mainly from
Mumbai and Bengaluru, so we thought of participating in BLTM which specialises in the same. We got to interact with many travel corporates and are hoping it to close on a positive note. We also hope to see more overseas buyer in the next BLTM edition.
RiCHARD suHPresident, Bosuk Tour, DMC Seoul, South Korea
Buyers speak
exhibitors speak
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 8 • COVER STORY
Buyers speak
It was a great experience overall to be associated with Fairfest Media Ltd. and participate in BLTM 2017! BLTM brought
something very different to the industry because it was a blend of business and luxury travel which covered the segment that I was looking for. BLTM had a very hardworking team and I wish them all the best! .
ViRAL DAVeDy. Manager Travel & Event, Skeiron Group
Though I have attended many events organised by Fairfest Media Ltd. in Mumbai, attending BLTM Gurgaon was a new
experience and quite a different one. The way BLTM was organised with regards to setting up the meetings well in advance, pre-scheduled appointments and the vendor-seller interaction was something which was very unique and sets BLTM apart.
ViRAL misTRyAdministrator - Pan India, Perkim Elmer India
We have been associated with Fairfest Media Ltd. for the past few years and have attended many TTFs. This year’s BLTM was
also one memorable event to enhance our association. The visitors here comprised serious buyers and sellers and we could generate good business. The organising team did a fantastic job and I would recommend BLTM to others for sure.
ViVek kARuLkARSenior Manager, Suzlon Energy
BLTM was a very good show. We’ve had some very meaningful discussions with a good combination of the corporate buyers
as well as the travel partners. The online meeting diary, as well as the BLTM app, was very useful for us. I am sure in the years to come it would become even more successful and will be an important event in the tourism sector.
mAnJu singHTeam Administration, Infogix International
This is my second association with BLTM, as compared with the previous edition. The sessions have been very interactive
and the online meeting diary was spot on. BLTM also offers global sellers under one roof and I was able to meet every seller in a short span of time. I will strongly recommend BLTM to my friends and to the people associated with the travel trade.
RAJiV nARuLAFounder, The Comforts
Although this was my second time at BLTM, the experience was the best one by far. BLTM has helped us to set a network
with veterans of the industry and to tap the untapped destinations. The sessions too were very informative and engaging. I thoroughly enjoyed the event.The sellers here at BLTM had great potential and were very diversified as well.
mAnyA ADLAkHAOwner, Seven Vows - A Planned Chaos
As of my first experience, I felt BLTM is an excellent platform for buyers and sellers to associate with each other under one roof. My
business is 90% MICE oriented hence attending this event was helpful to gain insights and network with potential clients. I hope BLTM to be held in the saturated markets of Mumbai and Pune.
AmOL kARAnDikAROwner, Tamarind Holidays
The experience at this year’s BLTM has been very good. It was very well planned, organised and executed! The showcasing
was good, at par with the concept of MICE, luxury and corporate needs. We got to understand the new players and dynamics prevalent in the market. I wish all the best to BLTM in their future endeavours.
sAnJOy kesHARy RAyDirector - TM, CBRE
I want to thank the organising team of BLTM for inviting me to this event. During these two days, I could conduct numerous
meetings. It was an excellent experience to meet vendors who came from abroad and other cities of India. I would recommend BLTM to other as it’s a great platform for serious B2B interactions.
ARnAB CHAkRAVARTyAssistant Manager, Travels And Rentals
I had attended TTF Hyderabad, but this is my first time in BLTM. It was a wonderful experience. The sellers were very
good, and we could close on some important deals. BLTM 2017 was very well executed starting from the convenience of the app, online meeting diary as well as the meetings. We would like to associate in future events organised by Fairfest.
DATTATRAy g. sukHReAssociate - TTGAC, Tata Technologies
BLTM gave a platform which enabled us to interact with a global service provider and vendors which was a unique experience. It
was my second time at BLTM Gurgaon. BLTM’s exclusive B2B meeting gives a good networking capacity. I wish to see BLTM happening in other Indian cities and globally as well. I wish the entire team of Fairfest Media Ltd. the best for their future endeavours.
RAkesH HARJAiOwner, Indian Wedding Planner
BLTM 2017 has been a good show focusing strictly on the B2B genre. The first day was very hectic and we could conclude on
a very positive note with the sellers. The concept of pre-scheduled appointment enabled us to interact with a lot of people. Our experience has been very enriching, and we wish the best to Fairfest Media Ltd.
mRiDuL CHAkRABORTyPartner, Discover India Tours And Travels
This was my second time at BLTM and this year I saw a lot of new exhibitors from across platforms. BLTM is an India centric
show as it caters to the needs of all DMC as well as travel trade in India. I had some good time talking to the diverse pool of sellers here at BLTM. I just hope it keeps doing a good job.
sAPneAL RAOCEO, SSR Holidays
This is my second visit to BLTM and it has really evolved a lot in a span of just two years. BLTM served as an ideal platform
which made easier for different buyers and sellers meet under one roof. We could garner good connectivity from the sellers present here. I would like to see BLTM evolve further and cover more locations soon so that we all benefit from it.
sAkeT kumARDy. General Manager, Alkem Laboratories
It was the first time I attended BLTM. From a buyer’s perspective, the first day was hectic as we network very well.
The sellers were enthusiastic to project their products. BLTM is a platform which gives every seller and buyer to develop and expand their relationship which is what makes this event different.
ROLAnD kinnyManagement Staff, CIPLA
This was my first time at the BLTM and the experience was very overwhelming. I have attended similar shows of the same genre
but BLTM really met my expectations as it gave equal exposure to every field related to travel trade. BLTM was very well organised and I am surely looking forward to attending the next event.
suDHA PRAsADTravel Manager, Mphasis
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 9 COVER STORY •
Buyers speak
BLTM is a very specific and unique platform. At this edition, as a hosted buyer I met all the hoteliers under one roof. The online
meeting diary feature of BLTM was also very useful and effective. The quality of sellers was superior and only qualified sellers were allowed to showcase their tourism products at BLTM. The pool of sellers was also very wide and diverse. BLTM will surely help us in getting the desired business and we hope to associate with BLTM in the coming future too.
JugAL RAyFounding Director, Jass Now
This was my first time at BLTM and it was a fruitful experience to be associated with the trade show. BLTM has uplifted the luxury
and MICE travel market and helped us in networking with the new players in the market. The show was very specific and helped me in setting one to one meeting with the clients. It has assisted my business to grow on a much larger scale. The quality of seller was also good and with the help of BLTM, I was able to tap new clients.
RAJenDRA DHummADirector, Classis Travel And Tour
Though this was my first time at BLTM, it surely met my expectation as the show had a lot of potential. The feature
online meeting diary was pretty great, brilliantly designed and very systematically done as it gave me 15 minutes of focussed networking with each seller. BLTM also helped us in gaining a great supplier base and gave us good business. I am very excited about the next BLTM and will be waiting to see what’s in store for us at the next edition.
sAnDHyA kARTHADirector, Red Chillies Holidays
This year’s BLTM was fairly unique from the last years as this event had new destinations like Peru, Taiwan among the
others. BLTM also gave a chance to speak to them personally and talk business with them. BLTM was more focused and direct, there was no diversion. We could directly approach the seller we felt was great for our business. I think this year’s BLTM was ten on ten and I applaud the organisers for being helpful and supportive.
DiVesH JAinFounder & CEO, Haute Living & Travels
BLTM 2017 was very well-managed and was very systematic - everything from registration process to appointments was very
smooth and we had managed to get through everything within a day. The meeting session too was very well-managed and it gave both the buyers as well as sellers an equal standard. I just hope that BLTM keeps on doing the good work in future and the quality of sellers keeps on improving with the coming years.
meHA VAsHiDirector - Business Development, Nivalink Tours And Travel
Since we are expanding in the MICE and corporate sector, we thought what better way to explore than to participate
in BLTM and it truly has been a fruitful decision. We are ideally focused on B2G model but here we got to conclude good B2B as well. The level of network we could conclude in the first day itself was very beneficial. I would recommend BLTM to other as it’s a great platform for serious B2B networking.
mAnisH AgARWALProprietor, Trips IQ
This is my first event and I am very glad that I could participate in BLTM. I was very obliged to collect so many details and interact
with such a vast variety of buyers and sellers. BLTM proved to be a very beneficial platform for all those who are eager to explore more into MICE, leisure and luxury segment of travel. Its different aspect makes BLTM very unique. I am thankful to Fairfest for pulling off the entire event so efficiently. I really look forward to participating in the next BLTM as well.
sACHin AgARWALAsst. Manager, Epsilon Carbon
Being the first-time participant at BLTM I was very much surprised by the quality of sellers I have encountered. BLTM is very much
suited for all kinds of industry associated with tourism and BLTM will assist them in their business endeavours. There is a mutual and symbiotic relationship between the sellers and buyers here at BLTM. BLTM is a very diverse platform as various corporate also took part in it apart from the regular tour operators and hotel industry experts.
gAgAn JAisWALSales Manager, The Ummed Hotels
The sellers at this year’s BLTM were very cooperative and supportive, my participation too was very successful as I got to
network with the stalwarts of the tourism industry. The organisers have done an outstanding job because organising a show of such standards is not an easy job. The pool of sellers was very diverse and I met a variety of sellers who guided me and helped me with my requirements. I just hope that BLTM keeps on growing like this.
This was my first time at BLTM and this event was always world class and league apart from other shows. The quality of sellers
has improved and I saw a lot of NTOs, STBs, airlines and hotels, it was a pleasure to work with them under one roof. I have attended many shows of the same genre but I think BLTM is very different from them and definitely the winner. The arrangements too done by the organisers were pretty smooth and the outcome is very much evident in the hard works of the organisers.
BuRJis meHTACEO, Skyworld Tours & Travels
This was my first visit to BLTM Gurgaon. I could witness a lot of scope and potential for B2B meetings. The trade visitor’s setup
served as an excellent opportunity for sellers to showcase their project and buyers as well could very well communicate about their MICE- centric needs. BLTM has a lot of scope to grow in the coming years and I just hope BLTM improve by each passing year as it has set a standard in the MICE, luxury and leisure sector of the travel industry.
sAnDiP sHAWManaging Director, Capital Tours
I have attended other events organized by Fairfest Media but BLTM was a first and one-of-its-kind event. It was a pleasure to participate
here because we got to interact with buyers and sellers coming from different parts of India and abroad and we could understand new destinations and prevailing trends in a very exclusive manner. MICE is a segment which is unexplored, and this event provided us with enough information. Very well organized and wonderfully executed.
I participated in BLTM Gurgaon as a hosted buyer and my experience has been very enriching. It was very well
planned, meetings were professionally executed and all the other arrangements were also noteworthy. Trade experts from outbound and inbound tourism were very knowledgeable about the prevailing market trends. The event was excellently planned. Hoping to see the next edition of BLTM to happen soon.
This is my first time at BLTM Gurgaon and I have to say Fairfest Media Ltd. executed it very well. Starting from the online diary
scheduling till the end, it was fantastically pulled off. The participants were also very genuine because we could conduct serious business which is what sets BLTM apart because it had cream trade visitors, sellers and experts. Hoping to continue the association with Fairfest Media Ltd. and participate in future events soon!
mAHesH gOgiAManaging Director, Sarathy Travel
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 10 • COVER STORY
BLTM is one event that caters to the niche market of business, luxury and MICE tourism, which is actually the nerve of the tourism business today. This time we participated as buyer and we would love to participate as sellers in the upcoming BLTM. BLTM has a lot of potential. Be it buyer or seller everyone had the
same motive of business and networking. I just wish BLTM keeps on growing as a platform and good luck to the organisers as well.
HimAni AuRORABusiness Development Manager, Lets Travel
My experience of participating in BLTM has been very fruitful for me as well as my business. I got to know about various
insights which would have been difficult to access otherwise. BLTM was conducted at such a large scale where we saw global footfall from India and abroad as well. The B2B concept was also very well-thought of. Kudos to the entire team for organising it so well and hope we participate in other events as well.
mAnJOT singHProprietor, MJ Travels
I had a very comfortable time in BLTM Gurgaon as it was very seamlessly organised. Since it was centred towards luxury
and leisure and MICE travel segments and all the buyers and sellers who came here were focused into expanding into this field only, this gave everyone an equal opportunity to highlight their business. It facilitated easy business dealing. I wish good luck to BLTM and Fairfest Media Ltd. to grow in the upcoming years.
THiRunAgu TAmiLseLVAmCEO, World Travel Club
The level of interaction between buyers and sellers has been really very good at this year’s BLTM. Actually, it is for the
content and structure of the event which is strictly focused on MICE, leisure and luxury segment that makes it unique. The onsite seller-buyer meeting was impressive. Hoping BLTM sustains the momentum and improves in the coming years.
suPROTik BHATTACHARyAGeneral Manager - Administration, Magma Fincorp
I took part in BLTM for the first time and the sellers were very supportive in providing all the necessary information. The
show met all my requirements. The footfall of sellers was very good. I am very thankful to Fairfest Media Ltd. for executing the entire event so efficiently. I look forward to even better editions of BLTM in the future.
mAinuDDin sAyeDBusiness Head, Majestic Holidays
This is my second year at BLTM Gurgaon and I would like to say that in a span of just two years BLTM has evolved a lot! The
number of footfall clearly indicates the success of the show. It gave us ample of opportunity to conduct one-to-one session with businesses which are focused on just MICE and luxury segment. I see BLTM has the potential to go global. I hope Fairfest Media continues to conduct such events more often and expand to other cities as well!
yusuF HAssAnCEO, Maxim Holidays
This was my second time at BLTM and my experience was great as usual. The sessions here at BLTM were well executed
and networking at such event was just phenomenal. The quality of sellers too was very good both on the domestic and International front. The organising team should keep up the good work with BLTM as a well organised and a systematic event.
HemAnT PACHPAuTeDirector-Travel & Leisure, Intellect Life Sciences
BLTM 2017 was a grand show and concept too is very new in India. The idea of the seller-buyer onsite meeting was just
excellent. The quality of sellers was really great and the pool of sellers was very diverse - from airlines to hotels every entity was covered in BLTM. The event is very different from other shows as players from all sectors come here for networking purposes and paves easy way for business.
RAmAnPReeT singHSenior Sales Partner, Skil Travel
BLTM 2017 was full of opportunities, we got new contacts and leads and I am sure that we will bank upon them in the coming
future. BLTM as the platform enables the small tour operators to dive into a sea of opportunities and help us network with the new as well as veteran players in the market. BLTM 2017 also featured new destinations like Peru, Korea, Taiwan and was studded with other players from airline and hotel sector. I hope to see new participants and new options to choose from in the next event.
RAJesH ViRAJash Holidays
Buyers speak
7
India is the fastest growing business travel market in the world.
Delhi is a major business hub of India, with decent buyer potential of Business, MICE and Luxury Travel spending. In addition to hundreds of buyers from the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR), BLTM will provide you guaranteed visit of hundreds of Hosted Buyers from all major cities in India.
According to GBTA: "More than any other country, India is poised for breakout growth. It forecasts 11.6 percent growth in business travel spending in 2017, to reach $36.8 billion USD. GBTA projects India will become the 6th largest business travel market in the world by the end of 2019, to reach $45 billion mark." (From its present position of 10th largest market in the world) "Fifteen years from now, India will likely be a top-five market in business travel spending"
BLTM unlike other shows in this category so far, is not a table top show, but a full format booth and pavilion based show, at even better pricing and inclusion. (According to industry analysts, table top shows do not do justice to seller brands, hence full format shows are most popular globally).
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 12 • COVER STORY
Panel Discussion : Tying the Digitech-Wed-planning Knot by WedWisePanellists: Shweta Acharya, Director, Baraati Event Management; Barun Gupta, Director of MICE - National Sales, Marriott Hotels; Prema Cooray, Chairman, Sri Lanka Convention Bureau; Arati Thapa, Blogger, Wedding Fables and Kunal Dewan, Director of Sales and Marketing, Le Meridien Gurgaon.
Moderator: Ginny Kohli, Founder and CEO, WedWise
“Incentives Drive ROI” -Education Session at Breakfast by SITESpeakers: Ajay Vinayak, CEO, Palomino HospitalityAbinash Manghani, Head - Travel Industry Sales & Regional Manager - North, ITC HotelsVikas Suda, Managing Director, Vdoit4U Event Management
Speakers: Gajesh Girdhar, Founder & National Co-ordinator, NIMAGopinath Nair, Founder & CEO, Tourism DNASanjiv Agarwal, Founder & CEO, Fairfest Media
Session : Transforming MICE by NIMA “Destination Wedding Masterclass” - Workshop by WedWise
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 13INDIA
Spreading the message of tourism for all, KJ Alphons, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Tourism, Government of India along with Mahesh Sharma, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Culture and MoS Environment, Forest & Climate Change, inaugurated the ‘Paryatan Parv’ celebrations at Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi.
Speaking on the occasion, Sharma stressed on the close linkage of culture and tourism in the coun-try and how everyone needed to work on making India’s rich cultural heritage as tourism attractions.
Alphons in his address highlighted the need to drastically improve tourist arrivals in the country. He also said that tourism is needed for three rea-sons, namely providing employment to the peo-ple, encouraging the youth to explore the tour-ism potential in India and to become an engine of growth.
In the last few years, youth travel within the country has witnessed a strong growth. Amidst this, Paryatan Parv is one event which has moti-vated youth to not only travel to different parts of the country, but also involve in spreading the mes-sage of tourism among the countrymen.
The State Tourism Boards also participated by organising various events such as trekking pro-gramme, photography contest, essay competi-tions, excursion trips, river walks, heritage walks, cyclothon, Nukkad Natak and sensitisation pro-gram to commemorate the celebrations.
In Guwahati, the students took to rowing in the Brahmaputra River to communicate the mes-sage of Paryatan Parv. State Government of Guja-rat organised a seminar on Homestay policies. Madhya Pradesh Government organised a Crafts
Mela including Craft Bazaar, cultural evening and food festival near Western Group of temples at Khajuraho. The Government of Uttarakhand organised an exhibition of Cultural Arts of the state at Almora.
The Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management, Noida organised a painting compe-tition for school children on the theme ‘Tourism for All’ and ‘Dekho Apna Desh’.
As part of the Paryatan Parv, Department of Youth Affairs, Government of India organised activities such as Tribal Youth Exchange Pro-gramme, Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat- Inter State Youth Exchange Programme, Neighbourhood Youth Parliament (one programme in each state), district level sports tournament, district level cul-tural programme (one programme in each state) and awareness programme on the importance of tourism especially for rural youth and tourism (one programme in each state ) across the country.
During the inauguration, the Ministry of Tour-ism launched a special film on the concept of ‘Pary-atan Parv’ and a promotional film on the various competitions to be organised during the festival across India.
The Punjab Heritage and Tourism Promotion Board (PHTPB) has authorised over 60 properties for the pur-pose of farm stays and has signed a MoU with Online Travel Agent, MakeMyTrip to make them available online.
Shivdular Singh Dhillon, Special Secretary and Director, Department of Tourism, Cultural Affairs, Archeology, Museums & Archives, Punjab and CEO, PHTPB, said, “We have come up with farm stays in the outskirts. Agriculture has been Punjab’s backbone so what better place than here to create this experience. The department has so far authorised 60-plus proper-ties for farm stays. For this, we have just signed a MoU with MakeMyTrip so that all these farm stays and B&B are online for everyone to book. We want travellers to look at Punjab as a tourist destination and enhance the perception going forward.”
Ministry of Tourism pushes domestic tourism further with Paryatan Parv
Punjab join hands with MMT to promote Farm Tourism
Indian Railways extends no service charge on e-tickets till March 2018For the ease of rail passengers, the Ministry of Railways has decided to waive off service charges till March 2018. Hence, rail passengers will con-tinue to enjoy service charge exemp-tion on tickets booked online until March 2018. The government had waived service charges after demon-etisation in November last year to encourage digital modes of booking.
Service charges on booking train tickets online through the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) ranges from INR 20-40 per ticket. Senior railway
officials revealed that almost 33% of IRCTC’s revenue comes from the service charge collected on online bookings.
According to revenue collection of the last financial year, about INR 540 crore of IRCTC’s revenue of over INR 1,500 crore came from ticket bookings. An amount of around INR 184 crore has not been realised from passengers on account of ser-vice charge and service tax thereon on reserved tickets booked online from November 23, 2016 to February 28, 2017, as per railways data.
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 14 • india
Bengal’s historical towns to be transformed into heritage cities
Demand for domestic air travel rises to 16%
Ministry of Tourism organises Innovation in Tourism workshop
The Ministry of Tourism recently organised a work-shop on ‘Innovation in Tourism’. The idea behind the workshop was to get the suggestions from the vari-ous stakeholders in the tourism sector to check on the development around the globe and respond to them in a proactive and adequate manner.
The workshop was chaired by K.J. Alphons, Minis-ter of State for Tourism and was attended by approxi-mately 50 participants representing various segments of tourism industry like hotels, tour operators, travel Agents, adventure tour operators, tourism profession-als, media representatives and Trade Associations. Rashmi Verma, Secretary, Ministry of Tourism and other senior officials also took part in the workshop.
The workshop focused on the various issues affect-ing Indian tourism and came out with suggestions to improve the scenario of Indian tourism and to position India as the most preferred destinations.
K. J. Alphons also informed that the Ministry of Tourism will constitute two Committees to work on the Development of Buddhist Circuits and to advise on Marketing & PR. The Tourism Ministry also decided to regularly interact with the related central Ministries on matters pertaining to development and promotion of tourism and facilitating the tourist to ensure that they have a pleasant & memorable experience during their visit to India.
The State Tourism Department of West Bengal is all set to transform the well-known historical towns of Ben-gal into heritage cities.
Cooch Behar, with its royal palace and Nabadwip’s famous lake, Lal Dighi, with its cultural heritage linked to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu are the two cities which are primarily chosen for the transformation.
The State Government has appointed IIT Kharag-pur (for Cooch Behar) and IISER Shibpur (for
Nabadwip) to prepare detailed project reports. The refurbishing and modification of the tourist sites and amenities would be taken up based on the conclusions of the report.
Work is expected to begin towards the end of this year. Among the areas to be looked into are the elec-tricity and sewage systems of the places. Similar steps would be taken up gradually for the other famous places in the state.
According to data released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Indian airlines achieved double figure domestic air traffic growth consecutively for the 36th month where demand for airlines rose to 16%.
The rate of domestic travel raised to 7.6% in August 2017 as compared to previous year same period. The demand for international passenger demand also climbed to 7% compared to the same period last year.
“Following the strong summer traffic season in the northern hemisphere, 2017 is on course to be another year of strong traffic growth. However, some important demand drivers are easing, particularly lower fares. As we head towards the end of the year we still expect growth to continue but potentially at a slower pace,” said Alexandre de Juniac, Director General and CEO, IATA.
The global passenger traffic data for August indicated that demand climbed 7.2% as compared to August 2016.
The Indian Embassy in association with India Tour-ism Dubai Office organised the seminar, ‘Incredible India Roadshow’ to make Egyptians aware about its diverse culture and boost tourism between the two nations.
H.E. Sanjay Bhattacharyya, Indian Ambassador to Egypt, highlighted that India and Egypt are two of the populous countries and thus the need to promote tour-ism between the countries is very crucial. He also men-tioned that both countries have an enormous wealth of tourist resources.
He said, “We are ancient civilisations and the his-torical sites are unimaginable to most of the other world. We have tourism sites which range from his-torical, cultural, ancient monuments, to religious sites and the landscapes.” He also added that India offered new experiences such as wellness tourism and
wedding tourism.IRV Rao, Assistant Director, India Tourism Dubai
Office, said that the India Tourism campaign in Egypt is important as it would make people know more about India and its diverse culture. “In 2016 there was a 4% increase in the number of Egyptian tourists to India as compared to 2015. Going forward, we expect at least 12-15% increase in the number of Egyptians tourists to India by 2018,” Rao stated.
“We have 21,000 Egyptians travelling to India but Indians travelling to Egypt are six times more 1,20,000. Hence we would like to invite travel agencies to make different offers and convince tourists to consider trav-elling to India as it offers so much,” he concluded.
The event was attended by Indian and Egyptian tour operators, officials of Egyptian Ministry of Tour-ism and Egyptian Tourism agencies.
india partners with egypt to improve tourism between the two nations
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 15 INDIA •
The Ministry of Tourism, under the ‘Adopt a Heritage’ scheme, has appointed seven companies which have been given the Letter of Intent for the adoption of 14 monuments, which were presented at the closing cer-emony of the three-week-long ‘Paryatan Parv’ at New Delhi.
K.J. Alphons, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Tourism, Government of India, said, “We had over 1200 events across numerous sites in the country, across schools, monuments etc. In the past 20 days, we have turned India into a land of celebrations with the help of our 18 sister ministries and thanks to the overwhelm-ing participation of our own people.”
The 14 firms which were selected to adopt the monu-ments were SBI Foundation, TK International Limited, Yatra Online Pvt Ltd, Travel Corporation of India Ltd, Adventure Tour Operator Association of India, Spe-cial Holidays Travel Private Ltd (With) Rotary Club of Delhi, NBCC.
‘Adopt a Heritage’ scheme of the Ministry of Tourism, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Archae-ological Survey of India (ASI) was launched by President, Ram Nath Kovind on the occasion of World Tourism Day.
The Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Min-ister, Arun Jaitley presented certificates to the ‘Best
Participating Central Government Ministry and Best Par-ticipating State Government’ at the closing ceremony. The event also included cultural performances by different state troops, craft mela showing diverse handicrafts and handlooms of the country and street foods from differ-ent regions pan India, amongst other interactive activities.
MoT issues Letter of Intent to seven companies for adoption of heritage monuments
Kerala join hands with HolidayIQ to promote #GoKerala
Lemon Tree announces the opening of two new properties
Odisha Tourism to roll out homestay facilities for the tourists
To promote the state’s tourism, the Tourism Depart-ment of Kerala has launched a unique campaign ‘#GoKerala’ in association with HolidayIQ. The cam-paign is launched keeping an eye on increasing the tour-ism output in the state. The campaign also initiated a contest under which five lucky couples will get a chance to win 10 days- all-expense paid the trip to Kerala and visit unexplored and pristine destinations of Kerala.
Speaking about the campaign, P Bala Kiran (IAS), Director, Kerala Tourism and Managing Director, Kannur International Airport said, “Kerala Tourism has always sought new and innovative marketing ave-nues to build Kerala as the top tourism brand and des-tination. Hence, we are excited to partner with Holi-day where they have provided an innovative concept to invite real travellers with varying preferences from their vast travel community to experience the beauty and
hospitality of Kerala & Kerala Tourism department.”The campaign is launched keeping in mind the young
netizens and people who love to travel and explore new places. This campaign is completely different from tra-ditional campaigns as it is powered by holiday experi-ence and reviews from travellers across the country.
“A holiday itinerary, specially curated by Ker-ala Tourism and HolidayIQ, will show these trav-ellers a Kerala beyond its backwaters & mere honeymoon destination to be a wholesome family desti-nation– a true taste of God’s own country,” P Bala Kiran further added.
Speaking on the occasion, Rohit Rawal, Head of Brand Solutions, Holiday IQ, said, “As India’s first and largest travel community, HolidayIQ has always been a pioneer in bringing experiential marketing to the Tour-ism sector.”
Lemon Tree recently announced the opening of two new properties- Lemon Tree Premier Patna Bihar and Lemon Tree Hotel Alwar in Rajasthan.
Speaking on the occasion, Rattan Keswani, Dep-uty Managing Director, Lemon Tree Hotels and Director, Carnation Hotels, said, “We are delighted to bring the Lemon Tree brand to Patna and Alwar. These hotels are a first for us and present the branded alternative to the city residents as well as our existing customer base. Both cities have rich cultural heritage attracting business and leisure travellers.”
The Lemon Tree Premier, Patna has a total of 105 rooms and suites, a multi-cuisine coffee shop, spa and salon- Fresco, gym, a rooftop swimming pool and an Indian restaurant. Lemon Tree Hotel, Alwar is located close to the popular tourist destinations of
Sariska Tiger Reserve & National Park, BalaQuilla- the Alwar Fort, and the City Palace.
Odisha Tourism Department is planning to roll out a special initiative to encourage its citizens in Bhubaneswar to provide homestay facilities to the tourists.
Under this initiative, the tourism department will issue the license to the house owners who are willing to register themselves with the scheme. The house owners can offer up to five rooms or 10 beds with good facilities. The house owner will be required to display the room tariff and provide the guests with Indian breakfast. The tourism officials will regu-larly inspect the houses and take feedback from the tourists.
Nitin Jawale, Director of Tourism, Government of Odisha, said, “We will carry out awareness cam-paigns through advertisements so that people come to know about the homestay facility. From November first week, we will start direct registration of homes at our department. Earlier, people were applying to the Ministry of Tourism. Now the Ministry has asked us to receive applications from people and conduct verification before permitting them to start home-stay facility.”
He also stated that the state tourism department will train the house owners’ family members, care-takers and other staff on how to deal with tourists. The state tourism board will also keep the location of the houses, hygiene and safety aspects in mind.
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 16 • india
Government of India and Assam Tourism launch Swachhta Hi Seva Campaign
Goa, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh bag prestigious National Tourism Awards
8.76 lakh foreign tourists visited India in October this year
Accelerating the tourism potential in the states of Goa, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh has bagged presti-gious awards at the National Tourism Awards from the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India for the year 2015-2016.
Goa Tourism bagged two prestigious national awards- one for the most innovative use of informa-tion technology: social media/mobile app by Goa Tour-ism Development Corporation (GTDC) and the other for the best state/UT comprehensive development of tourism.
During the last five years, Goa Tourism has pow-ered several campaigns on Goa as an ideal wedding tourism destination, a monsoon destination and as an adventure tourism destination.
Telangana Tourism has been awarded for the best services and excellence in various sectors of tourism & hospitality industry. GHMC has won the award in the category of Civic Management of a Tourist Desti-nation in India; Warangal - Best Heritage City; Depart-ment of Tourism, Theme Book published in Mandarin Language for China International Travel Mart- Best Tourism Promotion Publicity Material; Kasinath Rao, Telangana Tourism Guide- Best Tourist Guide; Chowmahalla Palace, Hyderabad- Best Maintained and Disabled Friendly Monument; Apollo Hospital,
Hyderabad- Best Medical Tourism Facility and Leo-nia International Centre for Exhibition & Conventions, Hyderabad has won the award of Best Standalone Con-vention Centre.
Along with this, Madhya Pradesh won the ‘Best Tourism State’ named ‘Hall of Fame Award’ for the third consecutive year.
The official said the state bagged the Most Inno-vative Tourist Product award for ‘Hanuwantiya Jal Mahotsav’ and Best State for Adventure Tourism. While Chanderi was adjudged as the Best Heritage City, the Best Tourist-Friendly Railway Station award was given to Ujjain Railway Station. The Best Civic Management of a Tourist Destination of India award was given to Khargone. An English coffee-table book published by MP Tourism Board, won the national award for Excellence in Publishing.
Madhya Pradesh also received a national award for Film Promotion Policy in the category of Best Film Promotion Friendly State/Union Territory. Best Wild-life Guide national award was bagged by Saib Khan of Pachmarhi.
President of India, Ram Nath Kovind presented the National Tourism Awards 2015-16, on the occa-sion of World Tourism Day, organised by the Minis-try of Tourism in New Delhi.
Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, in coor-dination with Assam Tourism organised a cleaning drive at the Bhubaneswari Temple, situated at the Nilachal Hills in Guwahati under the a nationwide sanitation campaign ‘Swachhta Hi Seva’ carrying forward the objective of Swachh Bharat Mission.
Speaking to the gathering, Shoeb Samad, Regional Director- North East, India Tourism, elab-orated the key objectives of this initiative and urged everyone to contribute to make the country clean and beautiful.
For the ‘Swacchta Hi Seva’ campaign, 15 sites were identified all over India and shortlisted for deep cleaning which took place from 15th Sep-tember and continued till 2nd October across the nation.
The Kamakhya Temple was cleaned twice. Even though the areas are generally kept clean by the local management, but due to the high number of pilgrims, it gets dirty fast and this campaign is a step to further promote tourism in India.
Everyone offered their help to clean up the tem-ple premise and took the Swachhta pledge to keep the country clean. They also pledged to devote 100 hours per year towards voluntarily work for cleanliness.
The Ministry of Tourism (MoT), Government of India recently announced that 8.76 lakh foreign tourists vis-ited to India in October this year as compared to Foreign Tourists Arrivals (FTAs) of 7.42 lakh in October 2016. The growth rate of FTAs in October 2017 over October 2016 has increased to 18.1%, compared to 8.6% in Octo-ber 2016.
This year so far, FTAs during the period January-October 2017 were 79.96 lakh with a growth of 15.8% over same period of the previous year, compared to FTAs of 69.05 lakh with a growth of 9.6% in January- Octo-ber 2016.
The percentage share of FTAs in India during Octo-ber, 2017 among the top 15 source countries was high-est from Bangladesh (21.66%) followed by USA (11.57%), UK (10.23%), Sri Lanka (3.79%), Canada (3.36%), Ger-many (3.17%), Australia (3.07%), France (2.81%), Russian Fed. (2.81%), Malaysia (2.76%), Japan (2.44%), Thailand (2.10%), China (1.93%), Nepal (1.66%) and Republic of Korea (1.48%).
Among the top 15 ports Delhi Airport was on top (32.56%) followed by Mumbai Airport (14.02%), Hari-daspur Land Check Post (11.29%), Chennai Airport (6.10%), Bengaluru Airport (5.19%), Kolkata Airport (4.55%), Gede Rail Land Check Post (3.02%), Cochin Airport (2.70%), Dabolim (Goa) Airport, (2.58%), Hyderabad Airport (2.53%), Sonauli Land Check Post
(1.86%), Ahmadabad Airport (1.77%), Ghojadanga Land Check Post (1.64%), Amritsar Airport (1.53%) and Trivandrum Airport (1.20%).
On e-Tourist Visa, a total of 1.76 lakh foreign tourists arrived during the month of October, 2017, as compared to 1.05 lakh during the month of October, 2016 register-ing a growth of 67.3%. During January-October 2017, a total of 12.43 lakh foreign tourists arrived on e-Tourist Visa as compared to 7.81 lakh during January-October 2016, registering a growth of 59.2%.
The percentage share of top 15 source countries availing e-Tourist Visa facilities during October, 2017 was as follows: UK (18.2%), USA (9.7%), France (6.3%), Germany (6.0%), Australia (4.3%), Russian Federation (4.1%), Canada (3.9%), Thailand (3.7%), China (3.7%), Korea (Rep.of) (2.6%), Spain (2.3%), Oman (2.2%), Italy (2.2%), Netherlands (1.9%) and Malaysia (1.6%).
The percentage share of top 15 ports in FTAs on e-Tourist Visa during October 2017 was as follows: New Delhi Airport (53.0%), Mumbai Airport (16.6%), Bengaluru Airport (5.5%), Chennai Airport (5.3%), Dabolim (Goa) Airport (4.5%), Kochi Airport (3.5%), Kolkata Airport (2.5%), Hyderabad Airport (2.4%), Amritsar Airport (2.0%), Trivandrum Airport (1.1%), Ahmadabad Airport (1.0%), Jaipur Airport (0.7%), Gaya Airport (0.6%), Calicut Airport (0.4%) and Tirchy Air-port (0.4%).
India Tourism Development Corporation Ltd (ITDC) the public sector undertaking under the aegis of Min-istry of Tourism, Government of India signed a MoU with Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA) to provide complete E-ticketing solutions to CGDA on the nationwide basis. Piyush Tiwari, Director (Com-mercial & Marketing), ITDC and Manish Tripathi, Joint CGDA signed the MoU.
The travel wing of ITDC Ashok Travels and Tours (ATT) will help ITDC in conducting the process for CGDA to create a smooth and user-friendly platform for all CGDA air travel needs.
Speaking on the occasion, Ravneet Kaur (IAS), Chairperson & Managing Director, ITDC, said, “It’s an honour for ITDC to be associated with CGDA. We are delighted that CGDA, one of India’s oldest gov-ernment organisations has shown their confidence in our services. Our talented team of Ashok Travels and Tours (ATT) will put their best foot forward to meet the expectations of CGDA.”
ITDC and CGDA sign MoU to provide E-ticketing solutions
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 18ASIA
Indonesia eyes investments from the Indian market
Korea Tourism Organisation launches its online training programme
With a growing influx of Indian tourists to Indonesia, the country is looking for investments from the Indian market.
Citing it as the right time, Saut Siring-oringo, Consul General of the Republic of Indonesia, said, “We are looking for timely investments into tourism industry in Indonesia from India. Currently, there are two bidding requests to invest in res-taurants in Indonesia because it is impor-tant factor to cater to Indian visitors.”
Besides leisure tourists, he believes
that MICE is an important segment and Indonesia currently welcomes good trac-tion from the European market. “We are looking at facilitating MICE travel from India through discussions with vari-ous parties. After the launch of Garuda Indonesia flights between Mumbai and Jakarta in February, in April alone this year, we have recorded a 36% growth in arrivals from India which will augment further with Batik Air connecting Bali to Chennai,” he said.
In order to educate Indian travel trade partners about travel and tourism assets in South Korea, the Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO) launched its first ever South Korea specialist online training pro-gramme for travel trade in India. Approx-imately 450 travel agents have registered for the programme.
The course is structured in four mod-ules and each module focuses on differ-ent aspects of tourism offerings in South
Korea. The participants will also be awarded certificates on the completion of their training.
Jong Sool Kwon, Director, KTO, said, “Indian outbound market has tremendous potential and diverse requirements based on which we would like to educate the travel trade partners about South Korea’s tourism assets. We urge all the tour opera-tors to come forward and make the most of the knowledge we intend to impart.”
The 6th Asian Tourism Fair was inaugurated at Dhaka to celebrate and promote sustainable tourism in Bangladesh. With 2017 being announced by United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) as the ‘International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development’, the theme of this year’s Asian Tourism Fair aimed at promoting sustainable regional connec-tivity, considered significant for tourism development globally and attracting investment into the country.
The event was supported by Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) and Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation (BPC) under the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tour-ism, Government of Bangladesh with Biman Bangla-desh Airlines as the Airline Partner and Dhaka Din-ner Cruise as the Cruise Partner. It witnessed the presence of over 120 tour operators, travel agents, airlines, hotels and service providers from both the private and public sectors of Bangladesh along with stalls of the Republic of Indonesia and Philippines.
The tourism sector of Bangladesh is an untapped one. The fair acted as an ice breaker and served as an apt platform to tourism professionals to promote their products and destinations. The fair focused on attracting inbound as well as outbound tourists to Bangladesh.
Rashed Khan Menon, Minister of Civil Aviation and Tourism, Bangladesh, said, “The government is trying to implement projects related to infrastruc-ture development and tourism branding of the coun-try. This year’s World Tourism Day carried an extra significance for the country’s tourism industry as Bangladesh was recently elected UNWTO Chair for South Asia.”
Bangladesh was promoted as an ideal destination
in Indonesia and Rima P Soemarno, Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to Bangladesh empha-sised on the immense potential in the tourism sector between Bangladesh, Indonesia and India owing to the cultural similarities.
Bangladesh has welcomed 20,000 Indians in 2017
and is targeting 50,000 tourists by 2018.According to the World Travel and Tourism Coun-
cil, Bangladesh generated BDT 11.1 billion in visitor exports in 2016. This year the same has grown by 11.2% and the country is expected to attract 147,000 international tourists by the end of the year.
6th Asian Tourism Fair promotes sustainable tourism in Bangladesh
To facilitate the tourists with easy access to informa-tion on tourism products and experiences, the Tourism Council of Bhutan (TCB) launched its new official desti-nation website on the World Tourism Day.
This major development will help the stakeholders and visitors in knowing Bhutan in a better way. The web-site is designed to provide vital details to the potential vis-itors to Bhutan and portrays new user-friendly features.
The visitors can sort out and save events and activities
in their wish list for easier reference for their future vis-itation to Bhutan. Subscription to emails and newsletter will now help visitors keep themselves updated with the information on the tourism industry of Bhutan.
The current website is built in a user-friendly way with feedback buttons. The users can send in their feed-back to improve the working or share their thoughts on Bhutan tourism on their social handles thereby creating a ripple of information dissemination.
Another new improvement that has been incorpo-rated into the new website is the inclusion of tour pack-ages. The new features will interest the potential trav-ellers to Bhutan and will attract new tourists to the destination, believes TCB.
Tourism Council of Bhutan launches new website
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 20middle east
Destination Azerbaijan networks with Indian travel trade at their maiden roadshow
Sharjah Tourism conducts four-city roadshow across India
Azerbaijan recently organised a 3-city event titled ‘Discover Azerbai-jan Roadshow’ in Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad in September to educate the Indian market to travel to the South Caucasus region.
Sachin Nene, Regional General Manager- Air Arabia, India, said, “Azerbaijan is relatively new to Indi-ans as a tourist destination. Through these roadshows our efforts have been centred towards reaching out to the best performing travel agents and tour operators across three cities and grow their knowledge about Azerbaijan. The destination needs a lot of promotional efforts like this to get itself acquainted with the Indian travel trade fraternity and thereby witness good number of Indian tourist.”
Ildirim Ganbarov, Business Devel-opment Manager, Pasha Travels, said, “Exhibitors from Azerbaijan focused on targeting not only the MICE trav-eller segment but also the leisure seg-ment though MICE have been till now the best performing sectors from India. The exhibitors present at the roadshow not only showcased their product offer-ings in Baku, but also exhibited other destinations like Shabran, Guba, Shah-dag, Shamakha, Qabala, Sheki, Ganja, Lankaran, Nakhichivan and Naftalan.”
The Indian market has been per-forming significantly well for Air Ara-bia as the airline recorded 95% pas-senger from this market across all 13 Indian cities from where the airline
operates. Between April and August this year Air Arabia recorded 850 Indian passengers.
Nene said that for Air Arabia, 80% of the Indian travellers to Azerbaijan are from the MICE segment. These travel-lers also prefer to add sightseeing and nightlife in their itinerary when visit-ing Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan Tourism Authorities are working towards engagement with members of travel trade and media through FAM trips and is also looking at attracting the film producers to the destination. For 94 nationalities includ-ing India e-visa is issued which is valid for 90 days.
“Baku has a lot to offer to Indians in terms of MICE and leisure. We are concentrating our efforts on promot-ing destinations in Azerbaijan as well but our prime focus remains on Baku. We are working towards tie-ups with Cox & Kings, SOTC, Thomas Cook, etc., to target the leisure traveller seg-ment from the Indian market next year. India is an emerging market for Azer-baijan and we are hopeful that our pro-motional efforts will help us establish Azerbaijan as a prominent destina-tion for the Indian travellers,” Nene concluded.
Till now word of mouth publicity helped Air Arabia to record good num-ber of passengers from the Indian mar-ket, with this roadshow it is expected to attract more Indian passengers to visit Azerbaijan.
Eyeing the booming Indian outbound tourism, the Sharjah Tourism Board conducted a 4-city tourism promotional roadshow for stakeholders and travel agents in Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. The main aim of the roadshow was to attract Indian travel-lers to the diverse tourism prospect of Sharjah.
Speaking on the occasion, E. Kha-lid Jasim Al Midfa Naiken, Chairman, Sharjah Commerce & Tourism Devel-opment Authority, Government of Sharjah, said, “India is a very lucrative market and we are aware of the poten-tial it holds in terms of inbound visitor traffic into Sharjah. We are happy to be tapping this important market through our four-city roadshow. We received an overwhelming response from travel agents and stakeholders and we look forward to doing more roadshows in the state in near future.”
He further added, “We want to pro-mote Sharjah as a cultural and educa-tion destination for Indian travellers. Sharjah has a lot to offer in terms of tourism, culture and commerce and it is imperative that the scope of engage-ment between both countries should now be taken to the second level. India is one of the most crucial and promis-ing tourism markets for Sharjah and the emirate every year attracts thousands of tourists and visitors from the country. It is also a safe destination for women and we want to highlight that.”
The event also witnessed high atten-dance from the tour operators who interacted with DMCs, hoteliers, air-line officials and management of Sharjah Tourism board. The roadshow acted as a platform for representatives of Sharjah Tourism board and other delegates to interact with the Indian Tour Opera-tors and showcase the tourism products.
Oman is making it easier for the citizens of India, China and Russia who reside in or who hold an entry visa to one of these countries– USA, Canada, Australia, UK and Schengen states to enter the Sultanate of Oman by granting them non-sponsored tourist visa. The new terms and conditions were issued by the Omani Author-ities stated that the visa shall be granted for a period of one month for the fee of OMR 20.
Salim Adi Al Mamari, Director General of Tourism Promotion, Ministry of Tourism in Oman, said, “With the revision of visa regulations, we are expecting that Indian arrivals across all segments will grow exponen-tially, especially leisure and visitors to conventions and exhibitions. Oman has gained immense popularity with mature and evolved travellers in the recent years. We aim to expand our travel and tourism offerings and are certain that the revised policies will offer expediency and convenience to travellers and will encourage more impromptu trips to the Sultanate.”
Lubaina Sheerazi, India Representative, Ministry of Tourism, Oman, stated, “The outbound segment in India is on a rise with the Indian economy boom-ing and increasingly better standards of living. Most Indians typically travel for three to five nights as they want to experience Muscat and beyond. We are certain that the recent change in policies will be favourable for the Indian travellers and Sultanate will see a positive growth in this upcoming festive and holiday season.”
Oman woos Indian travellers with easier visa rules
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 21europe
Munich-based Studiosus reports 61% increase in cultural tourism to Greece
UK Tourism industry proposes sector deal to increase economy
France witnesses record increase in Indian travellers
A Munich-based tour operator Studiosus confirmed that it has recorded 61% increase in educational and cultural travel bookings to Greece between Janu-ary-December 2017. Croatia, Russia and Spain also recorded a remarkable surge in travellers, revealed the brand.
The Iberian Peninsula was successful in observ-ing 12,000 visitors. Italy was the most popular des-tination in absolute numbers, with 13,500 bookings. The Middle East, the Arab world and Israel also wit-nessed a steady increase, while Jordan and Egypt showed a small upward trend. Morocco, the UAE and Oman had a 25% increase.
The tour operator exhibited revenue growth of 275 million euros as of the present year, an up by 5.3% of about 261 million euros in 2016. Studiosus high-lighted that it was noteworthy to see a rise in reser-vations for products such as smart & small and travel for events which contributed to a 4% increase in tour-ists annually.
H.E. Alexandre Ziegler, Ambassador of France to India confirmed that France has become the desired travel destination for Indian travellers as Indian arrivals have surged by 50% compared to the last two years.
While inaugurating a branch office of the Consul-ate General of France in Puducherry, Ziegler said, “France has now become the preferred travel desti-nation for Indians. The total number of Indian tour-ists who visited France last year was 6,00,000, which a sharp rise from about 3,00,000 in 2014.”
He also added that there has been more than 50% increase in the number of visa applications, mostly for tourist visas.
Emphasising on the economic advantages, Ziegler said that the branch office will ensure prox-imity and accessibility to the public. “The inaugura-tion served as a testimony of the very strong momen-tum that our (Indo-French) relation is experiencing,” he mentioned.
The annual roadshow recently organised by Spain Tourism in Delhi highlighted the growing prospects of MICE and luxury travel of the destination. The work-shop witnessed a turnout of 160 tour operators in Delhi who were updated on the destination, the online train-ing programme, ‘Spain 360 Expert’ along with presen-tations by Spanish suppliers. The roadshow also cov-ered the cities of Ahmedabad and Chennai.
Addressing the Spanish suppliers and select Indian trade partners, Ignacio Ducasse Gutierrez, Tour-ism Counsellor, Embassy of Spain in India and Direc-tor, Tourism Office of Spain assured that the Spanish Embassy is constantly striving to ease the visa process further.
In an interactive get-together, Amit Kalsi, Founder and CEO, Experiential Travel Journeys Pvt. Ltd. high-lighted, “We cater to the discerning Indian travellers who look for immersive experiences. Finding a deeper perspective to travel, they want to indulge in food and wine trails, etc. and see newer regions.”
Natalia Boveda, Promotion Executive, Costa del Sol Tourist Board, urged Indian trade partners to look at Spain as an ideal destination for an experiential sojourn. She cited Costa del Sol’s diverse offerings as a luxury destination.
The destination observed 100,000 Indian arrivals to Spain last year which was a 17% increase over the pre-vious year.
Under the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy to pro-mote its tourism industry as a potential sector, the UK tourism industry’s bid for a potential sector deal. The Tourism Industry Council (TIC) which is a group set up to collaborate between government and the tourism industry, led by Steve Ridgway, BTA Chairman and For-mer Chief Executive of Virgin Atlantic Airways.
He stated that tourism in UK is worth £127 billion annually and is one of the most valuable export indus-tries and a big employment generator across Britain. The sector deal bid was the result of the industry collab-orating over many months to seize the opportunity and put tourism at the top of the UK Government’s agenda.
Ridgway is in hope to more than double the value of this industry to £268 billion within a decade, increase employment to 3.8 million and boost productivity.
Britain is seeing strong growth, with a record 23.1 million inbound visits, witnessing a rise of 8% as of 2016.
Employing more than three million people across the UK and made-up of 200,000 businesses, the tour-ism sector deal aligns the industry on four priorities:
• A 10-year tourismandhospitality skills cam-paign to boost recruitment, skills and long-term careers providing the industry with the workforce it needs,
• Boostingproductivitybyextendingthetourismseason year-round and improving global market share in the MICE sector,
• Expand connections to encourage inboundvisits by making it easier for overseas and domestic travellers to not only travel to the UK but explore more of it,
• Creating ‘tourism zones’ to build qual-ity tourism products that meets with the tourist’s expectations, extending the tourism season and enhancing localised transportation to improve their experience.
Spain’s annual roadshow highlights MICE & Luxury Travel as growing segments for Indians
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 22AfricA
South African Tourism highlights new destinations
AVANI debuts in Tunisia with two new properties
Ethiopian Airlines welcomes the new Boeing 787-9 DreamlinerEthiopian Airlines has become the first airline in Africa to add Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner to its fleet. The aircraft model is one of the most technically advanced, ultra-comfortable, fuel-efficient and environment-friendly in the 787 family that the carrier will operate. Ethiopian Airlines was the first in the world outside Japan to receive and operate the 787-8 back in August 2012.
Both the 787-8 and 787-9 offer superior and unmatched onboard comfort, thanks to their unique features such as the biggest windows in the sky, high ceiling, less noise, distinctive lighting, higher air humidity as well as 20% less fuel. The 787-9 is 20 feet or 6 meters longer than the 787-8 and has more passenger capacity with 315 seats and more cargo space.
Tewolde Gebre Mariam, Group CEO, Ethiopian Airlines, said, “Continuing our legacy of pioneering aviation technology in Africa, we are proud to celebrate yet another first with the introduction of the cutting-edge 787-9 into our young and fast-growing fleet. Today, the 787 is our core fleet with 20 aircraft in service. Our investment in latest technology aircraft such as the 787 and A350, makes us among the very few airlines in the world to simultaneously operate these two most cutting-edge aeroplanes.”
Ethiopian Airlines currently flies to more than 100 international destinations in five continents using 93 most modern and youngest fleet, 20 of which are B787 Dreamliner, deployed on its long-haul routes.
To expand its tourism base and showcase new destina-tions, the South African Tourism (SAT) has now fur-ther expanded its product offering to include newer regions that offer newer activities. The new destina-tions include East London, Port Elizabeth, Oudtsh-roon, Plettenberg Bay, Knysna. SAT firmly believes that these new destinations will attract more Indian travellers and boost arrivals to South Africa.
To promote these SAT’s India office recently organised an educational roadshow to promote the unexplored destinations. Tour operators from Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Nagpur and Bengaluru took part to understand the new South African destinations.
Hanneli Slabber, Country Manager- India, South African Tourism, said, “A large section of the Indian market includes second and third-time visitors to South Africa and to maintain their interest, we need travel agents to be thoroughly aware of different loca-tions within the country.”
AVANI Hotels & Resorts is launching its two new lux-ury properties in Tunisia in partnership with Groupe Chaabane. This is for the first time that the hotel group has launched its property in North Africa.
AVANI Les Berges Du Lac Tunis Suites will be located in Les Berges du Lac II, a prime commer-cial, residential and diplomatic area in the Tunisian Capital. There will also be an all-day dining restau-rant and a health club with a gym, two spa treatment rooms, sauna and steam rooms, and an indoor swim-ming pool.
Alejandro Bernabe, Vice President, AVANI Hotels and Resorts, commented, “We are really excited to be bringing our dynamic AVANI brand to North Africa with the launch of these two properties in Tunis. We look forward to working closely with Groupe Chaa-bane to launch the brand in the Tunisian capital; a
market which we are confident has a lot of potential.” Maher Chaabane, Chairman, Groupe Chaabane,
remarked, “We are pleased to partner with Minor Hotels and believe the AVANI brand will bring something new and exciting to the hospitality mar-ket in Tunis. We are confident that Group Chaa-bane’s extensive real estate and hotel development experience, combined with Minor Hotels’ hotel and resort management expertise, will ensure a success-ful partnership.”
AVANI Gammarth Tunis Resort & Spa, the group’s second property, is expected to open in 2021 and will offer 250 keys in a prime beachfront loca-tion. Located 20 minutes from Tunis Airport and 30 minutes from the city centre, Gammarth is an upmar-ket coastal resort area of Tunis, catering to a mix of leisure, government, corporate and MICE demand.
To attract more travellers from India, the Seychelles Tourism Board India office organised a three-city roadshow in Delhi, Ahmedabad and Mumbai which are the top source markets for Seychelles Tourism in India.
Seychelles Tourism chose a ‘round robin’ method across all the three cities, which also included pre-sched-uled meetings with the local travel partners and agents. The interaction helped the visitors from Seychelles to showcase their travel products. It is for the first time that STB has adopted such promotional activity for showcas-ing their products in India.
Commenting on the new format, Lubaina Sheer-azi, Chief Operating Officer, Blue Square Consultants, which represents Seychelles Tourism in India said, “We have introduced this new format for the roadshow in the fourth year of Seychelles Tourism’s presence in
the country keeping in mind the awareness and inter-est built over the years. The cities chosen contribute as the top performers for Seychelles and have shown great potential to rise further. We are pleased to receive such positive and encouraging feedback about the format and quality of meetings.”
The roadshows saw the highest turnout of partic-ipants from Seychelles, representing DMCs, hotels, cruise company and airlines.
Sherin Francis, Chief Executive, Seychelles Tourism Board, said, “We are happy to note the immense success of the three-city roadshow in India. The cities were cho-sen due to their current and potential capacities for out-bound tourism to Seychelles. We have received only pos-itive feedback about the format and execution by both our Seychelles partners and Indian trade partners.”
seychelles eyes on attracting more indian travellers
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 23americas
India’s Only Global Travel Trade Newspaper
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BLTM 2017 registers high interest from buyers and
sellers, the show likely to grow 50% over last year
The 2.0 edition of the Business & Luxury Travel
Mart (BLTM) will be held from October 26-27, 2017
at Hyatt Regency, Gurgaon in Delhi NCR. The show
will consolidate its lead as India’s first and the only
full-format booths and pavilions based travel trade
show focused on Business Travel and MICE. There are
a number of much smaller and localised roadshows
in table-top format, which do not do justice to the
branding needs and privacy of competing sellers, as
per industry insiders.
Buoyed with the successful opening last year,
BLTM has now firmly established itself as India’s
premier B2B travel trade show on business, luxury
and MICE travel. 98% of the Buyers as well as Sellers
were satisfied and said they are likely to return in 2017.
India’s international outbound business travel
spending has shown consistent double-digit CAGR.
According to Global Business Travel Association
(GBTA) BTI Outlook Annual Global Report & Forecast,
India is placed seventh in the overall business travel
volumes globally. It was one of the fastest growing
markets, with 11.6% growth in 2016 and expected to
grow at an average rate of 10% annually till 2022.
Estimated on the basis of a survey of buyers and
sellers, an estimated `300 crore ($ 46 million) worth
of business would be waiting to be transacted on
the show floor of BLTM 2017, from the 250+ highly
qualified hosted buyers. The exit survey in BLTM
2016 revealed each hosted buyer conducted estimated
business worth ̀ 1.5 crore ($ 230,000).
Hosted Buyers at BLTM include corporate travel
planners with purchasing authority, travel companies
catering to business, leisure, MICE and luxury travel,
MICE travel managers and buyers, MICE organisers
and managers, business travel managers and buyers,
film destination companies, associations, wedding
planners and event management companies.
Buyers from the following companies will attend
BLTM 2017: Music Broadcast, Alkem Laboratories
Limited, Tenova India Private Ltd, Magma Fincorp,
Tata Technologies, Amazon Development Centre
India Pvt Ltd, ICICI Prudential Life, D-Link India Ltd,
BCD Meetings and Events, Crowley Accord Marine
Management Pvt Ltd, LIC of India, Adani Wilmar,
Perkim Elmer India Pvt Ltd, H & R Johnson, Schueco
India Pvt Ltd, Khaitan & Co, Colliers International,
Axis Bank, Pernod Ricord, Gammon India Ltd,
Volkswagen, Corporate Events (I) Pvt Ltd, IDBI
Federal Life Insurance and many more.
A state-of-the-art online meeting diary system has
been deployed by the organisers, for buyer and seller
matchmaking and appointments.
BLTM 2016 had registered over 5000 pre-scheduled
appointments, prior to the show.
There are likely to be more than 250 Sellers from
India and abroad, in their colourful booths and
pavilions.
Sellers who have confirmed their participation at
BLTM include The Fern Hotels & Resorts, Trulyy India
Hotels and Resorts Pvt Ltd, KAP Computer Solutions
Pvt Ltd, Dee Empresa Hotel, The Residency Group of
Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, Royal Retreat, Westin
and Le Meridien Bahrain City Centre, Abhiwadan
Expedition Holidays Pvt Ltd, Hola China (Shanghai)
Int’l Travel Service Co Ltd.
There are many new features in BLTM 2017. Sellers
are also being offered complimentary board and lodge
within their booth packages on first-come basis to
make their participation more effective in terms of
convenience and greater opportunities to network
with hosted buyers.
In addition to buying and selling opportunities at
the show floor, there will be an equally interesting
line up of Panel Discussions to be conducted on the
sidelines of the exhibition. The eminent panelists at
the sessions will deliberate on the latest issues related
to Incentive Travel, MICE, Wedding and destination
promotion through films.
Sanjiv Agarwal, Chairman & CEO, Fairfest
Media Ltd (the organiser of TTF, OTM and BLTM),
commented, “While smaller table-top shows have
mushroomed in this space, they do not do justice to
the branding needs of reputable sellers.”
“We are very happy to welcome new sellers like
the Sri Lanka Convention Bureau who have joined
with a large pavilion and is sponsoring some of the
programmes. Other magnificent MICE destinations
like Taiwan, Korea, and leading brands like Taj, Hyatt
are likely to participate in a bigger way. It shows
BLTM’s promise to be an effective platform for CVBs
and brands wanting to tap into the lucrative MICE
markets of India,” he added.
For more details visit: bltm.co.in
Over 250 hosted buyers will meet an equal number of sellers maintaining the 1:1 Hosted Buyer to Seller ratio
INDIA 10 ASIA 14
EUROPE 18
MIDDLE EAST 16
AMERICAS 20
CARIBBEAN 24
TECHNOLOGY 26
FILM TOURISM 30
EVENTS 27
OCEANIA 22
GLOBAL 25
AFRICA 19
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM 28
We want to target MICE and incentive travel business from corporate clients
and expand our business in this area, with the help of BLTM. At BLTM Gurgaon
2017, we will give our training and presentation to the Indian tour operators, through
our local office in India.
JENNIFER ZHAO
CEOHola China
The key factor that attracted us to participate in BLTM is the credibility of this
unique tourism trade fair and expanding our business to different corners of
the world. We will take this opportunity to promote our company through different
media sources especially trade fairs and digital marketing.
UMESH GUPTA
CEOAbhiwadan Expedition Holidays Pvt Ltd
Our strategy for this year BLTM is to increase awareness in the Indian market.
We believe that India has a lot to offer in Bahrain. Bahrain has experienced
Indian corporate and leisure business in the beginning of this year and we are
delighted to explore more now.
ZEE BASSILA
Westin and Le Meridien Bahrain City Centre
Taiwan has put its focus to attract corporate meetings from Southeast Asia.
This is in line with the government’s new Southbound Policy, which aims to
deepen Taiwan’s agricultural, business, cultural, education, trade and tourism links
with Southeast Asian Nations member states, South Asian countries, Australia and
New Zealand. With the help of BLTM, we believe to get such opportunity. Various
strategies have been implemented to attract corporate and incentive groups and
nothing better than BLTM can give us such a platform.
YATING (TINA) CHUANG
Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA)
Sellers Speak
In order to lure travellers from around the globe, the Mex-ico Tourism Board unveiled a new global campaign ‘A World of Its Own’ in New York City. The campaign throws light on Mexico’s vibrant tourist destinations and pro-motes Mexico as a global tourism destination.
The tourism campaign comes at a time when Mexico is thriving as a go-to destination for travellers across the world. According to UNWTO, Mexico has climbed from the 15th (2012) to the 8th rank as the most visited country in the world. Thus, the campaign will help Mexico in attain-ing the desired number of tourists in the coming years.
“This new campaign is an invitation to immerse your-self in everything that is Mexico. We constantly hear visi-tors tell us that Mexico is unlike anything they have expe-rienced. This new campaign seeks to capture this positive overwhelming feeling of sensations and discovery,” stated Hector Flores Santana, CEO, Mexico Tourism Board.
In order to attract more tourists and make this cam-paign truly global, Mexico Tourism will work on making
their website more appealable to the public and their dig-ital platforms to showcase the world about the unique offerings of Mexico.
A video featuring 360 degree view Mexico experiences titled ‘World Of Its Own’ will be shot which is designed to cater the customised market and consumer segments and highlight Mexico’s unique tourism products like beaches, romance, adventure, nature, medical and wellness, LGBT, cruises, culture, high-impact events, luxury, sustainability and gastronomy.
Emmanuel Rey, Chief Marketing Officer, Mexico Tour-ism Board, added, “It’s time for Mexico to connect with travellers on a more personal level, now more than ever. ‘A World of Its Own’ will both engage consumers by shar-ing the breadth of experiences Mexico has to offer and more importantly, challenge travellers to live life to the fullest, awaken their drive to imagine and ensure travel is an important part of how they discover the world and themselves.”
Africa’s Cape Town and USA’s New York City has entered into a partnership in order to boost tourism between the two destinations. The tourism partnership agreement was signed in New York by Fred Dixon, Pres-ident, NYC & Company and Enver Duminy, Chief Exec-utive, Cape Town Tourism.
A two-year contract is signed between the two nations by which they will have to collaborate the best practices in tourism marketing and exchange market-ing assets that will cultivate a productive tourism rela-tionship in the years ahead. Dixon mentioned that the two cities share a lot in common in terms of culture, cui-sine and design.
Cape Town will be promoted in the New York City through advertisements on bus stop shelter and LinkNYC kiosks that are expected to create 17.6 million media impressions. In Cape Town advertisements will be rolled out through digital and out-of-home media of the same value with specifics to be determined.
To boost tourism exchange between both the coun-tries, special travel packages will be launched to increase the visitor arrival to both places.
South Africa is ranked as the largest African origin market for visitors to New York City.
mexico Tourism launches A World of its Own campaign
NYC partners with Cape Town to increase tourism between the two destinations
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 24OCEANIA
Australia records 15% increase in Indian travellers
New Zealand introduces two new walking tracks
Norwegian Jewel to spend second season in Australia and New ZealandNorwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Jewel will spend a second season in Australia and New Zea-land. The cruise will sail through destinations like Melbourne, Cairns, Hobart, Milford Sound, Wel-lington and Tauranga, as well as in the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and a transpacific voyage from Van-couver to Tokyo.
As part of the Norwegian Edge multi-million-dol-lar revitalisation programme, Norwegian Jewel will undergo a three-week dry-dock enhancement in Sin-gapore in late 2018.
Andy Stuart, President and CEO, Norwegian Cruise Line, said, “Norwegian Jewel’s Australia and New Zealand sailings have received a great deal of anticipation and excitement from guests both locally and internationally. The region is a bucket-list desti-nation for many of our guests with a warm culture, lush lands, sandy beaches, action-packed adven-ture and more. We are thrilled to be returning to this
dream destination with the iconic Norwegian Jewel looking as if she were a brand-new ship.”
Cruise Line’s 2018/2019 season include a spectac-ular 19-day transpacific journey from Vancouver to Tokyo (Yokohama) via Alaska and Russia; a 19-day journey to Australia from Singapore with stops in Bali and Komodo Island and a new 13-day South Pacific itinerary.
On the popular demand, the itinerary of the cruise line also features a series of sailings in and around Australia and New Zealand home-porting from Sydney, including a seven-day round-trip itin-erary featuring calls in Tasmania just before the hol-idays in mid-December.
Norwegian Jewel is loaded with facilities and features to woo the travellers from across the globe, including 15 bars and lounges, the line’s signature specialty restaurants and state of the art accommo-dation options on board.
As many as 277,100 Indian tourists visited Australia in 2016-17, a growth of nearly 15% over the last year, making the country the 9th largest inbound market.
Maharashtra has emerged as the leading source market for Australia with over 59,000 tourists from the state visiting the land of kangaroos in June 2017. Along with Maharashtra, Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal secured the place as the top source markets from India.
“Over the years, we have undertaken several focused campaigns as part of our consumer out-reach efforts. Our collaboration with television over the past two years has definitely helped us to not only build awareness but also drive visitation from our number one state (Maharashtra),” said Nishant Kashikar, Country Manager- India and Gulf, Tour-ism Australia.
Kashikar said Tourism Australia has also worked closely with key specialist agents and airline partners to present attractive offers to travellers to choose Aus-tralia as their next holiday destination.
“Visitors from Maharashtra were looking for-ward to a range of experiences, including aquatic and coastal (beaches), self-drive, nature, wildlife and adventure on their Australian sojourn. With a grow-ing penchant for travel, we expect growth from our top metro cities to continue over the years to follow,” he added.
New Zealand recently introduced two new networks of walking tracks to be known as short walks and day hikes. The new walking tracks will help in boosting the hiking sector in New Zealand.
The new walks are spread through both islands and are easily accessible popular tourist destinations of New Zea-land. The walks are divided into two, the ‘easy’ 45-minute Lake Gunn loop and to the ‘advanced’ 7.5km / 6-hour Te Whara Track on the coast near Whangarei, north of Auckland.
“It’s fantastic to see that consumer feedback from both international vis-itors and Kiwis was a key input into the walk selection– this helps deliver an experience that we know New Zea-landers and our international visitors are looking for and will enjoy,” says Ste-phen England-Hall, Chief Executive,
Tourism New Zealand.The tracks were chosen for their
beauty and variety of scenery to offer along with connectivity and facilities provided to the travellers.
According to a research, New Zea-land is known for its varied offering of walks to travellers around the globe and that people want to experience a wide range of these, particularly shorter style walks.
“We know that New Zealand is highly regarded for its great walking experi-ences by New Zealanders and inter-national visitors,” says DOC’s Tour-ism Manager Tinaka Mearns. She also mentioned that the motive behind the promotion is to let people provide the right information to try new walks and experience different places around New Zealand.
Australia’s capital, Canberra is named one of the world’s top cities to visit according to travel guide Lonely Planet’s annual ‘Best in Travel’ list for 2018. Canberra ranks third in the list. Canberra’s ranking in the list is the only Australian city to appear in this year’s top ten and represents a ranking that exceeds the best prior efforts of Melbourne and Sydney.
The new guide noted Canberra’s sur-prisingly rich history and cultural high-lights, singling out things like the region’s 140 vineyards with 30-odd cellar doors, or Bar Rochford which was named Austra-lia’s Best Bar in the 2017 Gourmet Travel-ler Awards.
Calling the ranking as a ‘significant acknowledgement of the evolution of our city in the past few years’, Tourism Minis-ter Andrew Barr celebrated the news.
Lonely Planet’s Chris Zeiher, who authored the upcoming guide’s Canberra chapter, labelled the city a hidden gem and particularly praised the plethora of family-friendly options, as well as the nearby nat-ural wonders and host of nation-leading food and drink.
“Recent revitalisation efforts have given Canberra a new lease of life, establishing a truly contemporary and unique sense of style, with boutique precincts emerg-ing throughout the city, bursting with cool bars, cafes and restaurants. With endless family-friendly and adventurous activities, opportunities to connect with nature or indulge in a range of gastronomic delights, along with a smorgasbord of cultural, artis-tic and sporting events, Canberra should be on everybody’s 2018 travel wish list,” emphasised Zeiher.
Canberra among world’s top cities to visit in 2018
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 25CAribbeAn
Caribtours to promote South Africa and Costa RicaCaribbean luxury tour operator, Caribtours has included South Africa and Costa Rica as its new destina-tion which will be published in the two brochures-Our Caribbean and Our Beautiful World, scheduled for 2018.
Paul Cleary, Managing Director, Caribtours, said that they were thrilled to be at the forefront of bringing the best of global travel by announcing Costa Rica and South Africa as their new destination spot as well as to proudly maintain Caribtours’ for providing award-winning services.
Caribtours will offer a range of hotels in Costa Rica
alongside experiences such as a ‘boutique’ nature tour and a family adventure including kayak tours, white-water rafting and zip lining through the treetops.
In South Africa, the operator had introduced itiner-aries such as a 13-night Boutique Garden Route tour and a nine-night Western Cape and Safari itinerary.
The Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) has applauded efforts by the region’s public and private sector to grow tourism, as regional and global investor confidence plays an integral role in shaping the future of tourism in the Caribbean region.
Tourism in Caribbean contributes to employment, entrepreneurial activity, tax revenues and has immense potential to benefit its citizen, governments and the industry.
Given that the Caribbean is the most tourism-depen-dent region in the world generating more than 80% of GDP in some jurisdictions, CHTA maintained that tour-ism’s contribution to the region’s economies cannot be understated.
Frank Comito, Director General and CEO, CHTA, said that healthy investment climate and investor confi-dence are linked directly to good governance and sound business practices. “While we may tend to think of our-selves as individual companies or countries, many inves-tors look at the Caribbean as one, so what happens in one
destination, positive or negative, can reflect on the entire Caribbean,” he stated.
Through CHTA’s work with the Caribbean Tour-ism Organisation and CARICOM Heads of Govern-ment, there has been greater movement in recent years towards stronger public-private sector collaboration and a civil discourse as both organisations work to support a regional tourism development.
CHTA recognises the committed and hardworking public sector officials who are devoted by ensuring Carib-bean countries and territories continue to generate reve-nues to maintain systems.
The association also observes greater resolve by civic, business and government leaders to create a more positive investment climate, eliminating the corruption, bureau-cratic apathy and inefficiencies stifling development in other regions asserting that the collaboration was benefi-cial not only to the thousands of people directly benefiting from tourism, but also to the investors who have placed their confidence in the stability and growth of the region.
“Our region has come a long way and we should remember these achievements as we move towards hon-ourable conclusions from unfortunate misunderstand-ings,” Comito concluded.
Caribbean stakeholders join hands for tourism promotion
UNWTO Global Conference to promote Jamaica Tourism CHTA ties up with tourism stakeholders from Dominican Republic
The upcoming United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Global Conference may serve as an ideal platform to showcase Jamaica as an ideal tourism destination. The country’s sustainable tourism development agenda and demonstrate how tourism contributes to the economic well-being of every Jamaican.
Edmund Bartlett, Minister of Tourism, Jamaica, told that the conference to be hosted by both the Government of Jamaica and the World Bank Group, from November 27-29 at the Convention Centre in Rose Hall, St. James will be the most significant global conference ever to be held in the Americas.
“The conference will focus on jobs and growth in the region. It will also see leaders of the cruise industry sitting at the same table with their land-based
counterparts, discussing critical matters related to tourism,” he pointed out.
Citing it as a grand event, Bartlett informed that about 800 tourism delegates will gather under one roof comprising representatives from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank, the Organisation of American States and a number of key regional organisations such as the Caribbean Tourism Organisation and the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association.
“There has never been a gathering of this nature of key leaders in tourism who will be looking at best practices and how we can bring ideas and resources together. We want to look at how we can map out a blueprint of the future development of tourism, not just in the Caribbean but worldwide,” he added.
The Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) has signed an agreement with hoteliers and tourism partners in the Dominican Republic.
As a part of a new agreement, a tourism informa-tion centre is being developed by the National Asso-ciation of Hotels and Restaurants in the Dominican Republic (ASONAHORES) to share research on country’s economic impact on tourism and activi-ties with CHTA and its members.
The partnership also allows ASONAHORES to access reports from CHTA’s data partners, includ-ing STR, MasterCard, KPMG, ADARA, Travelzoo, the Caribbean Tourism Organisation, the Ameri-can Resort Development Association and the World Travel and Tourism Council.
CHTA will arrange in-country workshops and presentations for ASONAHORES’ members to review data and reports and to provide them with deeper insights and tools useful for destination, organisation and property planning.
In a bid to further utilise the potential of the region to develop health and medical sector, CHTA and ASONAHORES have agreed on a strategy for the development of medical tourism in the region.
The information sharing will strengthen ASO-NAHORES’ advocacy efforts with both the Domin-ican Government and the business community.
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 26global
BLS International inaugurates Spain visa application center in Tashkent
Airbnb joins PATA as hospitality member
12th UNIGLOBE Regional Conference highlights the power of tourismThe 12th Annual UNIGLOBE Regional Conference and Excellence Awards recently concluded at Imagica in Mumbai. The theme for this year’s conference was ‘Feel the Power’ and it recorded footfall of over 300 UNIGLOBE travel professionals from South Asia. The conference saw two power-packed days of delib-erations over GST and stimulating educational ses-sions on leadership and unveiled two ground break-ing technology solutions from UNIGLOBE.
The highlight of the conference was the launch of UKonnect, an end-to-end networking and collabo-ration tool that brings over 1500 UNIGLOBE profes-sionals on a single platform to exchange ideas, share knowledge, discuss the latest trends and explore new technology tools.
Also, unveiled at the conference was an improved version of the company’s flagship agent booking tool- Complete Access Online and a preview of upcoming products, including the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the devel-opments of GST.
An interactive session by Raja Natesan, CEO, UNIGLOBE Travel (South Asia), shed light on how UNIGLOBE professionals have the potential to rec-ognise new opportunities and turn them into step-ping stones of success for clients. Other sessions revealed how to transform difficult business circum-stances into the most favourable outcome and balance power with learning to be used more effectively as leaders.
“Our theme for this year, ‘Feel the Power’, was chosen to inspire UNIGLOBE Travel professionals to feel the power to conquer industry challenges and find new ways of adding value to client relationships through transparency, new-age tools and better use of travel content to tailor options and experiences for travellers,” highlighted Ritika Modi, Regional Presi-dent, UNIGLOBE Travel (South Asia).
A part of this year’s star attraction was the key-note session, where Rohit Roy, a highly acclaimed actor, let the attendees in on his ‘mantra for success.’ They got an inspiring and valuable lesson in realis-ing the power within to deliver excellent service in a highly competitive industry.
Over 40 suppliers from different categories including leisure, technology, insurance, banks,
hotels, airlines and destination management com-panies came together for the Supplier Showcase that served as a platform for participants to estab-lish, renew and build successful partnerships with their preferred suppliers and gain a better under-standing of their offerings.
Top performing agencies were rewarded for achieving the organisation’s highest standards of growth through professionalism and customer sat-isfaction at the conference. Awards for top-level sales and revenue growth achievements were given to the owners of UNIGLOBE member agencies from across the South Asia region.
“As every year, it was great to bond, interact and learn with our fellow UNIGLOBE family members around South Asia at the conference. The rides and experiences at Imagica Theme and Snow Parks, along with the ‘Dress as a Toon’ and ‘Pirates’ themed dinners on day one and two of the conference, only added the fun element to the rendezvous,” cited C.H. Uma, President, UNIGLOBE Franchise Own-ers Association.
The 12th Annual Excellence Awards felicitated the top individual performers for continually pushing the benchmark of excellence higher across 11 award categories. The awards included recognition for counsellors, managers, sales, accounts, leisure and facilitation of personnel at various levels of perfor-mance assessment.
The representatives from the Embassy of Spain and senior officials from BLS International Services Ltd. formally inaugurated the Spain Visa Application Cen-ter in Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent.
The opening ceremony was attended by the Consul General of Spain in Russia, Ittsiar Akerreta Tabauda; the Consul of Spain in Uzbekistan, Alfonso Lopez Pan-dilla and senior officials from BLS International Ser-vices Ltd. The officials particularly appreciated the value-added services including VIP lounge, photo-copy courier, form filling assistance, SMS alert, photo
booth and insurance services that BLS provides at the Spain visa application center for the convenience of applicants.
The center, authorised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Spain, will provide visa support services (advice, collection, pro-cessing and forwarding of documents to the Spanish Consulate General in Moscow) for obtaining a Schengen visa for Spain.
For the spring-summer period Uzbekistan has scheduled to allow open charter flights to Spain. In the future, the center plans to expand cooperation with other European countries as well.
Shikhar Aggarwal, Joint Managing Director, BLS International, said, “It is our privilege to facilitate seam-less visa application process for Spain in Uzbekistan. Our aim has always been to provide world-class ser-vices to customers and make the entire visa process, a delighted experience. I would like to thank the Embassy of Spain in Uzbekistan for their constant support.”
The application center is centrally located and has equipped staff to handle applicants’ queries while the web-site is user-friendly and informative. It is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and has the capability to service other Schengen countries jointly with prior approval from Spanish Mission.
PATA Global Insights Conference was once again a resounding success with nearly 200 delegates hear-ing from high profile speakers representing major international brands such as Boeing, Microsoft and TripAdvisor.
Under the theme ‘R U Future Ready’ and with the support of Auckland Tourism, Events and Eco-nomic Development (ATEED) and BBC World News, the event took place at the SKYCITY Grand Hotel in Auckland, New Zealand.
Mario Hardy, CEO, PATA, said, “This year’s con-ference programme focused primarily upon the need for the public and private sectors in the travel and tourism industry to prepare for the disruption and innovation that is currently taking place and will take place in the future.”
The event examined the issues, threats, challenges and opportunities for New Zealand’s tourism sector in line with the Tourism 2025 Plan and beyond, spe-cifically looking at artificial intelligence, aviation,
e-commerce, consumer travel trends, cybercrime, destination brand building and media.
The programme also featured a fascinating ses-sion with ‘Tomorrow’s Tourism Leaders’. PATA and ATEED presented the Tourism Leaders Forum with the title ‘Being Future Ready’. Tourism indus-try leaders in New Zealand, including Nick Hill, CEO – ATEED; Chris Roberts, CEO of Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA); Stephen England-Hall, CEO of Tour-ism New Zealand, and Cam Wallace – Chief Reve-nue Officer at Air New Zealand, addressed the chal-lenges and opportunities facing public and private organisations as the nation seeks to maximise the sec-tor’s economic benefits in line with the Tourism 2025 Plan and beyond.
Airbnb is the latest hospitality sector organisation to join the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA).
Mario Hardy, CEO, PATA, said, “We are extremely pleased to welcome Airbnb to the PATA family. With more than four million Airbnb listings worldwide, it impossible to ignore the impact that the sharing economy is having upon the travel and tourism industry. It is impor-tant that we are able to add this voice to our dis-cussions in the development of a responsible travel and tourism industry, especially when we examine the role of the sharing economy in the dispersal of tourists to lesser known and emerg-ing destinations.”
Highlighting the agenda of the partnership, Hardy said over the next few months, PATA and Airbnb will work on sharing economy and their economic impact over the issue of tourism.
“Home sharing has become an important economic engine for communities around the world,” said Thao Nguyen, APAC Head of Strate-gic Partnerships at Airbnb. “We’re excited to join the PATA family and play our part in promot-ing healthy and sustainable tourism that directly benefits local communities.”
PATA Global Insights Conference 2017 examines the future of tourism
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 27technology
ixigo launched a first of its kind virtual travel currency to enable travellers book tickets hassle free.
Citing the reason of the launch of ixigo money, Aloke Bajpai, CEO and Co-Founder, ixigo said that most of loy-alty programmes, cashback offers and wallets that come with limitations and restrictions on their earnings and usage and people are tired of such gimmicks. “Most existing programmes have minimum booking values to earn anything at all, you get your cashback or earnings many days after your booking and your earned value is most likely to expire within 90 days. You can never use all of your earnings at once, as they only allow usage of a small percentage on every transaction,” he said.
With no minimum booking amounts to earn ixigo
money, no usage limit on ixigo money balance, instant discounts on future bookings, guaranteed 48-hour transfers and a 6 months expiry period, ixigo money is an industry-first travel currency that works across mul-tiple OTAs and airlines that are partnered with ixigo.
In addition to all these benefits, a major bonus is that
when a traveller pays their entire booking amount using ixigo money, they will be charged zero convenience fees by the booking provider. With the value of one ixigo money being equivalent to a rupee, users are entitled to use the entire balance of their ixigo money account on their next booking transaction.
ixigo launches virtual travel currency for hassle free bookings
Indians are turning into impulsive pilgrims: OYO survey
Amadeus encourages industry to make accessible travel a reality for all
IRCTC collaborates with MobiKwik for e-ticket booking
According to a survey conducted by OYO, a growing num-ber of Indian travellers are seeking a holistic experience when they travel to destinations traditionally known for their religious symbolism. They now look for more expe-riences to club with their pilgrimage to optimise their travel.
These insights have been published in the ‘Connected Pilgrims Survey’ which was conducted across 11 cit-ies (Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Patna, Bengaluru, Chennai, Lucknow, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Kolkata) through detailed in-person interactions with 1700 respondents.
Ritesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, OYO, said, “Travel to religious destinations is among the largest segment of domestic travel business. Today, lakhs of travellers heading to diverse pilgrimage destinations like Shirdi, Tirupati, Ujjain and Puri have an assured accommodation option through OYO. We conducted this survey so that travel service providers like us could better understand the expectations of these guests and how to serve them.”
The conclusion revealed that Indian travellers are looking for a holistic experience when they travel, even to religious destinations. These ‘pragmatic pilgrims’, often travel as family-group spanning different age-groups and
therefore, look for a variety of experiences. Those travel-ling with friends of the same age-group also often look for interest-based activities to make the holiday memorable.
65% respondents suggested they would visit a site of religious prominence for reasons beyond spirituality or religion. With over 50% respondents stating that their ideal pilgrimage duration is for 1-2 days, the demand for leisure travel has seen a surge as short weekend breaks appear to be the growing norm.
More than two billion people around the world have acces-sibility needs due to disability and age. Yet a new study curated by Amadeus revealed that most of their needs are not being fully catered for by either the travel industry or the public sector, so accessible travel is far from becoming something that millions of travellers can take for granted.
According to the report ‘Voyage of discovery- Work-ing towards inclusive and accessible travel for all’, one of the biggest barriers to accessible travel remains inac-curate or incomplete information being available, cou-pled with a lack of skilled customer service. The report also highlighted that travellers with accessibility needs increasingly now expects these to be met as part of the mainstream service and at no extra cost. The role of tech-nology in making these accessible is becoming more
important, with specific developments such as voice rec-ognition starting to be commonplace.
The study also concluded that 35.9% of the respon-dents prefer travelling by plane as their transportation method. The least satisfactory areas with regards to accessibility are those related to railway stations (4.9 out of 10) and the most satisfactory area is accommodation (6.2 out of 10).
The study highlighted that transitioning to an acces-sible travel-friendly environment for all will require the improvement of many aspects. These include more effec-tive communication that will facilitate access to relevant information on accessibility, and a more responsive ser-vice with properly trained staff who know how to address people with different access needs.
Moreover, standardised content and services would increase consistency across the industry ensuring clar-ity in the type of services that any customer could expect. There is an opportunity in tandem for a more personalised travel experience so that each travel segment is tailored to the individual and their specific needs.
Alex Luzárraga, Vice President, Corporate Strategy, Amadeus, said, “Improving accessibility in travel means enhancing usability for all customers. Lifting barriers to travel, personalising the travel offer, using technology to further facilitate travellers’ experiences and creating more accessible infrastructure where people can navigate autonomously will benefit everybody.”
India’s mobile phone based payment sys-tem and digital wallet, MobiKwik and Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Cor-poration (IRCTC), has signed an agreement which will allow customers to book railway tickets using the former’s payment gateway.
Mobikwik’s payment gateway currently enables payments for more than 3,000 e-commerce websites and apps. The tie-up is aimed at simplifying payment systems by introducing MobiKwik’s easy-to-use interface for all, which supports payment solution through channels like debit card, credit card, net banking, ATM cards and wallets.
“Our association with IRCTC is another step to reach out and work towards our mission of digitising the country. This association will help the passengers to pay for their tickets seamlessly and securely, within seconds,” stated MobiKwik’s Chief Business Officer, Vineet Singh.
IRCTC app sees over 1 lakh train tickets transactions per day. Mobikwik’s payment gateway processes more than 100 million transactions a month with a secure plat-form that works with different levels of security—encryption of all transactions, sensitive data storage with multiple levels of encryption API level security.
The alliance of MobiKwik and IRCTC highlights a significant rise in cashless mode of transactions. During the current fiscal year, as much as 17% of total tick-ets, both reserved and unreserved, were booked through various cashless modes of payment.
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 • 28EVENTS
Cambodia Travel Mart gears up to highlight ASEAN’s tourism potential
Ministry of Tourism, Cambodia in collaboration with Slickbooth Holding – Events & Public Relations officially launched the first Cambodia Travel Mart (CTM) 2017 which will be held from November 17-19, 2017 in a wonder cultural land Angkor Wat of Siem Reap in Angkor province.
The event is initiated by Thong Khon, Minister of Tour-ism, Cambodia. High-ranking officers and experts from Ministry of Tourism Cambodia, industry leaders and sub-ordinates of private companies involved in tourism will be attending the event.
The Ministry of Tourism, Cambodia has a duty to orga-nise and cooperate with state institutes and private sectors to enhance the potential of tourism. Slickbooth Holding, Event & Public Relations is an important partner with the Ministry of Tourism to organise the international tourism expo in Cambodia.
CTM 2017 will be a tourism business forum which will witness a wide array of participation from tourism com-panies, tourism operators, tourism experts, national and international media, total of approximately 500 com-panies and agencies. The forum is supported by tour-ism organisations of ASEAN state member countries to improve local and regional tourism.
This event is the key factor to develop tourism in
Cambodia and to revive tourism in ASEAN nations. To ensure a hassle-free business, an online business
appointment is pre-scheduled, cordial golf tournaments, workshops related to tourism, travelling and showcasing tourism products and services is organised. CTM will have approximately 200+ national and international sellers and 200+ national and international buyers. Besides sellers and buyers, the event will host about 50 national and interna-tional media agencies.
Thong Khon, Minister of Tourism Cambodia, praised Prime Minister Hun Sen, citing that it was under his lead-ership that Cambodia could progress in tourism and enhance its tourism potential.
Along with highlighting Cambodia’s stance in promot-ing tourism in the country the event also will also draw attention to the “VISIT ASEAN@50: GOLDEN CELE-BRATION.” ASEAN completes 50 years in 2017 and to mark the prominence and success of the association,
ASEAN’s best 50 festivals and 50 most unforgettable travel experiences will also be showcased.
In 2016, an estimate of 5 million tourists visited Cambo-dia, an increase of 5% in 2015. By the end of 2017, Cambodia expects to observe 5.5 million tourists and is eying to reach 7 million in 2020.
The Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) in association with Odisha Tourism organised its 33rd Annual Convention which witnessed over 1,200 delegates. The event focused on re-inventing the inbound tourism sector in India with the theme ‘Indian Tourism– Time to reinvent ourselves’.
The convention was inaugurated by Naveen Pat-naik, Chief Minister of Odisha in the presence of KJ Alphons, Minister of State with Independent Charge for Tourism, Government of India at the Mayfair Convention Centre, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.
The various sessions of the convention cov-ered topics such as ‘Next Generation-Challenges and Opportunities’, ‘Moving Beyond Culture and Heritage’, ‘Aviation-New Policies and New Opportunities’, ‘FAITH and the GST Journey’
and ‘Marketing- Stop Serving Old Wine in a New Bottle’.
One of the major highlights was the ‘Run for Responsible Tourism’, an event to promote respon-sible and sustainable tourism in the country.
Lally Mathews, Honorary Secretary, IATO and Co-chairman of the Convention Committee elab-orated on the importance of the theme explaining that the theme was chosen because lately the num-ber of inbound tourists have dropped and with constant policy changes from the Government and introduction of GST it is the time for reinvention.
The image of Odisha is transforming from the recently-held Asian Athletic Championship and Bhubaneswar is now being rated as the first Smart City in the country.
33rd iATO Convention initiates discussion on re-inventing tourism
World Tourism Awards honours changemakers at WTM 2017The World Tourism Awards celebrated its 20th Anni-versary at the World Travel Market by recognising three awardees during the event held in London.
The first award was to Charity Challenge and it was recognised “for creating, managing, and delivering international fundraising expeditions across six conti-nents and 38 countries, which over the last 18 years have inspired tens of thousands of people to raise more than £50 million for 1,800 charities, as well as themselves donating close to £500,000 to community projects.”
Micato Safaris from AmericaShare was the second awardee and was honoured for “philanthropic work that has improved the lives of thousands of orphaned and vulnerable African children through the gift of edu-cation, including the Micato One for One Commitment, which sends a child to school for every safari sold.”
The third award was to His Excellency Paul Kagame, President, Republic of Rwanda and was presented for “his visionary leadership through a policy of reconcil-iation, sustainable tourism, wildlife conservation, and economic development attracting major hotel invest-ment, resulting in the remarkable turnaround that has led to Rwanda’s rise as one of the leading tourism des-tinations in Africa today.”
Before each award, a short video was shown high-lighting the work of each of the awardees and what dif-ference their work has done to the community.
Matthew Dixon, Commercial Director of Corinthia Hotels; Patrick Falconer, Executive Director UK of the New York Times and Jeanette Gilbert, Head of Market-ing and Communications, World Travel Market pre-sented the awards on behalf of the sponsors.
Peter Greenberg, CBS News Travel Editor hosted the Awards presentation. The Guest speaker at the cere-mony was TalebRifai, Secretary-General, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO).
The Award, Inspire was a specially handcrafted glass designed by Mdina Glass from Malta. The cere-mony was immediately followed by a special perfor-mance by the Rwanda National Ballet, Urukerereza.
The World Tourism Awards are co-sponsored by Corinthia Hotels, The New York Times and by Reed Travel Exhibitions. The awards are to recognise “indi-viduals, companies, organisations, destinations and attractions for outstanding initiatives related to the travel and tourism industry, and in fostering sustain-able tourism and developing programmes that give back to local communities.”
(Source: Terry Spruce | London)
Madhya Pradesh Travel Mart updates the travel trade on the new tourism products of the stateThe 4th edition of Madhya Pradesh Travel Mart (MPTM) held last month at Hotel Lake View in Bhopal witnessed over 200 national and international buyers and close to 100 domestic exhibitors. The event played a significant role in facilitating serious networking between the buyers and the suppliers during which the travel trade was updated about the new tourism products in the state.
With B2B sessions scheduled over two days, both the buyers and sellers utilised the opportunity to form suc-cessful collaborations and network with the industry players including airlines, accommodation providers, destination management companies, heritage hotels and wildlife resorts.
At the inaugural ceremony, Surendra Patwa, Minis-ter of Tourism, Government of Madhya Pradesh, unveiled ‘Tourism– Everyone’s Business’, a book authored by Gour Kanjilal, Executive Director, IATO. Hari Ranjan Rao, Sec-retary, MP Tourism, was also present at the event.
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The Responsible Tourism initiatives in the state of Kerala woke up to a new dawn, with the Chief Minister, Pina-rayi Vijayan launching the dedicated mission for it. The world’s first Responsible Tourism Mission will lead Ker-ala Tourism through people-friendly, local community-friendly and environment-friendly initiatives ensur-ing rural development, employment opportunities and women empowerment.
K Suresh Kurup MLA and Jose K Mani were the chief guests of the function. P Bala Kiran, Director of Tourism presented the Responsible Tourism Mission project. K Rupesh Kumar, Coordinator, State Responsible Tour-ism Mission announced the new Responsible tourism destinations.
“Within a span of 9 years, 16 crores are the profit Kumarakom could gain through tourism. Around 1.16 crore revenue is generated by the localities. The reason behind this growth is the involvement as a group by the communities around. The aim of RT is to create 1.5 lakh jobs in the future,” said Venu V, Principal Secretary, Ker-ala Tourism.
Presiding over the function, Kadakampally Suren-dran, Minister of Tourism, said, “The government pol-icy is to make tourism more popular. Apart from improv-ing the functioning of the elite class, the government also aims to use tourism as a tool for village development and women empowerment. Their aim is to make Responsi-ble Tourism more beneficial to the localities.”
Inaugurating the Responsible Tourism Mission of the state and speaking on the occasion, Chief Minister Pina-rayi Vijayan, said, “One needs to appreciate Responsible Tourism completely for it is a source of support for the local communities. Our land is encompassed of serenity and greenery; that is why it’s called God’s own country.”
With a bunch of new projects under the new mission, the state aims at expanding Responsible Tourism across the state by incorporating a set of new destinations. Cur-rently it is carried out only in seven destinations in the state, viz. Kumarakom, Thekkady, Vythiri, Ambala-vayal, Kumbalangi, Bakel and Kovalam.
“The state Responsible Tourism cell has been formed and has already kick started with its functioning and as part of this, from 6 destinations, today we have almost 35 destinations on RT across Kerala”, said P Bala Kiran, Director, Kerala Tourism.
Turning these baby steps into big leaps, the Mission takes Responsible Tourism to all 14 districts. The gov-ernment has planned to create 1,50,000 employment opportunities in the tourism sector alone through the Responsible Tourism Mission, in a span of 5 years. The selected destinations for the Responsible Tourism plan are mostly areas that are covered by backwater, sea, wild-life, heritage and diversity in areas comprising natural beauty. The scheme is being implemented with the pri-mary objective of ensuring extra income and livelihood for agricultural labourers, traditional industrial workers and marginalized communities in these areas and to give equal importance to the social-environmental parity.
The Chief Minister and the Tourism Minister also honoured the Panchayat committee, various tour-ism coordinators, facilitators, entrepreneurs as well as natives of Kumarakom, for their participation in bagging the national award to the village this year for Responsi-ble Tourism.
To promote responsible travel, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation launched a travellers’ competition on World Tourism Day. The campaign helped the travel-lers to enjoy and travel responsibly, keeping all the param-eters in mind.
The winner of the competition was awarded a one-month trip around the globe visiting sustainable tour-ism initiatives. The initiative is part of the ‘Travel.Enjoy.Respect’ campaign taking place within the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017.
The winners across the world journey will be sup-ported by Explore WorldWide, an adventure travel group with a commitment to responsible travel. Destinations like Colombia, Germany, Mexico, Ras al-Khaimah and the Léman region in Switzerland have offered to help them discover responsible and sustainable tourism practices.
“Every action counts and travellers have a strong role to play in building a more sustainable tourism sec-tor. Imagine the impact of one small action multiplied by millions. We want to inspire all travellers to be the change they want to see in the world,” said Taleb Rifai, Secretary-General of UNWTO.
Chief minister of kerala launches Responsible Tourism mission
UNWTO announces competition to promote Responsible Tourism
South Africa’s Robben Island Museum goes greenRobben Island, the prison-turned-tourist-attraction that held Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment amidst the apartheid struggle, has moved to solar energy. The move will reduce Robben Island’s carbon emis-sions by almost 940 tons.
Tourism Minister, Tokozile Xasa handed over a solar power plant to the Robben Island Museum (RIM) as part of the Department of Tourism’s man-date to support sustainable and inclu-sive tourism development.
Minister Tokozile Xasa said, “Pre-serving our environment and reducing our carbon footprint is critical to the sustainability of the tourism industry. The construction of the solar PV mini-grid on Robben Island is a shining example of what can be achieved when government structures work together to preserve our ecological and cultural tourism assets for future generations.”
She concluded that this collabor-ative initiative has the capability to engineer sustainable energy solutions and inspires a hope that the business of tourism be conducted in an efficient and sustainable manner.
Chief Executive Officer for RIM, Mava Dada said that the initiative was an incredible advancement for Robben Island and explained, “Prior to the con-struction of the solar plant, we relied solely on expensive diesel generators to provide electricity on the Island. This transition will see the island largely powered by the solar plant. This will reduce the Island’s carbon emissions by almost 940 tons per year.”
The United Nations General Assembly adopted 2017 as the Inter-national Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development– inviting a dedicated focus on tourism’s ability to contribute to economic growth, social inclusion, cultural and environmental preserva-tion, peace and mutual understanding. South Africa is readying itself for these new age destination selection filters.
“Responsible tourism is everyone’s business, with an immense potential to increase our country’s global com-petitiveness and I urge the industry to embrace the Green Tourism Incentive Programme, and help us build a sus-tainable and inclusive tourism sector,” said Xasa.
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Chile promotes incentive scheme for film production
VisitBritain lures tourists through film-tourism campaign
Assam Tourism encourages filmmakers to shoot in the region
The Assam Tourism Development Corporation Lim-ited (ATDC) has assisted three movies to be filmed in various parts of the state and is now encouraging filmmakers from outside the region to visit and shoot in Assam. The ATDC is also considering of estab-lishing a film city in Dima Hasao district to help the filmmakers.
“We are assisting filmmakers to shoot in Assam. We have provided them with vehicles and other facil-ities along with location know-how (local guides) to ease their shooting experience. We have two small caravans for 25 to 30 people which are available free of cost. Also, they can stay at any hotel in Guwahati.
We have 10 air-conditioned rooms,” said Kausar Jamil Hilaly, Managing Director, ATDC.
“There was a proposal from the autonomous council for a film-city. It’s a huge investment but we will have to bring the people first and then we can think of the infrastructure,” added Hilaly.
Representatives from ATDC participated in Brah-maputra Valley Film Festival to promote Assam as a favourable film tourism destination.
Shillong’s fame, Ronnie Lahiri who has produced films like Pink, Piku, Madras Café highlighted that spreading awareness is most significant in attract-ing filmmakers from Mumbai, Delhi and other cities.
Chile recently announced that it will be providing 30% filming incentive to international film and TV producers to shoot in Chile. For the same, filmmak-ers will need to work with a Chilean production com-pany and spend at least $ 2 million locally and per production payments will be capped at $ 3million. Chilean officials want the pilot incentive to boost film tourism, as well as elevate Chile’s international pro-duction profile.
“The development generated by audio-visual investments goes beyond the economic activity asso-ciated with the investment itself,” pointed out Cris-tian Diaz, Director of Investments at Corfo, Chile’s Production Development Corporation, one of the agencies running the incentive.
Countries like New Zealand or cities like New York are strong examples of the impact on the tour-istic development of those territories, which in those cases and in terms of income may be even higher than the benefit originating directly from the audio-visual industry.
With an aim to entice international tourists, VisitBri-tain has roped in a new film tourism campaign ahead of the release of Paddington 2 in Britain. For the same, VisitBritain has partnered with StudioCanal to com-pel people to book an adventure-filled, marmalade-inspired holiday to the UK.
The sequel follows Paddington as he explores London. Among the many iconic locations such as Tower Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral, London Padding-ton station, Portobello Road and Little Venice are fea-tured in the film.
Clare Mullin, Director of Marketing, VisitBritain/VisitEngland, cited, “Our collaboration with Studio-Canal is a fantastic opportunity to promote to a global audience the fun and adventurous destinations that can only be experienced on a trip to Britain- be it after-noon tea in central London, taking a stroll around one of the many parks and gardens, or catching a train for a new adventure from Paddington station.”
VisitBritain’s campaign gives audience the chance to explore some of the best spots in the UK, whilst appreciating Paddington’s very British etiquette, spreading joy and marmalade wherever he goes.
Last year set a record for inbound tourism to Brit-ain on visits and spends with 37.6 million visits, up by 4% in 2015, and visitors spending £22.5 billion, up by 2%.
The PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry has pro-jected that the Indian film industry is expected to grow at 11.5% year-on-year, reaching a total gross total of INR 240 billion ($ 3.7 billion) by 2020. The forecast has been predicted jointly by the PHD Chamber and its Knowledge Partner BnB Nation on which a report was released in Mumbai during the Global Film Tourism Conclave: ‘Promoting Destinations through Films’.
Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Union Minister of Minority Affairs was the Chief Guest at the event. The session also witnessed Jaykumar Jitendrasinh Rawal, Tourism Min-ister, Government of Maharashtra who spoke at length about the initiatives taken by the Maharashtra Govern-ment in promoting tourism. Besides, veterans of the Indian film industry- Mukesh Bhatt, Boney Kapoor, N Chandra and Kunal Kapoor were among others pres-ent at the occasion.
According to the report, the film industry faces mul-tiple challenges on regulatory fronts such as about 70 approvals and licenses from as many as 30 authorities for shooting films in India. Elaborating on regulations, the report indicated that central clearances and shooting of foreign feature films in India require the prior approval of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB)
whereas in case of a documentary, approval of the Min-istry of External Affairs (MEA) is required. The script of the film has to be approved by the MIB, which is a time-consuming process. The ministry may also depute a liai-son officer to facilitate the shooting.
The report recommends introduction of Soft Loans. The government should replicate the foreign coun-tries’ film tourism incentives in India. It should provide filmmakers a short-term loan without charging inter-est to meet their short-term needs. This would encour-age producers to shoot in that particular location and would catalyse the growth of the industry. The govern-ment should also ensure safety and security while shoot-ing in locations.
It concludes stating that states should undertake vari-ous initiatives like setting up surveillance cameras, tour-ist police, 24x7 helplines and compulsory registration of tourist guides operators, etc to ensure safety of the tour-ists as well as the film crew.
Historically, the film industry in India has grown at a CAGR of over 10% in the past and going by present pre-vailing circumstances, if all goes well easing the film reg-ulation will serve as a catalyst to further promote film tourism in India.
11.5% growth expected in indian film industry by 2020: PHD & BnB nation
TRAVEL NEWS DIGEST | nOvemBeR 2017 31 film tourism •
Tapping the tourism potential and promoting Bengal as an ideal shooting location, the Government of West Ben-gal has picked the 23rd Kolkata Inter-national Film Festival (KIFF) as an annual event to use the silver screen as a route to drive foreign investment into the tourism sector of West Bengal. The KIFF was held from November 10-17.
“The state tourism, information and cultural affairs ministries have started working together to showcase Bengal as a shooting location to the vis-iting directors and producers at the KIFF this year,” commented Singer-turned-Politician Indranil Sen, Min-ister of State for Information and Cul-tural Affairs, West Bengal.
Arup Biswas, Minister for Youth
Affairs and Sports, West Bengal, said that the state has a pool of tech-nicians and services offered are at a competitive rate when compared to international standards. “Bengal has many picturesque locations and we will appeal to the foreign guests at the KIFF to visit some of these spots,” he cited.
Amitabh Bacchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kamal Hassan, Mahesh Bhatt along with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee inaugurated the show. Some 143 films from 53 countries will be screened at the week-long festival. Marking a first for the years of leg-acy, Britain was selected as the Focus Country with six films of British Direc-tor Michael Winterbottom.
A new state film office is aiming to increase film production in Arizona. This south-western U.S. state does not offer tax incen-tives to movie companies, whereas neigh-bouring New Mexico offers film companies a 25% tax rebate on the amount of money they spend. Kentucky offers a 30% rebate and Oklahoma offers 35%.
This is being changed by the Producer of Wishman- Marc Gold, who will be pro-ducing his movie entirely in Arizona cit-ing that the movie is based on the man, Frank Shankwitz, who is a Prescott local and thus it is only plausible that a large part of the movie is set here. Shankwitz has managed to create financial incentives of his own as well.
He arranged for the county to lend a building to the production company to use as a headquarters, studio, set and soundstage– free of charge. The Prescott
community has also embraced the produc-tion, offering costumes and period vehicles.
“We’ve got more diverse topography than any other state in the country. We are the nearest big city to Los Angeles,” said Matthew Earl Jones, Director, Arizona Office of Film and Digital Media.
Noting that Arizona lacks tax incen-tives, Jones and the rest of the film officers decided to become creative. They man-aged to get the state Department of Trans-portation and Parks Department to waive fees for production companies to shoot in parks and on highways. Jones rolled out a new program called ‘Reel Deals’, a private sector discount program for the film indus-try who will shoot in Arizona.
“When you start adding it up, then we are a great bargain and I think we can resume our rightful place in the film indus-try,” said Jones.
kolkata international Film Festival showcases investment opportunities in Bengal
Arizona rolls out new incentives to promote film tourism
Morocco targets screen tourism from IndiaMorocco, fast emerging as North Afri-ca’s economic leader is keen to diversify its cooperation with India including in tourism sector targeting high-end tour-ists and filmmakers.
The country is taking specific steps to target the Indian tourism market, according to Adberrafia Zouiten, CEO, Moroccan National Tourist Office who was on a weeklong trip to India recently. “The destination of Morocco wants to open up more and more to India and hopes to capture the atten-tion of a large number of Indian tour-ists by making them visit the kingdom including filmmakers. Number of pop-ular Bollywood films has been shot in Morocco during the past few years,” he mentioned.
In Morocco, there is a lot of interest in Indian art and culture, especially Bol-lywood. The Marrakesh International
Film Festivals (MIFF) regularly screen Hindi movies and invite Indian actors.
The Moroccan Tourism Author-ity recently opened a regional office in Delhi in a record 10 days-time by obtaining necessary permit from local authorities. The opening of this office is a result of fruitful cooperation between the two governments.
“Indo-Moroccan relations have been strengthened, particularly after the historic visit of King Mohammed VI to New Delhi in October 2015 as part of the third India-Africa Forum Sum-mit,” said Zouiten.
Relations between India and Morocco go back to the 14th century when the famous traveller and writer from Tangier, Ibn Batuta travelled to India. In modern history, India was active in the UN supporting the Moroc-can freedom movement.
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