Palladium Hotel Group the internationally renowned Spanish hotel chain represented by Global Destinations in India recently hosted exclusive cocktail dinners for their top 50 priority travel and trade partners in Mumbai and Delhi. The evenings were graced by The Consul General of Spain Fernando Heredia Noguer along with The Director of the Tourism Office of Spain in India, Elisa Robles in Mumbai, while Delhi saw the presence of Deputy Head of Mission, the Embassy of Spain, Montserrat Momán Pampillo and Incharge of Consular Section, Embassy of Spain, Helana Escorial Lopez in attendance. Sandra Polo Canudas, Asia & ME Commercial Director Palladium Hotel Group presented insights on Palladium’s hospitality and newly established regulations for hassle-free travel for Indian visitors. She touched upon Spain re-opening borders, all ready to welcome Indians back. The guests were acquainted with the gamut of brands under the Palladium Hotel Group and were informed about the upcoming projects & developments in Spain. The evenings were full of sparking conversations with the travel fraternity exchanging tête-à-têtes over cocktails. The events presented an opportunity to reconnect with travel & trade partners in India to showcase the diverse brand portfolio the hotel group has to offer. Canudas said, “After 2 years of meeting virtually it is delightful to meet our key Stakeholders in-person. India continues to be one of our focus markets for Outbound travel. We look forward, to continue increasing our footprint in India and to further our brand presence. With international travel now open, we are ready to spoil our Indian visitors with an array of experiences, fantastic cuisine, and stunning vistas!”

Rupinder Brar, Additional Director General, Tourism, has informed that for promotions and campaigns currently, they are going to remain in the digital space. “It has a wide outreach at minimal cost. It creates an effective campaign and also in terms of user profile, most people these days prefer the digital space for getting information for bookings for looking at user generated reviews. Hence, we believe that this is a space that will create informational height for incredible India. There will be a lot more users in digital space and in terms of the content, there is so much diversity in the country that we will continue to bring the different offerings of India as we go along with the opening. Also, there is a lot of excitement within the travel industry as well,” she says.

Ajay Singh, CMD, SpiceJet shares that apart from ATF, excise duty is another issue that the aviation industry is dealing with. “It’s not just about bringing ATF under GST, it’s also excise duty, which is around 11%. The excise duty was hiked at the time when oil prices went down. Now that oil prices are at a record, excise duty is not coming down. Hence, we need to be very cognizant of the fact that aviation sector has suffered huge losses. It’s a chronically ill industry,” he said.

In a bid to further boost air connectivity of North Eastern Region with the rest of the country, Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has approved a Scheme – ‘Providing air connectivity and Aviation infrastructure in North Eastern Region (NER’” to promote air connectivity in the NE states and, if required, to develop infrastructure for air connectivity. As part of this scheme, two important development will take place – first flight of Made in India HAL Dornier Do-228 from Dibrugarh in Assam to Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh. Alliance Air will be India’s first commercial airline to fly Indian made aircraft for civil operations. There will also be inauguration of First FTO (Flying Training Organization) for North Eastern Region at Lilabari, Assam.

The travel agent fraternity of Andhra Pradesh welcomed RK Roja Garu, the new Tourism Minister for Andhra Pradesh. K. Vijay Mohan, President of Tours & Travels Association of Andhra (TTAA), as well as ADTOI Chairman for Andhra & Telangana, said, “We look forward to working closely with the new minister for promoting tourism sector in the state.”

After the completion of several infrastructure projects in Jammu and Kashmir, Union Minister for Road, Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari said that people will be able to travel from Srinagar to Delhi in just eight hours in the future. He stated that the government is pursuing a number of important infrastructure projects in Jammu and Kashmir that will improve regional connectivity. “The Srinagar-Katra-Delhi expressway is also under construction,” he said, adding that more people will visit Kashmir if the infrastructure is improved.

The Department of Tourism of Rajasthan Government on Wednesday signed an MoU with the Federation of Hospitality and Tourism of Rajasthan (FHTR) for organizing the Rajasthan Domestic Travel Mart (RDTM) 2022. The MoU was signed between the Director of Tourism, Nishant Jain and the President of FHTR, Apurv Kumar in the presence of Principal Secretary, Tourism, Gayatri Rathore. She Rathore said that the objective of the MoU is to promote Rajasthan as the most favourable tourist destination nationally and informed that the second edition of RDTM will be organized from July 22-24, 2022 at Birla auditorium, Jaipur.

Radisson Hotel Group is embarking on an exciting new era of hospitality in India, as it prepares to double its portfolio in the country. It will continue its focus on the market as a part of its Asia Pacific growth strategy. The Group has unveiled plans to more than double its Indian footprint, with 148 hotels and resorts to be added by 2025. These will be in addition to over 140 properties Radisson Hotel Group currently has in operation or under development nationwide, revealed Katerina Giannouka, President, Asia Pacific, Radisson Hotel Group.

The Federation of Hotels & Restaurants Association of India (FHRAI) FHRAI recently sent a representation to Santosh Sarangi, Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), to extend the Export Obligation (EO) period under the EPCG Scheme for another 6 to 8 years for the past EPCG licenses where the EO period ended in February 2020 onwards. The association states that it should allow all hotels time to recover and generate foreign exchange to meet their export obligations.

SriLankan Airlines has geared up for a busy Summer 2022 by increasing the number of scheduled flights by 40 per cent to match pre-pandemic levels and meet the growing demand for air travel as the industry continues to recover. The frequency increases will come into effect across SriLankan’s network of online destinations with the start of the airline’s summer flight schedule. The new schedule will facilitate smoother operations for the airline and offer customers greater flexibility, convenience and connectivity. One of the most significant changes is in SriLankan’s operations to India, which were scaled down considerably at the height of the pandemic. India recently reopened their skies for commercial passenger flights after two years of closure. In celebration of this encouraging development, SriLankan will be nearly doubling the number of weekly flights to India to over 100.  Other planned frequency increases to cities in the Indian Subcontinent include the operation of an extra weekly flight each to Gan, Maldives and Lahore, Pakistan. SriLankan is further planning to match the weekly number of flights to Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Muscat and Seychelles in the Middle Eastern and African regions to its pre-pandemic level of operations. Frequencies to certain destinations in the Far East and Oceania would also be gradually increased in the coming months. Daily flights have already been introduced to Kuala Lumpur, while daily flights will be operated to Melbourne by May and to Bangkok and Jakarta by July of this year. Further, an additional weekly flight has been scheduled for Narita starting from July 2022. New destinations are also part of the plan and commercial passenger flights to Seoul, Korea are to be launched in May 2022. SriLankan Airlines earns …