The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) recently organised a one-week online contest to stay connected with Indian social media influencers encouraging them to create a nice video or photo story from their stock of materials of a fond #ThrowbackThailand memory.  Initiated by TAT New Delhi and Mumbai Offices, the contest represented a token of gratitude that TAT wanted to convey to Indian social media influencers. In a normal situation, they would usually travel to various parts of Thailand and share their experiences during the year. But this year, making trips to Thailand has not been possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Vachirachai Sirisumpan, Director, TAT New Delhi Office, said the activity was conceptualised with the Millennials in mind, considering that they would be the early travellers once the situation returned to normal. “We would like to thank all participants for joining this online event and keeping the spirit of travel and tourism moving during this challenging period,” he said. Taking place during the last week of May 2020, the online contest attracted over 100 high-quality unique entries, including many top award-winning ones. The contest was a huge success in terms of reaching out to the public through India’s social media influencer community, achieving more than 2.4 million impressions across the country. After a very careful selection process considering both quality and engagement, the winners were picked by the appointed committee. Out of the hundreds of participants, five were selected as Grand Winners and each received a GoPro Hero 8 Sports and Action Camera while 10 were chosen runner-up winners who also received gifts. Cholada Siddhivarn, Director of the TAT Mumbai Office, extended her warmest congratulations and appreciation to all social …

Travelport has launched the Travelport COVID-19 Smartpoint Plugin. The plugin provides travel agencies with the latest information on government restrictions, lockdowns and safety measures across the globe all within the agent workflow. It is available free-of-charge to all Travelport customers globally, using Travelport Smartpoint 8.2 or above, and can be downloaded directly from Travelport Marketplace. The new tool provides detailed information on a range of topics, including: lockdown rules, entry requirements and quarantine measures for travelers. Country-level information can be displayed at the click of a button, allowing agents to advise their customers easily and instantly. Kyle Moore, Global Head of Customer Strategy and Marketing, Travelport, said, “The travel ecosystem today is probably the most complex it has ever been, with government, airline, and hotel policies in every country constantly-changing. We’re making sure our agent partners no longer need to constantly leave their workflow to search for accurate and up-to-date information— greatly improving their efficiency in servicing their traveller customers.” Sandeep Dwivedi, Chief Operating Officer at InterGlobe Technology Quotient, said: With the looming uncertainty across the globe, having a substantial amount of certainty through readily accessible up-to-date information including on government and airline policies shall unequivocally prove beneficial for our network of agents and serve as a ready aid for gaining momentum in operations and transactions. This free built-in plugin in the GDS is a welcome move from Travelport, one that will result in both informed traveller and travel enabler.” The information in the Travelport COVID-19 Smartpoint Plugin is provided by global travel safety intelligence provider, Safeture, and is updated daily. “Our collaboration with Travelport will provide millions of travellers with the information they need to make informed decisions. With …

International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced that airlines in the Asia-Pacific region will be the hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis, with losses expected to be $29 billion for 2020. This is more than a third of the $84.3 billion industry losses globally.

As part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat Initiatives by GPS, agents can now own a booking engine portal, which has been developed by GPS in partnership with Influence Technolabs. Apart from they have also launched GST ready accounting solutions for travel and retail industry in association with Infozeal E-solutions. Harmandeep Singh Anand, MD, Global Panorama Showcase (GPS) has said these two solutions are subscription based. The subscription charges are waived off till 31st March 2021. There is a nominal one-time integration charges applicable based on membership level of GPS.

India is still top of the mind in all the top searched markets in South Asia from all the source markets, namely UK, USA, Germany, UAE and Australia, revealed Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys. “In fact, India is usually in the top two of the destinations for these markets. We can see a lot of VFR travel going on from these destinations to India,” he revealed at the PATA India Chapter’s webinar titled ‘Tourism the economic PowerHouse in an evolving landscape’.

Prahlad Singh Patel, Minister of State (I/C), Tourism & Culture, has said that in order to improve the number of Buddhist tourists coming to India, we should fill the deficiencies and make travel easier for them. Addressing a webinar by Association of Buddhist Tour Operators (ABTO), he said that we need to remove the obstacles for Buddhist tourists from coming to India and improve the numbers.

Mario Hardy, CEO, PATA, has said that travel will never be the same after the COVID crisis. “Some of the protocols that have been devised for travelling now, will not be limited through the crisis, but will carry on afterward as well,” he said while speaking at the PATA India Chapter’s webinar titled ‘Tourism the economic PowerHouse in an evolving landscape’.

Starting August, Alitalia will increase the number of flights, and will operate a total of over 1,600 flights per week, 24% more than in July and more than double compared to those operated in June. Alitalia aircraft will fly on 75 routes (24 more than July) and 52 airports (16 more than in the previous month), of which 20 in Italy and 32 abroad. Seats offered in August will return to exceed one million per month, with a growth by 29% compared to July. Despite the significant growth of operations compared to the previous two months, Alitalia will increase its activity in August at around 45% of what was planned before the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Alitalia flight schedule will see in August, on the long-haul sector, the beginning of the Rome-Tokyo Haneda route (from 17 August), the resume of the Milan Malpensa-New York service (from 15 August) and the increase of flights between Rome and New York. On the medium-haul international network, Alitalia will increase the number of destinations served in Spain, France and North Africa and will resume services to and from the Middle East, as well as increasing the number of flights to airports already served abroad; in addition, the Airline will launch many seasonal services to the Balearic Islands and to the Greek Islands (both from Rome and Milan). For the domestic sector, Alitalia will increase air services between Northern and Southern Italy. Furthermore, beginning on 24 July Alitalia will resume operations to and from Milan Linate airport where the Airline will operate, in a first stage, only the PSO routes to and from Sardinia. Starting from 1 August, the Airline will operate to …

In view of the ongoing Covid-19 outbreak, the domestic airlines are operating at a lower capacity – total 21,696 departures in June 2020, as against 86,456 departures in June 2019, resulting in a 74.9% YoY reduction in capacity deployment, reveals ICRA. For June 2020, the domestic passenger traffic was 19.5 lakh, as against 119.9 lakh in June 2019, a YoY de-growth of 83.7%. For May 2020 (25th to 31st), the domestic passenger traffic was 2.6 lakh, as against 115.6 lakh in May 2019, resulting in a YoY de-growth of 97.7%.

PATA India Chapter is all set to conduct its next informative webinar ‘Tourism the economic PowerHouse in an evolving landscape’ will have international speakers –Dr. Mario Hardy, CEO, PATA and Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys. The webinar is aimed at offering a global perspective on the evolution of tourism policy being adopted by various countries, as well as, an analytical view on the reorganisation of global tourism with focus on India & South Asia, Emerging Trends, future opportunities, the new normal business practices and source markets efforts to inspire travellers’ confidence. The webinar promises to be engaging, educational and practical from the perspective of travel professionals and tourism industry stakeholders.