Narita International Airport

A POWERFUL storm has made landfall in Hokkaido, triggering warnings of floods, landslides and waves in Japan’s northernmost prefecture.

Before hitting Hokkaido’s southern coast around 06.00 today, the storm was downgraded from a typhoon by weather authorities.

Seperately, Typhoon Mindulle travelled through Japan’s northeastern prefectures, including Iwate on Monday night, having damaged Tokyo and grounding hundreds of flights that afternoon.

Over 400 domestic services to and from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport were cancelled. Meanwhile, Narita International Airport, located further afield from Tokyo, cancelled 88 international and 34 domestic flights.

Narita’s control tower was temporarily closed as wind speeds soared. The airport runway also shut down, suspending all operations for about an hour.

Express trains halted services temporarily as well although most commuter services continued operating normally.

Some reports place casualty numbers at two so far. This is the first typhoon to directly hit Japan’s capital city in 11 years.

THE GDP of the global travel industry is predicted to continue to register strong growth despite the surge in terror attacks and headwinds coming from macroeconomic factors.

Latest updates from the WTTC’s Economic Impact Reports 2016 shows that the travel sector is set to grow by 3.1 per cent this year, outpacing global economic growth forecast at 2.3 per cent.

Regionally, the outlook for South Asia will be the strongest at 5.9 per cent growth, driven mainly by India’s economic prospects.

North-east Asia is expected to experience solid growth too at 4.7 per cent, stimulated by China growing at 6.3 per cent, while South-east Asia is set to follow closely behind with 4 per cent growth.

Meanwhile, North America is predicted to grow at a moderate 3.1 per cent and Europe by 2.2 per cent. Latin America will be the worst performer, with an anticipated decline of 0.9 per cent because of declines in Brazil post-Olympics.

The growth expected in Asia comes as some European destinations become less attractive to international visitors.

In France, the sector’s direct contribution to GDP is still growing, but the forecast has been reduced from 2.9 per cent to 1.1 per cent, due to macroeconomic downgrades in other European countries, and compounded by recent terror-related atrocities.

In Turkey, growth in travel and tourism’s direct contribution to GDP has been reduced further from negative 0.2 per cent to negative 3.2 per cent, due to the spate of terror attacks, the diplomatic dispute with Russia, the failed coup, and proximity to the Syrian conflict.

“Our update report highlights the resilience of travellers and the robustness of our sector, as tourism continues to outpace global economic growth by nearly one per cent,” said David Scowsill, president and CEO of WTTC.

“Whilst we should not downplay the impact of incidents or turmoil at the individual country level, on a macroeconomic level, we continue to register strong growth.”

THIS year’s Business and Luxury Travel Mart (BLTM), to be held from October 24-25 at the Hyatt Regency Gurgaon, will feature hundreds of buyers from associations, event management companies, travel planning departments of corporates, luxury agencies and more.

Leading trade bodies like the Society for Incentive Travel Excellence India, Network of Indian MICE Agents, India Association Network, Indian Golf Travel Association and the Travel Agents Association of India, have also confirmed their attendance and will be curating education and networking sessions during the two-day event.

Meanwhile, the support and participation of other travel industry associations like Global Business Travel Industry Association, Outbound Tour Operators Association of India and the Indian Association of Tour Operators, is being finalised.

Some of the hosted buyers who have confirmed their participation include Tata Motors, Red Bull India, RBS Services India, Total Oil India, Tata Communications, BCD Meetings & Events, Fountainhead Entertainment and Hewlett Packard, among many others.

Among those who have confirmed their participation as sellers at BLTM include AccorHotels, Chancery Hotel Bangalore, Lemon Tree Hotels/Redfox Hotel, Ottila, Pride Group of Hotels, Shanti Maurice, The Ambassador Hotel Group, The Lodhi Hotel, The Royal Orchid, Travel Motivations and Variety Cruises.

NTOs from South Korea, Nepal, Malaysia and Zimbabwe have also confirmed their participation at the event.

“We are committed to creating BLTM as India’s premier show focused on business, MICE and luxury travel segments,” said Sanjiv Agarwal, chairman of Fairfest Media, organisers of BLTM.

“Hundreds of genuine hosted buyers will be flown in from all parts of India and neighbouring countries. Additionally, the venue will provide a rich hinterland of high-value corporate buyers in thousands, who will be also accorded the same status as hosted buyers,” he added.

CORPORATE travel from the US and Europe to Asia has seen staggering growth so far this year, according to latest findings by business airliner VistaJet.

Despite global economic and political uncertainty, the company, which regularly serves over 90 per cent of the globe, reported triple digit percentage increments in flights from the US to Asia. Meanwhile, flights from the UK to China more than quadrupled and flights to India were up 50 per cent.

The strong growth is felt globally, with overall flight traffic for VistaJet up 23 per cent and passenger numbers up 20 per cent. This has resulted in the company’s sale of the largest single package of flight hours in its history.

“We are flying our customers to more places than ever before and had our biggest ever quarter in the three months to June 2016,” said VistaJet’s chairman and founder Thomas Flohr.

“We are particularly pleased to see the growth in flight traffic to India, Asia and the US. From the trends we are seeing in the market, we expect Asia and India to play increasingly significant roles in global business going forward, particularly destinations like Shanghai, Mumbai and Singapore, which have seen notable growth over the past six months.”

VistaJet added that this is an indicator that corporations are increasingly viewing access to an entire fleet rather than ownership of one or two aircraft as a priority. Even as more economic headwinds are on the horizon, businesses are not flying less, but rather, are taking a more fiscally prudent approach to corporate travel.

The average number of annual contractual flight hours rose for the airliner in the second quarter to 120 hours per new customer, according to the report, which reasoned that VistaJet’s subscription model is increasingly preferred to ownership, which carries greater financial burdens and asset risks.

Flohr commented: “Our continued growth in the first half of this year demonstrates both the resilience of the VistaJet business model, and that our commitment to delivering the best possible service for our customers, in a way that makes sense in uncertain times, is clearly valued.”

“It also shows that there is an ongoing need for business aviation, that companies will always seek to grow and pursue new opportunities and it’s just a question of finding the right, financially prudent solution to access these,” he adds.

Wanda Tulfo Teo

THE first order of business for the Philippines’ newly appointed Department of Tourism (DoT) secretary are housekeeping matters affecting the daily operations of the agency.

Wanda Teo, who took office in July, embarked on a marathon of meetings with internal heads to conduct a “reality check”, according to a DoT statement, to ascertain if its resources are used efficiently for tourism-related projects and activities.

One of the first actions taken was the scrapping of the processing fee for the issuance of certificates of travel tax exemption and reduced travel tax, which came into effect since July 25.

There is also an ongoing discussion to integrate the terminal fee into the passenger’s airline ticket payment in hopes to simplify travel regulations and ease the queuing and delays at Philippine airport terminals.

Outside of internal workings, Teo also met with Tourism Authority of Thailand officials and the Thai minister of tourism and sports, Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul, who offered collaboration between the two countries in farm tourism, youth development as well as women and indigenous community projects.

Representatives from the Thai Travel Agents Association also met up with Teo to discuss how tour operators can send more Thai tourists to the Philippines.

She also travelled to the US to explore opportunities for tourism advocacy among the Filipino-American community and to see if medical tourism is a possibility for Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike residing on the country’s east coast.

Teo asserts that the DoT will be emphasising on domestic tourism too, and that the agency will be geared towards “shared tourism” to ensure that the economic benefits of tourism are felt by marginalised members of local communities.