Osamu Tokairin, MD, Travelport Japan

TRAVELPORT has hired travel industry veteran Osamu Tokairin to head the company’s Japanese operations.

As managing director, he will lead the expansion of Travelport’s presence in Japan, taking into account as well the recent acquisition of the GDS’s third party distributor in April, Galileo Japan.

Tokairin has over 25 years of experience working for both regional and global travel companies. Prior to joining Travelport, he has held various senior level management positions such as CEO of Kuoni Japan, managing director for Gulliver’s Travel Agency Japan and general manager of Toptour Corporation’s office in Los Angeles.

He takes over leadership of Travelport Japan from director and general manager Yoshinobu Aoyama, who will be retiring later this month.

“Japan is a highly strategic country for Travelport as we continue to invest in the region. We are delighted that Tokairin has joined us to lead the team to grow Travelport Japan’s presence,” said Mark Meehan, Travelport’s managing director, Asia-Pacific.

“In the meantime, I would like to thank Aoyama for his remarkable leadership of Galileo Japan over the past 30 years, and wish him all the best for his retirement. He will be missed by all of us here at Travelport.”

Ovation of the Seas

THREE of Royal Caribbean’s largest cruise ships, the Ovation of the Seas, Mariner of the Seasand Voyager of the Seas, will be homeporting from Singapore starting October.

This marks the cruise operator’s longest homeport season from the city-state yet, which will run for eight months totalling 55 cruises and is expected to bring an estimated 200,000 guests to ports in South-east Asia.

The deployment of these three ships will increase Royal Caribbean’s South-east Asia capacity by 30 per cent in 2017 over 2016.

Initiating the season is Mariner of the Seas starting October till March next year with 39 sailings that range from three- to seven-night itineraries to destinations like Penang, Langkawi, Port Klang, Phuket, Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City.

This Mariner of the Seas season sees the introduction of a three-night Penang Weekend Cruise and a four-night Phuket Cruise. Other highlights include festive Christmas and New Year cruises and themed cruises featuring salsa and cosplay themes.

Royal Caribbean’s newest and largest ship, Ovation of the Seas, will then homeport from Singapore in the months of March and April 2017, as announced earlier.

It will make 10 sailings comprising three- to five-night itineraries to Penang, Phuket and Bangkok as well as a 12-night one-way cruise to Tianjin with port calls at Ho Chi Minh City, Danang, Hong Kong and Seoul.

Following this will be Voyager of the Seas making six sailings of between three to five nights from May 2017.

Itineraries include calls at Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Phuket, plus one eight-night one-way cruise to Hong Kong with stopovers at Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Nha Trang.

Credit: TAT

FOLLOWING the recent bombing incidents in Thailand, a raft of initiatives were put together by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) in an effort to assure travellers that the nation remains safe and welcoming of visitors.

A Situation Monitoring Centre was immediately opened on August 12, the second day of the attacks, so that government officials could maintain timely and accurate communications. The centre monitors local and international news, collects statistics on tourist arrivals, bookings and cancellations as well as data from airline and tourism-related companies.

A campaign was also launched to galvanize local communities to host tourists and to encourage everyone working in the field of tourism to wear special white-yellow ribbons as symbols of peace and unity.

“We want to show that Thailand and the Thai people genuinely care for the well-being of all tourists. And we want tourists to know that by visiting Thailand, they’ll make memorable travel memories and enjoy experiences that will entice them to return time after time,” said TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn.

Going forward, TAT is also hoping to boost travel arrivals and spending for the rest of the year through several events and festivities.

While the tourism industry in Thailand has proven resilient post-disaster in the past, Yuthasak said in a statement that approximately 100,000 to 200,000 travel cancellations could be resulted due to the incident. “That would cost about 5.08 billion baht (US$146.6 million) to 10.16 billion baht,” he said.

However, Thailand’s Ministry of Tourism and Sports remains confident in reaching its target of 2.4 trillion baht (US$69.3 billion) of tourism revenue in 2016.

Currently, TAT is seeking cabinet approval for a special long-holiday weekend in September to coincide with World Tourism Day held in Bangkok. The ministry hopes that the actual celebration day on September 27 will be declared a public holiday and for the Monday prior on September 26 to be an extra day off.

According to TAT, a four-day break would encourage travel and spending nationwide while boosting confidence among travellers.

In addition, a number of mega events and special tourism promotional campaigns will take place. The Jazz Run Cycling Hua Hin Festival is scheduled for the first week of September, and will comprise a jazz music festival, food fair, marathon, and cycling event. A major golf tournament will also be held, featuring Thailand’s lady golf ambassadors Pornanong Phatlum and Ariya Jutanugarn.

Another large-scale event, titled Magnificent Thailand, will be held in Bangkok, possibly in Lumphini Park, from October 1-7. It will comprise a street food festival, local food fair, city street light decorations, mapping shows, and shopping street.

As well, there will be an ExpatFest held at the end of September to showcase unique Thai culture, traditions, cuisine and tourist attractions to the expatriate community in Thailand with an aim to encourage them to travel more domestically.

TAT has also scheduled to launch a new domestic tourism promotional campaign to encourage locals to travel in Thailand’s southern regions. Named the Cross Regional Travel Challenge, the initiative will start on October 1 featuring the attractions in southern Thailand such as beaches, islands and rainforests.

Also making a return is the Thailand’s Luckiest Visitor campaign which rewards each millionth traveller who enters the country from June to December.

“We believe that all these special measures and initiatives will help stimulate travel during the rest of the year, and allow Thailand to reach the 2016’s revenue target of 2.41 trillion baht,” Yuthasak assured.

HONG Kong tourism authorities are set to introduce food trucks at attractions around the city with an aim to add vibrancy to the destinations.

The initiative first started as part of Hong Kong’s 2015-16 Budget Speech and will finally come into fruition by end-2016.

The eight designated tourist spots to feature food trucks include the Golden Bauhinia Square; Central Harbourfront Event Space; Ocean Park; Tsim Sha Tsui Salisbury Garden; Tsim Sha Tsui Art Square; Energizing Kowloon East Venue 1; Wong Tai Sin Square; and Hong Kong Disneyland.

From a pool of over a hundred applicants, 16 managed to obtain the licences to operate the food trucks. The licensees were determined from a cook-off challenge.

“We trust that food trucks will enrich tourists’ experience when visiting these attractions. We will launch a series of promotional activities for the food trucks and will explore opportunities to collaborate with the tourist industry to use this new initiative to boost tourism,” said an official spokesperson.

“We are also planning to have them operating at major tourism events organised by the Hong Kong Tourism Board, such as the Dragon Boat Carnival, the Hong Kong Cyclothon and the New Year Countdown. Moreover, a mobile app for tourists and locals to track the locations of food trucks will be developed.”

Henry Lo, director and general manager of Lantau Tours believes the initiative is ideal for FITs. “(However), we organise day tours for leisure groups and will not purposely promote or include it in our itinerary because of limited free time.”

Managing director of Sincere International Travel Service, Charles Ng, welcomed the move and said: “Our local food culture definitely draws visitors. It’s vital to drum up noise for this new offer from the outset. But it’s hard to assess its immediate benefit to arrival figures as it’s a long-term investment.”

THE Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has introduced new initiatives to grow arrivals and increase the length of stay of business travellers and families on holiday with young children from Malaysia.

With this, STB hopes to combat declining arrivals from Malaysia, which remains the third largest source market for Singapore after Indonesia and China.

Arrivals from Malaysia had declined from 1.28 million visitors in 2013 to 1.23 million in 2014, then to 1.17 million in 2015. “Arrivals from Malaysia were flat in the first half of 2016, showing no growth or decline,” said Edward Koh, STB’s executive director of Southeast Asia.

He said the declining numbers from Singapore’s nearest neighbour was partly due to the challenging economic environment over the last two years as well as due to the increased usage of virtual meetings leading to the decline of face-to-face meetups.

But according to statistics, families with young children are a segment showing potential for growth. In 2015, Singapore welcomed more than 90,000 children below the age of 14, representing close to 8 per cent of total visitor arrivals into Singapore that year.

STB has thus launched Singapore Junior, a seven-episode web series which will kick off on August 19. Co-hosted by two young children below the age of 10, they embody the sense of wonder and excitement from a child’s perspective and provide travel advice and ideas to parents with young children.

To grow the business travel segment, which currently represents 33 per cent of tourist arrivals, STB has introduced a meetings and incentives rewards scheme for Malaysian corporates.

It offers complimentary activities such tours to Marina Barrage, National Gallery Singapore, Gardens by the Bay and the Singapore Zoo, among others. To qualify, groups have to number at least 20 people and stay for at least two nights in Singapore. The group must also complete their travel by March 31, 2017.

Promotional image for the launch of U-Fly Holidays

HONG Kong-based budget carrier HK Express has entered into the OTA space with the launch of U-Fly Holidays.

The platform, which launched earlier this week, allows users to book HK Express flights, hotels, tours, ground transportation and bundled packages. With an accommodations inventory of over 500,000 properties in 21,000 cities, U-Fly Holidays is more comprehensive than some OTAs already in the market.

However, the platform currently only offers flights by the LCC, limiting destinations to those served by HK Express only.

“At the moment, U-Fly Holidays focuses exclusively on flights from HK Express, where guests will be able to find a wide range of great deals on the platform just within a few clicks,” said Charles Johnson, general manager of U-Fly Holidays.

But revealing future expansion plans, he said: “It’s certainly our goal to align our product offering to include more offers from the U-Fly Alliance group of airlines.”

The other airlines under the U-Fly Alliance are co-founding members Lucky Air, Urumqi Air and West Air, along with HK Express, while South Korea’s Eastar Jet was recently inducted.

For now, the U-Fly Holidays site offers HK Express’ South-east Asian services. “The remaining HK Express network will be added this month. Airport transfers and travel insurance will be added in the near future, and expanded products and fare deals will be enhanced over the coming months,” added Johnson.

Explaining the move for the low-cost carrier to enter the OTA space is Andrew Cowen, director and CEO of HK Express. He said: “Our vision is to empower everyone to explore Asia at an affordable price and encourage guests to expand their horizons through travel.

“We have expanded to 26 destinations in Asia and carried five million guests since (transforming into a Hong Kong-based LCC), and have achieved profitability with a revenue of HK$2.4 billion (US$309.5 million) by 2015 year’s end, while the fleet has been aggressively expanded to 15 in August.

“All in which have motivated us to go a step further and reflect on the ways to take our offering to the next level.”

Cowen added that the move has always been part of the company’s plan as part of efforts to streamline the travel planning phase for its customers. Having the platform also allows the airline flexibility to offer packaged deals and offers at their discretion.

Asked if this changes the distribution strategy, he said: “HK Express has seen strong demand from our guests on budget travel since the airline transformed into an LCC in October 2013.

“We believe in a multi-channel distribution strategy, so we offer guests the chance to transact with us in the manner they prefer best. Of course our best fares and full range of services will always be offered on our own website, whereas other channels may have more limited options available.”

In a press statement, Cowen also affirms the new platform’s positioning as an OTA.

“Over the next 12 months we will continue to develop U-Fly Holidays including launching into new markets and welcoming additional content ranging from airlines to accommodation and activities making U-Fly Holidays a strong, competitive force in the online travel space.”