Credit: Wyndham Hotel Group

WYNDHAM Hotel Group is set to expand its presence in South Korea by more than 200 per cent over the next three years with 12 new property franchise agreements.

The signings are a continuation of the company’s 14 franchise agreements in South Korea in 2014, bringing its pipeline in the country to more than 7,550 rooms across 26 properties under the Ramada, Days Inn and Howard Johnson brands.

The new hotels, consisting of 17 Ramadas, six Day Inns and three Howard Johnsons, will be scattered across Seoul, Pyeongtaek and Jeju Island. All are expected to open by 2018. The first of these new locations, Ramada Encore Jeju Seogwipo, has opened on June 30, 2015.

“With its increasing popularity among tourists, natural beauty, trend-setting technological marvels and upcoming world events like the 2018 Winter Olympics, South Korea plays a key role in our growth in the region,” said Barry Robinson, president and managing director, South-east Asia and Pacific Rim of Wyndham Hotel Group.

ACCORDING to data analysis done by travel search engine Kayak, Tokyo, followed by Manila and Seoul top the list of the 15 most searched destinations for outbound travel from Singapore during the Christmas period.

The results are based on travel searches made between January to July 2015 on their website for Christmas period travel from Singapore to destinations abroad.

The Christmas period is defined as December 18, 2015 to January 3, 2016. Searches are based on return flights and prices are based on average costs.

Based on Kayak findings, Singaporeans tend to prepare their Christmas trips well in advance, with flight searches starting in March. July saw a three per cent increase from June, which saw a 33 per cent spike in searches.

While flight prices generally increase by 50 per cent during the season, Kayak has found exceptions for flights to Paris, with an 18 per cent decrease; New York, a one per cent decrease; and Seoul, also a one per cent decrease.

TRAVEL operators in Thailand are not reporting significant cancellations or postponement of inbound visitors after Monday’s bombing in Bangkok.

“We have received very few cancellations. To be exact we have received 12; this is less than one per cent of the bookings we have here till the end of the month,” said Laurent Kuenzle, CEO of Asian Trails told TTG Asia e-Daily and TTGmice e-Weekly. “I do expect some cancellations over the next few days,” he added.

“Very, very few” clients have changed their plans, Kuenzle said, elaborating that those who altered their Thailand plans have opted to head to the beaches in the south or mountains in the north.

This pattern of transferring to nearby destinations was also confirmed by Hans van den Born, managing director of Diethelm Travel Thailand. “At this stage, the impact has been very small and limited only to one MICE event and a couple of re-routings of bookings to avoid Bangkok.

“People are heading straight to another part of Thailand or another region we operate in,” he said.

“Bangkok may see an initial decrease of tourist arrivals with people heading straight to beach destinations or Indochina until they feel confident again,” commented van den Born. “It will also be important to find the perpetrator(s) behind this violent attack in order to restore confidence at the main tourist source markets again.”

Likewise, Kuenzle opined that the fallout on Thai tourism would be muted, with a short-term impact on the regional market and an even less pronounced effect on the longhaul market, which is currently in its low season.

PAYMENT solutions provider CellPoint Mobile has launched a new system giving airlines the ability to manage payment methods and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) through an integrated platform.

Named Converged Payment Gateway, the system pre-integrates PSPs, allowing airlines shortened time-to-market and at the same time and reducing the costs of launching and managing new payment methods by leveraging its central platform.

Additionally, CellPoint promises a period of minutes or days, rather than weeks or months, when deploying new payment methods, currencies and channels.

From a single access point, airlines can manage, add, delete and update payment data easily and quickly, and process passenger payments and transactions seamlessly and securely for passengers, according to CellPoint.

OUTBOUND travel operators in Asia saw a mixed bag of responses from their customers three days after the deadly bomb attack in Bangkok, which local authorities say was targeted at damaging tourism in the country.

Hong Kong operators experienced the biggest backlash, likely a result of the government’s issuing of a level 4 travel advisory – the second highest possible – to its citizens on August 18, a day after the bombing.

Following the alert, 18 key outbound agencies operating Bangkok tours agreed to cancel their packages, with the exception of cruise and charter tours which depart between the afternoon of August 18 and August 31. In total, over 200 tours involving 4,000 travellers were affected.

Danny Wong, FIT specialist at China Travel Services (Hong Kong), said: “We had a lot of bookings cancelled and refunds requested, with projections of more than a 50 per cent drop for bookings in September.”

A more muted response is seen among Chinese travel agencies. Reder Wang Yonghong, managing director of Shenzhen CEPT International Travel Service, said: “Since the tragedy happened, there isn’t any travel warning raised by the government. Therefore, it depends on our clients’ judgements whether or not to continue their travel to Bangkok.

“We did receive some cancellations but frankly, the immediate impact is not big because the summer holiday is almost ending and most of the package tours departed earlier. My concern is upcoming bookings for September where we estimate a drop of about 20-30 per cent.”

Vico Wei, chief inspector of Guangdong China Travel Service played down the impact, saying tour groups will simply avoid high-risk areas. “Better still, FITs may even switch to package tours as they will be taken good care of. Therefore, I am optimistic and trust the bombing will only have a short-term impact on tourism.”

In South-east Asia, operators are seeing customers erring on the side of caution. Alicia Seah, director of marketing communications at Dynasty Travel Singapore, said: “For the next peak period in September, we will have about 150 travellers to Bangkok, primarily consisting of MICE groups and some leisure travellers.

“About 60 per cent of the travellers have requested to transfer to other cities such as Malaysia, Indonesia or Vietnam,” she added.

Rocky Kho, managing director at Skyzone Tours & Travel in Kuala Lumpur, said he has not received cancellations for his September bookings so far, albeit acknowledging cancellations may still come in the future.

Desmond Lee, managing director of Kuala Lumpur-based Apple Vacations & Conventions has not received any cancellations of forward bookings as well. He said: “The powerful bomb blast on the Hindu Shrine on Monday was an isolated case. It will not deter Malaysians from going to Bangkok, unless there is a travel advisory.”

Over in Indonesia, Pauline Suharno, managing director of Elok Tour Jakarta said that the ASEANTA/FATA will continue its plan to hold its meeting in Bangkok at the end of August.

She added that most Indonesia travellers are adopting a wait-and-see approach, avoiding travel to Bangkok unless required for business purposes.

Rudiana, director of sales and marketing at WITA Tour, concurred: “Our MICE department have received invitations to bid for MLM incentive tours between September and November and they specifically requested not to include Thailand in our offer of destinations.”

Than Dam, a travel consultant at Vietnam’s Aurora Travel remains optimistic and pragmatic. “No bookings have been cancelled so far. The bombing is not a problem if you choose to stay at hotels around the river instead,” he said.