ALL licensed travel consultants in Singapore must ask outbound leisure customers if they would like to purchase travel insurance covering travel consultant insolvency starting next month, announced the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) last Friday.

This new licensing condition, which will kick in from July 15, requires travel consultants to offer their customers travel insurance against the company’s insolvency and to record their customers’ final decision.

It is applicable on a per person basis whenever a consumer makes a deposit or payment of S$500 (US$371) or above, or purchases a travel package costing S$1,000 or more.

An STB statement said the new rule “serves to educate consumers of the measures they can take to protect their interests when they make travel bookings”, and was launched following STB’s discussions with the trade assessing consumer protection measures over the past year.

Assistant chief executive of STB, Yap Chin Siang, said: “With the implementation of the new licensing condition, consumers will now be better informed on steps that they can take to protect themselves against unforeseen circumstances including travel consultant insolvency.”

The new condition comes in on the heels of the sudden closure of Asia-Euro Holidays which left travellers in the lurch last month.

Yap said STB will assist industry stakeholders with implementation of the new condition and will “layer on with continued consumer education efforts”.

Alicia Seah, director of marketing communications at Dynasty Travel, told TTG Asia e-Dailythat 90 per cent of the company’s travellers purchase travel insurance. The 10 per cent that do not may have forgotten to do so or simply do not wish to, especially if they are visiting nearby destinations such as Malaysia and Thailand.

Seah said more has to be done to address the “root of the problem”, the financial health of travel agencies, and suggested more stringent background checks on owners or directors before the issuance of a travel consultant licence.

“We can also ensure an annual or conduct a financial audit every two years to ascertain the financial health of all travel agents before renewing the licence,” she added.

TWENTY per cent of Travelport’s revenue comes from beyond air offerings, a new source of revenue that Travelport wants to further establish by placing more focus and investment in technology.

Cognizant to the needs of agencies struggling with reduced air commissions, Mark Meehan, Travelport’s managing director, Asia-Pacific, said: “We want to help them grow their business in the beyond-air space. They know where the customer is going and what the customer wants, so there are opportunities to increase customer spend by providing hotel, car rental and other add-on services.

“We have the platform to provide best in class content that is very easy to use. The hotel platform includes maps and TripAdvisor reviews so the travel consultant can become an important source of information to the consumer.”

Meehan was speaking to TTG Asia e-Daily on the sidelines of Travelport Live conference held last week in Seoul.

A key part of aiding travel consultants sell products complementary to air tickets is the Travelport’s Rich Content and Branding solution that allows airlines to present and market their content any way they wish, and include visuals and textual branding.

David Watson, general manager at Future.Travel, an OTA in Vietnam, said he was using Travelport’s Rich Content and Branding to further develop new functions on his portal, which will let corporate travellers make their own bookings based on their company profiles. This is scheduled to go live on August 1.

AUSTRALIAN DMC Wildnerness Australia this week unveiled its new identity to reflect its dedication to creating new and unique experiences for travellers.

Now called Alquemie, derived from “alchemy”, the company was founded by Charles Carlow in 2001, specialising in high-end experiences and tailor-made itineraries around Australia.

With the rebranding, Alquemie will continue to work in the luxury segment of the travel industry and simultaneously grow its sales and marketing strategy to beyond its traditional markets.

Carlow said in a statement that Wilderness Australia was initially established to offer high-end travellers a safari-style, off-the-beaten-track approach to visiting Australia that involved bush camps and homesteads.

“The Wilderness Australia brand represented the initial concept but neglected to represent the broader scope and creative style of our offering. Our area of expertise is the transformation of luxury Australia, whether it be outback, coastal or urban, into something truly unique and exceptional, and I believe our new brand effectively captures this,” he said.

Along with a new name and logo, the company will roll out a new website, documentation and marketing collaterals in the near future.

THE Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) will step up overseas promotions in the next few months in order to rebuild confidence and traffic for the upcoming peak season starting September.

NTB administrative chief, Ramesh Kumar Adhikari, said: “We’ll focus on the China and India markets as they are our top two sources. Apart from media fam tours in June and July, we’ll rely on Honorary Public Relations Representatives stationed in Europe to design programmes like sales missions and events to promote Nepal.”

International visitor arrivals by air plunged 40 per cent year-on-year in May in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.

Despite irreparable damage to certain areas in Kathmandu Valley, NTB said it remains safe to visit Nepal: only two of 36 trekking routes and three of eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites have been affected, while 90 per cent of hotels are operational.

Heritage sites, including damaged ones like the collapsed Dharara Tower, will also reopen to tourists from June 15.

NTB’s Adhikari said: “We want to create new interest for visitors to see 721 damaged sites. The (monuments) will be rebuilt in future but given the long time frame for design and reconstruction, we decided to let tourists see the remains.”

Nepal’s travel trade is dangling discounts in order to rebuild tourist numbers.

Worldways Tours & Travels has specialised in the Chinese market for over 20 years and handles around 12,000 pax annually. “All traffic for May, June and July was cancelled and this involved about 2,900 clients. In order to help traffic return, the company will charge 50 per cent less on services and products like hotels and tours until end-August,” said executive director Varun Mehta.

Nepal Social Treks & Expedition’s general manager, Basu Panday, hoped business will bounce back by September and is offering a 20 per cent on adventure tours until then.

But Panday added: “China still hasn’t lifted its travel ban on Nepal whereas the US and Europe have started to come back and help.”

Nepal’s consulate in Hong Kong issued a record 40,000 visas last year but travel consultants here that TTG Asia e-Daily interviewed remain cautious, saying they will continue to monitor the situation.

HOTEL room inventory in the Maldives is set to soar by at least 10 per cent in the next two years, with a guesthouse island project and a new luxury property on the way.

The site of the first development, which will house some 2,100 rooms in the mid-range segment, has just been moved from Thumburi on Laamu Atoll to the 72ha Baresdhoo on the same atoll.

Speaking to TTG Asia e-Daily, deputy tourism minister of the Maldives, Hussain Lirar, said the new site is larger and only 10 minutes away from the domestic airport, as compared to Thumburi’s 20-30 minutes.

Managed by the Maldives Marketing and PR Corporation and first announced in June 2014, the new development will feature small hotels and guesthouses as well as restaurants, shops, entertainment centres and diving facilities provided by independent operators.

The Maldives had 23,917 rooms in 111 resorts at the end of 2014.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s Asia Capital is joining Japanese partner Belluna to build a 70-key luxury resort on Miriandhoo island on Baa Atoll at a cost of US$45 million.

Stefan Abeyesinhe, group CEO at Asia Capital, said there are ample opportunities for new investments in the Maldivian tourism industry as the increase in bed capacity is not adequate to cater to the fast-growing tourism industry.

ALL Nippon Airways (ANA) has announced that it will add a direct route from Tokyo’s Narita International Airport to Brussels from its winter 2015 schedule.

The new route will be the airline’s sixth direct route into Europe, operating in parallel with flights from either Narita or Haneda airports to London, Paris, Munich, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf, and has been welcomed by the Japanese travel industry.

“We are seeing so many inbound visitors to Japan from Europe that this makes perfect sense,” Yoko Ogata, manager of the International Travel Division of Nippon Travel Agency, told TTG Asia e-Daily.

With some promotion, Japanese tourists who have already visited some of Europe’s main tourist cities could be convinced to try something new in the form of the Benelux countries, she said.

“This part of Europe is relatively under-developed in terms of visits by Japanese tourists, but there is no reason why it could not become a new hot spot for visitors,” observed Ogata.

ANA intends to announce further details of the service later in the year, but a spokeswoman for the company told TTG Asia e-Daily that it is part of ANA’s ambitious expansion plans.

“Brussels has been a candidate for this expansion for a long time as we know there is a large Japanese community there and that many Japanese companies have their European bases there,” said Maho Ito.

“And we hope that we will be able to attract both inbound tourists to Japan from that part of Europe and take more Japanese tourists to a new destination,” she added.

SOUTH Korea’s failure to contain the MERS outbreak has caused Asia to go on high alert, with scores of travellers cancelling flights to South Korea and authorities taking precautions to prevent its spread.

Governments throughout the region are already cautioning citizens about travel to South Korea, including Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Indonesia, where travel advisories have already been issued.

Taiwan’s health authorities have widened their travel alert to cover all of South Korea, saidReuters, while Japan, Vietnam and Cambodia are boosting monitoring and screening of inbound passengers from South Korea.

Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not warned against visits to South Korea, but the Singapore Hotel Association has advised its members to stay vigilant.

With tour cancellations from China expected to fall by 20 per cent at the very least, airlines are currently bearing the brunt of the fallout.

China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are the top three source markets having made flight cancellations to South Korea between January 1 and June 5 this year, according to ForwardKeys research.

Bookings in Hong Kong have collapsed by 102 per cent over the same period last year, Taiwan tumbled 83 per cent and China down 72 per cent.

Taiwan’s two biggest airlines have halved the number of flights to South Korea from mid-June to end-July, citing falling travel demand to the country.

Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways are waiving cancellation fees and administration fees for refund, rebooking or re-routing for customers holding confirmed tickets to and from Seoul, reported Channel NewsAsia.

Stewart Hunter, director of APAC, Sojern, which collates travel data internationally, said regional airlines are “bracing themselves for a potential downturn in demand for flights to Seoul”.

“Sojern’s data…shows some significant fluctuations of intent for inbound travel to South Korea: when looking at the start of June when the first deaths from MERS were reported, we observed a week-on-week 30 to 40 per cent decline in the volume of travellers showing intent to travel to South Korea from Japan and Hong Kong.”

However, Stewart added: “Volume has since rebounded significantly in Japan and Hong Kong along with other countries in the region.”

As of press time, there are 126 confirmed cases of MERS in South Korea, where the disease has claimed 10 lives.