THE TRAVEL Corporation has kicked off its five-year Look East For Growth strategy that aims to tap into Asia’s burgeoning outbound boom to grow bookings for tour programmes under its brands, which includes Insight Vacations, Trafalgar Tours, Contiki Holidays and Uniworld Boutique River Cruises.
In an interview with TTG Asia e-Daily, Robin Yap, managing director Singapore at The Travel Corporation said Asia would “outperform many markets in terms of travel”.
The company has prioritised China and India for development. In early February, Darshan Maheshwari was appointed as its country manager for India (Hot Moves, February 10, 2012). The firm will open an office in Shanghai next month.
“We are seeing growth in China, and with the opening of the Shanghai office, we will duplicate the success we had in Singapore there. It took Singapore 10 years to grow into luxury travel products, but the Chinese will get there sooner,” he said.
He added that Indonesia was also on his radar, especially for Insight Vacations products, and an exclusive partnership with Indonesia’s Vayatour has been formed to market and retail The Travel Corporation’s products across the country. A training programme for 62 branch managers of Vayatour concluded just recently.
According to Yap, Singapore and the Philippines are the company’s key performing markets in Asia. Forward bookings out of Singapore for Trafalgar products have doubled, while bookings for Insight Vacations and Contiki programmes have grown 22 per cent and 10 per cent year-to-date respectively.
The Philippines chalked up a 290 per cent increase in year-to-date bookings for Trafalgar, while Insight Vacations hit 71 per cent and Contiki, 86 per cent.
In addition, The Travel Corporation is growing its product portfolio, with the introduction of new tours to India, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Nepal this year under the Insight Vacations label.
