INDIA’s runaway success OTA, MakeMyTrip, has so far roped in about 7,000 travel agents to its MakeMyTrip for travel agents online B2B module launched 18 months ago.

Owner Deep Kalra, who wants to bridge the gap between the rich and poor by making inroads into regions with a dearth of travel options, said the system allowed MakeMyTrip to penetrate tier-two cities in India, where Internet connectivity is low and where people may not have credit cards and are only able to pay by cash or cheque.

“It runs on a B2B2C model, like a super GDS for travel agents. The agents are able to access the inventory on our website and sell the products to their customers,” Kalra explained. “There is no credit involved. Agents just have to make a deposit.”

Kalra, representing the voice of distribution challenges during the Plenary Three: New Realities of Travel panel discussion this morning at PATA 60th Anniversary & Conference in Beijing, added: “Online media and technology can definitely help us to go beyond the elite in India.”

According to Kalra, eight per cent of people in India have Internet access, while only about four per cent shop online. With 40 to 50 per cent of the population able to afford some form of travel product ranging from bus, train and plane tickets to packages, “the challenge is how to grow the four per cent to this 40 to 50 per cent”.

Meanwhile, Kalra said one of the main challenges of catering to Indian customers was the sheer diversity of the separate regions within the country.

“Up to 20 per cent of Indians who will soon travel abroad are first-time travellers,” he said. “The different states can be like different countries, with people from different regions having different preferences in terms of food, language and culture.”

“We have many call centres, and 20 travel stores in the 20 biggest Indian cities. This enables us to connect locally with the different regions, and allows us to provide a relevant level of comfort to our customers.”

Kalra added that MakeMyTrip was leveraging on metasearch engines like TripAdvisor to increase visibility and market penetration online.

PATA will again stage its annual conference in 2012, and already one country has expressed interest in hosting the event, which returned this month after a five-year break.

PATA chairman Hiran Cooray said the conference was resurrected due to popular demand. The four-day event drew 1,000 participants across 66 countries and regions, with international delegates comprising almost half of the attendees.

He added that the association would soon be inviting bids from countries who were interested to host next year’s instalment.

Said Cooray: “We are looking at the format of a conference alongside other meetings conducted concurrently to satisfy the requirements of all our members.”

Tourism Malaysia acting director general Dato’ Azizan Noordin told TTG Asia e-Daily that Malaysia plans to contest as host, adding that the country’s strength was its value-for-money proposition.

He said having a conference of this nature would also educate the local trade on latest trends and create more awareness for tourism in Malaysia. Hot topics at this year’s conference were about education, training and raising the industry’s profile.

Azizan added that he planned to have discussions on digital marketing, as well as involve more low-cost carriers.

“It’s been a long time since the PATA conference was held in Malaysia,” said Anthony Wong, group managing director, Asian Overland Services Tourism & Hospitality Group, adding that the last time was during PATA’s 50th anniversary in 2001.

“We intend to bid and hopefully we’ll have more Chapters joining us next year,” he added.

PATA Life Members said that the association’s new Future Strategic Focus (see related story) is ambitious, and that proof of the pudding will be in its ability to identify and execute priorities.

Alwin Zecha, executive chairman, Pacific Leisure Thailand, said: “It’s ambitious, and to achieve, it must assume a good support team. The question is, do you have that support team and the people who share your ambition? It also presumes an executive board that also has the same type of make-up – now I won’t comment on that.”

Asked what interim CEO Bill Calderwood had to do first, Zecha said: “The first thing he has to do is to stop the downward spiral the association had been allowed to slip into in the last two years. It’s lost track of its vision and mission. The three things supposedly to be done, ie, increase/enlarge premier partnership, increase/improve membership and activate/improve chapters, all that has shrunk.

“On the other side, better communication with members hasn’t happened. Accountability and transparency have not happened. Financially, nobody was even given an opportunity to address the financials at the board or any meeting here.

“So while it is fair to say the new strategic focus is a good one, I’m not comfortably confident yet. We’ve had motherhood plans before, some moved faster and better than others, but so many had fallen by the wayside because the implementation left much to be desired.”

Joe McInerney, president & CEO of American Hotel & Lodging Association, said: “It’s an excellent plan…a great framework to move forward with. What it needs is focus, and a CEO who is in sync with the strategic plan and with what members want.

“I think priorities, such as building membership, are correct, as it resolves the deficit issue. Also, to take a look at the function PATA is doing, some might not be as relevant as we move into a different age. A third priority is to be in touch with members at the chapter level or international level to make sure you are in tune with what they want from the organisation.”

Michael Pauline, chairman of Aqua Hotels US, said: “The strategic plan must be executed in a step-by-step manner. For me, the overriding priority is restoring the PATA brand, with a strategy that embodies PR and the work of PATA Intelligence, among others, as it has been usurped by the WTTC and UNWTO in our region. The other two priorities for me are sustainability and training and education.”

BEIJING is on a new journey to be a “global metropolitan city” and will set up offices in world cities like New York, Paris and Hong Kong to learn their best practices, as well as mutually promote tourism.

In an interview with TTG Asia e-Daily following yesterday’s PATA conference opening session, Beijing’s vice mayor, Ding Xiang-Yang, said he believed in inter-border and global cooperation as a means of improving city planning and development, as well as Beijing’s tourism fortunes. He said that promotional agencies would be established in New York, Paris and Hong Kong, and cooperation would be between different levels of government offices.

“Our agreement will be focused on attracting tourists from these cities and establishing a strategic scheme to learn their best practices,” he said, adding that Beijing also wants more business trips and events to be held in the city.

In 2010, Beijing had 4.9 million foreign tourists, with tourism accounting for seven per cent of its GDP. While Beijing is home to veritable world monuments such as the Great Wall of China and the Imperial Palace, much of its past has been erased through rapid development. In addition, the common refrain facing many developing cities – ie, a loss of character – has not escaped Beijing.

Asked what best practices Beijing wants to learn, Ding said: “We want to have an understanding of their tourism management and operational plans. In my opinion, Beijing needs to have a unique identity of its own. If the Chinese go to France, they buy perfume. Italy, leatherware, South Africa, diamonds. I often ask, ‘What do you want to buy in Beijing?’ Sure, we have the Peking duck, calligraphy brushes, etc, but how do we have a unique identity and promote it to the world?

Asked if Beijing has not been able to maximise Olympics infrastructure, Ding said: “I believe the effect has not yet ended. The various venues and the successful hosting will help us get more tourists.”

Though improving, Beijing hotels’ RevPAR has not returned to 2007 levels yet. Latest available data from STR showed a RevPAR of 399 yuan (US$61) for year-to-date October 2010, 32 per cent lower than the same period in 2007.

PATA will be hiring a regional director Asia, and a director marketing membership. The hires for the newly-created positions will have their jobs cut out for them, as the Bangkok-based organisation seeks to grow revenue by 13 per cent this year, increase the number of chapters from 38 to 50 by 2012, re-engage members and communicate its new value.

The move is one of many tasks confronting PATA, which has not even found a CEO, but has unveiled a broad-based Future Strategic Focus designed to make its brand mean something again.

PATA’s interim CEO, Bill Calderwood, in an interview with TTG Asia e-Daily, said he would be working with the PATA team and board to come up with an 18-month business plan based on the new strategic focus.

He said he would count his six-month interim PATA stint ending in September a success if he had re-stabilised the team and established a clear culture in the organisation – “one that focuses on delivering things which build business”; created a structure that connects PATA with members’ chapters; rebuilt the brand; and created a sustainable programme and financial structure for PATA.

When asked what he needed to make progress with PATA, Calderwood said the challenges were not insurmountable. He called on members to stop dwelling on the past and get on with the task at hand.

“The challenges of an industry association is not unique to PATA. Every association has to keep working out where its potential is to add value,” he said.

“There have been a lot of discussions about PATA in recent years, all sorts of concerns and criticisms, some of them valid. But there has always been the recognition that PATA provided great value in the past and can continue to deliver value, with a clear vision and plan of action.”

He added that membership could be expected to be “tapped to work” again, as “the management team needs support, not just in words, but in deeds”.

The spirit of volunteerism was a strong pillar of PATA.

PATA’s Future Strategic Focus looked at changes in the operating environment, such as the digital revolution, rise of regional tourism NTOs and increasing need for effective advocacy, and addressed how PATA needed to retool its role and value.

– Full report in TTG Asia, April 29 issue

PATA’s immediate priorities were the focus of debate at yesterday’s Industry Council meeting, with several members expressing concern over the re-activation of the grassroots Chapter programme, as well as hopes of the association expanding its role in advocacy, information sharing and networking.

With PATA now trying to revive its Chapter programme, Lao National Institute of Tourism and Hospitality chief technical advisor Peter Semone said it felt like the association was “going forward to the past”, while Singapore-based World Express Group chairman Tan Chee Chye was skeptical about the cost of trying to bring it back.

The restructuring of PATA in recent times had seen a three-year Chapter Integration Plan that aimed to have all Chapter-only members upgraded to full PATA membership by 2007. With many unwilling to increase their level of commitment, this led to an exodus, causing the number of Chapters to dwindle by about half to its current 38-strong network.

Semone worried that Chapter membership would end up “dissolving” full PATA membership, with large numbers “hiding in the Chapters and being distantly involved” with PATA due to their reluctance to participate internationally.

Earlier in the meeting, other council members such as Marriott International chief operations officer, Asia Pacific, Craig Smith, had already pointed out that PATA needed to work on building a stronger membership base, with the lack of major industry players currently limiting networking opportunities.

PATA was also urged by members to step up in its lobbying of governments, removing barriers to destinations such as visas.

Industry Council chairman and Thailand-based Asian Trails Group CEO, Luzi Matzig, reiterated that PATA would take all the aforementioned into account, with key priorities being membership growth and renewal; restarting the chapter network while still encouraging some to become full members; getting relevant information to members; and lobbying.

CHINA is planning to launch a space theme park in Hainan province, as it is clear that ground-based space tourism and not space travel itself is the immediate opportunity for the industry, according to this morning’s keynote lift-off at PATA’s 60th Anniversary & Conference.

Yu Dengyun, deputy director general, Committee of Science and Technology, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, said: “I dare not forecast when the first Chinese tourist will be able to go into space. Maybe we should start thinking about ground-based space facility tourism first,” he said.

The theme park will give people the opportunity to visit space shuttle launch pads and other ground facilities, watch the launch of space aircraft, and experience what it is like to be on the moon and Mars. “The experience will be very different to watching it on television,” Yu said.

Space travel will eventually become “as common as a car drive” with advances in technology, but for now and the forseeable future, it is strictly a luxury limited to those able to afford the astronomical fees.

Conference keynote speaker Eric Anderson, chairman and co-founder of Space Adventures – which sent the first tourist into space in 2001 – said: “It has been 50 years since the first human successfully went into space orbit. Only about 500 people have visited space in this 50-year period. This is fewer than the number of billionaires in the world.”

While hoping to eventually expand space tourism to the masses, Anderson admitted that the cost of space travel had tripled from about US$20 million per person per trip 10 years ago to close to US$60 million today, not taking into account the cost of travel insurance – a couple of per cent of the princely sum.

Even the next best alternative, sub-orbital flights which only take 1/100th of the energy required to reach orbit, and give passengers the opportunity to experience floating weightless in a zero gravity environment for two-to-three minutes at a time, cost US$100,000 to US$200,000 per person per trip, according to Anderson.

Anderson said he was planning to introduce a lottery to give people who would not normally be able to afford space travel the chance to head into space. “It is a way of democratising space travel.”

Anderson said: “Ground-based space tourism is a market with big potential. The most-visited museum in the world is the Smithsonian National Air and Space museum in Washington.”