Korean Air will be flying direct from Incheon International Airport to New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Airport beginning December 1.

The service departs from Incheon International Airport at 12.45 and lands in Delhi at 16.20. The return flight departs Delhi at 19.40 and arrives at Incheon at 05.50 the following day. The service will operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

The route will be serviced by an Airbus A330-200 capable of seating 218 passengers. The airplane will also be outfitted with Korean Air’s newest seats in both the First and Prestige Class.

Delhi is Korean Air’s second destination in India after Mumbai.

Tourists at Kinabalu National Park

The Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (MATTA) inbound vice president, Tan Kok Liang, has welcomed the government’s allocation of RM400 million (US$96.1 million) for clean air and ecotourism initiatives.

In tabling Budget 2017, Malaysian prime minister Mohammad Najib Abdul Razak acknowledged that the tourism sector has contributed significantly to the country’s economy. The government is now targeting 32 million visitors for next year, which is expected to generate RM120 billion (US$28.84 billion) in tourism receipts.

Tan said: “Capitalising on our clean air and promoting activities like walking or trekking tours will attract tourists from countries with high pollution index, such as China and India. These two Asian giants are also the biggest contributors of visitor arrivals to Malaysia, excluding our ASEAN neighbours.

“We should repackage and rebrand our tours so that tourists can enjoy our clean air when engaging in outdoor activities. Jungle and mountain resorts such as Taman Negara and Kinabalu National Park, together with many of our clean cities and towns throughout the country, will benefit from these initiatives and ought to be heavily promoted.”

He added that travellers from Europe also visit Malaysia mainly for ecotourism and that investing in this sector would ensure sustained interest from the longhaul source market.

Molo Church, or Church of St Anne Parish, is a Spanish colonial church and heritage site in Iloilo, Philippines

Chinese arrivals into the Philippines is set to rekindle following the thawing of political tensions between the South-east Asian nation and China, prompting the latter to lift a longstanding travel advisory against its neighbour.

Tourism secretary Wanda Teo, part of a delegation that accompanied Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on a state visit to China earlier this month, said she is looking to double arrivals from China to one million this year and to two million thereafter.

Teo is preparing for the bonanza by coordinating with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Bureau of Immigration to simplify visa application procedures for Chinese tourists, including visa on-arrival, e-visa facilities and launching Mandarin language training programmes for tour guides.

She expects big tour groups from China over the next two months as cancelled chartered flights resume, and as more flights connecting the two destinations, including the twice-weekly China Eastern Airlines chartered services from Guangzhou to Laoag, Ilocos Norte takes off on November 1.

Teo also met with Chinese businesses who are willing to invest in Philippine tourism infrastructure including in areas like Iloilo, Subic and other tourism zones offering incentives such as tax relief.

Rajah Travel Corp president Aileen Clemente said two million yearly arrivals from China is feasible “if the visa facilitation, infrastructure and permits are in place”.

Clemente, who also helms ASEANTA, added: “It is an opportune time to improve the relationship with China, especially since the tension (arising from) the territorial dispute and with ASEAN cooperating with China”.

Hannah Paula Yulo, director of sales & marketing at Paradise Garden Resort Hotel & Convention Center in Boracay, said that while it’s doable to double the arrivals from China this year, the country needs to increase its capacity.

Boracay is the prime destination for Chinese travellers but Yulo pointed out that the existing hotels on the island resort already can’t cope with demand.

Tobira Onsen Myojinkan

Operators of hot spring hotels in Japan have welcomed news that 102 million yen (US$981,000) is to be invested in promoting their establishments to tourists.

The Environment Ministry, working with local governments and communities that have hot springs, is to draw up a selection of travel plans that highlight some of the nation’s best onsens. The project is scheduled to begin in April 2017.

“We are located in a very rural area and relatively few foreign visitors – even those visiting the prefecture – know about us,” said Emi Ikeda, spokesperson for Tobira Onsen Myojinkan, located in Nagano prefecture.

“Around eight per cent of our visitors are from overseas, the majority of them from Europe because we are a member of the Relais & Chateaux organisation.”

Without the affiliation, Ikeda admitted that it would be hard to attract as many Europeans.

Yoshihiro Ueta, president of the Hotel Oya Onsen in Tokushima Prefecture, southern Japan, faces a similar challenge. “Onsens are a key part of Japanese culture and something that all foreign visitors want to try when they come here, but it is often difficult for hotels like ours to promote ourselves to a foreign market,” he said.

“The Hiltons and Prince hotels of this world have a global presence and the power to tell travellers from around the world about their properties, but we don’t,” he added. “This sort of assistance could make a huge difference for us, as well as introducing a relatively unknown part of Japan to foreigners.”

Chie Ariyoshi, assistant manager of the Overseas Division of the Kyushu Tourism Promotion Organisation, also welcomed the national government’s initiative, saying it will help give the entire region greater visibility.

Kyushu is home to one-third of all onsens in Japan, she pointed out, but it can be difficult for foreign visitors to get the full picture and know what each establishment is best known for.

Kimpton Glover Park Hotel, Washington

The InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is bringing two of its boutique brands outside the US with Even heading to Australia and New Zealand and with Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants properties expanding into Asia in the next two years.

With Even, IHG provides a wellness-centric brand offering from city locations rather than resorts.

IHG intends to plant 10-12 new Even properties, each with 150-200 rooms, in major cities in Australia and New Zealand, revealed IHG’s AMEA COO Alan Watts.

He said: “Even is the first wellness-focused brand with an accessible price. The concept includes facilities like a fitness zone and yoga mat for each room, a studio for sports classes and group runs along with the hotel general manager. That’s why we seek staff who are active in the gym (so they) can give advice to our guests.”

Meanwhile, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, acquired by IHG in 2015, is a boutique brand positioned as slightly more upscale than the group’s Hotel Indigo offering.

CEO Mike Defrino said: “The boutique hotel concept is not only growing in Europe and the US but also in China and the rest of Asia.

“For China, primary markets will be Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing… The Chinese market is beginning to embrace the next level of lodging, not (simply) luxury but a more approachable form of luxury.”

According to Defrino, the ADR of Kimpton-branded hotels in the US is US$240, 10 per cent (US$20) lower than the typical luxury threshold.

Hotel Indigo is also expanding in Asia. IHG now has 11 Hotel Indigo properties in the pipeline for the AMEA region, having opened Hotel Indigo Bangkok Wireless Road last year and Hotel Indigo Singapore Katong this year.

These will be followed by the soon-to-open Hotel Indigo Bali Seminyak, the first Hotel Indigo property to open in a resort location.

China’s HNA Group will be acquiring an estimated 25 per cent equity stake in Hilton Worldwide – including Hilton’s planned spin-offs of Park Hotels & Resorts and Hilton Grand Vacations – from affiliates of investment firm Blackstone for an approximated transaction value of US$6.5 billion.

If successful, the deal, expected to close in the first quarter of 2017, will reduce Blackstone’s interest in Hilton to around 21 per cent.

As part of the transaction, HNA will enter into a stockholders agreement with Hilton, and into similar agreements with Park Hotels & Resorts and Hilton Grand Vacations, effective upon closing.

The agreement allows HNA to appoint two directors, one HNA member and one independent member, to Hilton’s board of directors, bringing the total to ten board members.

As well, HNA has agreed to certain restrictions on its ability to sell any of its interest in Hilton for a two-year period, and to limitations on HNA’s ability to acquire more than 25 per cent of Hilton’s outstanding shares without Hilton’s consent.

Blackstone, which made initial investments into Hilton nine years ago, will continue to have two seats on Hilton’s board, including Jon Gray who will remain chairman.

Eric Danziger

Trump Hotels has launched a second brand, Scion, which it hopes to expand in Asia, but despite CEO Eric Danziger saying “we’re not in politics”, politics does get in the way.

The US media over the last few days has painted the move as the Trump name being dropped for Scion due to supposed declines in bookings at Trump Hotels in the heat of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. But Danziger, in an interview at HICAP (Hotel Investment Conference Asia-Pacific) last week, said this was completely untrue.

Scion is an upper upscale lifestyle brand which is also big on local experiences, while Trump is clearly known as a five-star brand, said Danziger.

“It breaks my heart and my name isn’t even Trump,” said Danziger. “I had created a dozen brands in my career and as you know there’s a limited number of markets you can bring a five-star brand like Trump to. I thought as a hotel company, we should have an option to do hotels that couldn’t be a Trump. The only link is the name, Scion, which is a bit of the wink to the family.”

In Asia, two Trump hotels continue to be under construction in Bali and Lido (65km south of Jakarta), scheduled to open in two years. Danziger – along with EVP hotel operations Jeff Wagoner and EVP new brands & innovations (a new post at Trump Hotels) Kathleen Flores – were at HICAP to introduce Scion to the market and continue to expand Trump in Asia.

Danziger said most US media had picked up on a report by a distribution channel which he hadn’t even heard of in his 45 years in the business. Hipmunk said it saw around 40 per cent drop in bookings, said Danziger, whereas in reality, four of the five hotels it used were up over last year. What’s more, the channel had produced all of 16 roomnights in the whole year before. A 40 per cent drop constituted fewer than eight roomnights, Danziger pointed out.

He is unfazed by the media brouhaha which at one point said “we (Trump Hotels) were decimated!”.

“We make it a point that in the hotel group, we’re not in politics, we’re completely separate,” Danziger told TTG Asia. Luxury hotels customers, he pointed out, chose hotels based on “where they want to be, the kind of hotel they want to stay at, the kind of service its people give, and that is the definition of the Trump brand and they know it”.

Developers and owners chose their hotel brands based on who could bring them success. “It’s hard to argue that a Trump Hotel isn’t successful. In most of the markets, our hotels beat the competition by a lot,” he claimed.

“An owner is going to to care about the results of his hotel…At this moment in time, (the politics) is not an issue for an owner who invests US$150 million in a hotel; he/she wants to make sure it’s going to work two, five, 10 years from now. This (political) ‘controversy’ will pass and they are going to have a successful hotel.”

Asked why there weren’t more Trump Hotels in Asia apart from the two being built, Danziger said: “The reality is the company (is relatively new). The first hotel opened 10-12 years ago and in the first 10 years, we’ve done 14. The company just didn’t have the focus to be able to do more than that. It’s a small group and they brought me in (August 2015, the first CEO ever for Trump Hotel Collection) and I brought the team in.

“I took the Wyndham (Hotel) Group when I was CEO from 20 properties in Asia to 1,100 properties. I came over here every nine weeks and I’ll do that again – we will have the commitment to put both brands in major markets in Asia.”

Myanmar National Airlines (MNA) will add five more flights per week on its Singapore-Yangon route starting December 1, when the visa waiver between the two countries comes into effect.

Demand for the route, which MNA commenced as a daily service in August 2015, has been slow to moderate, according to some outbound agents in Singapore.

One reason for this, suggested Shirlene Goh, head of sales at ATG Tours, is that Singaporean travellers seeking emerging destinations are faced with many options including Myanmar and Bhutan.

She added that since the visa waiver was announced, there have been more enquiries for Myanmar, though it remains to be seen if demand will significantly pick up.

Yet, Singapore – one of only four international destinations served by the airline – is “the obvious choice” as the carrier expands beyond its domestic network, according to Belinda Sim, general manager of MNA’s GSA in Singapore, Discover the World.

She told TTG Asia: “The countries share good trade relations. There’s also been a lot of student exchange between the two countries. And being the national carrier of Myanmar, they were looking for a place where people from Myanmar were travelling to.”

According to Than Tun, CEO of MNA, Singapore is “one of the most popular destinations, with 1.5 million passengers in the past year”.

Sim expects the visa waiver between the two countries will make “some difference” especially for outbound traffic from Myanmar.

The additional flights will depart Yangon Monday-Friday at 16.00 and touch down in Singapore at 20.30, before returning from Singapore at 21.15 and landing at 22.45.

Currently, carriers serving this route include Singapore Airlines, Jetstar, Silkair, Tigerair and Myanmar Airways International.

A correction was made on October 28, 2016 to reflect that Belinda Sim does not represent MNA

The Japanese government has called on the nation’s travel companies to promote tourism to Russia’s largely overlooked Far East region as part of a broader engagement with Moscow.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit Japan in December as the two nations attempt to solve a dispute over the sovereignty of a chain of islands off northern Hokkaido that Japan calls the Northern Territories.

As part of the reconciliation efforts, the Japan National Tourism Organisation is planning to open an office in Moscow and member companies of the Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA) are to send representatives to the Russian cities of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk in November to ascertain tourism viability.

“We are in the early stages of looking into the region as a tourist destination and we are still waiting to get advice and more detailed information from JATA,” said Motohisa Tachikawa, a spokesman for JTB.

“At the moment, most Japanese tourists who want to visit Russia go to Moscow or St Petersburg, while a few go to Sochi because it hosted the Winter Olympics in 2014.”

He added: “But the Russian Far East could be a good destination for us because it is close, it is new and it is different. The immediate problem is that there are very few flights to the region and we will also need to assess local hotels and attractions for Japanese tourists.”

A mere 100,000 Japanese visit Russia annually, compared with 3.57 million who travel to the US or 2.71 million who go to China.

Air bookings from China to selected European cities from November 9, 2015 to October 16, 2016 versus prior year

Overall Chinese outbound travel bookings to Europe are down 7.7 per cent over the period from mid-November 2015 to mid-October 2016, due to a plunge in a few hot spots in the region, according to data by ForwardKeys.

“The terror attacks in France have frightened off visitors from China. As many Chinese tour itineraries include the neighbouring countries – Benelux, France, Germany and Italy – they too have lost Chinese visitors,” said Olivier Jager, co-founder and CEO at ForwardKeys.

“The geographic area can be described by putting a croissant over the map of Europe which is why we are calling them the Croissant Countries.”

The cities worst affected are Paris and Milan, with bookings down 23.4 per cent and 25 per cent respectively. They are followed by Rome and Venice, down 17 per cent and 18 per cent respectively, and then by Frankfurt and Zurich which are both down 11 per cent.

However, Spain, the UK and northern Europe, which are outside the croissant zone, have experienced a growth in visitation from China. Barcelona and Madrid are up by 11 per cent and 9 per cent respectively and Helsinki, Copenhagen and Stockholm are up by 9 per cent, 6 per cent and 2 per cent respectively.

The UK has done particularly well, no doubt assisted to some extent by a favourable exchange rate; London is 7.8 per cent up and Manchester 27 per cent up, the latter benefitting from new air routes. Meanwhile, Dublin is up 37 per cent.

Looking at traffic from the whole Asia-Pacific region to Europe, Istanbul and Paris have been worst affected, with bookings down 27 per cent and 24.4 per cent respectively, while the cities perceived to be safe (Copenhagen up 14 per cent, Helsinki up 13.1 per cent, Stockholm up 12 per cent, Moscow up 23 per cent) are doing well.

Booking patterns reveal that terrorist incidents have contributed to substantial declines. After the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015 until the end of the year, bookings fell by 78.2 per cent; after the Brussels airport attack in March, bookings dropped by 29.4 per cent; and after the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice bookings fell 21.1 per cent.

Analysis of future bookings to France from the Asia-Pacific region reveals that in the period through to the end of 2016, bookings are currently running 21 per cent behind where they were at the equivalent moment last year.

“As would be expected, bookings are also running behind for the other croissant countries,” added Jager.