SINGAPORE Airlines subsidiary SilkAir will be launching thrice-weekly flights from Singapore to Laos come October 31.

It will operate a circular route between Singapore, Vientiane and Luang Prabang on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays aboard an Airbus A320 configured with business and economy class cabins.

Flights depart Singapore at 14.20 and arrive in Vientiane at 16.15. It will then depart from Wattay International Airport at 17.05 for Luang Prabang, touching down at 18.00. The trip back to Singapore then departs from there at 18.50 to reach Changi International Airport at 23.05.

With the launch of this service, SilkAir and Singapore Airlines will together offer flights to all nations in the ASEAN bloc.

PLANS to offer three-year tourist visas for travellers to Cambodia could help spur return visits, industry players say.

From September 1, foreign visitors from certain countries will be able to apply for multi-entry business and tourist visas valid up to three years.

Details are yet announced but tourism minister Thong Khon said the measure would help “promote tourism growth”, with an aim to attract 7.5 million foreign visitors by 2020.

Kong Hen, manager at Mekong Travel Tours, expects this to appeal to the regional market as well as business travellers and backpackers.

He said: “It makes returning to Cambodia convenient. You don’t have the hassle of paperwork and paying fees. It is easy.”

Chhay Sivlin, vice chairwoman of the Cambodia Association of Travel Agents, added: “It is important for international tourists or businesspeople who are looking to come back again with their family or friends, or for meetings with business partners.”

It is also believed the introduction of the visa will help lure foreigners from Thailand, where efforts to tighten regulations on long-term stays recently tightened.

Currently, tourists can access for a month with visa-on-arrival, which can be extended to three months. A one-year business visa is also available.

Boracay

GROUP bookings from China are beginning to return to the Philippines after inbound operators and hotels – especially in Boracay, Cebu and Bohol – lost millions of pesos following a spate of chartered flight cancellations during the July-August peak season.

Chartered flights are considered the lifeline for many Philippine operators as it offers a direct connection to even remote parts of China.

Cancellations began July 12 after the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favour of the Philippines over China’s territorial claims to the Spratly Islands.

The general manager of a travel agency specialising in inbound travel from China, who spoke on account of anonymity, confirmed that while there is no travel ban from the Chinese government, there were many chartered flight cancellations.

The general manager of another travel agency said that out of 12 groups of 20 rooms each, only three groups materialised.

The sales director of a hotel with properties in Boracay and Bohol said they were affected by massive room cancellations in the hundreds.

Since there are no rules governing flight cancellations from China, it is up to the hotels to decide whether to refund the amount already advanced by tour operators, to forward the bookings, or forfeit them.

But the latter travel agency general manager interviewed said that they are now starting to get bookings again from China and numbers should normalise over the next few months.

The DOSM of a hotel in Boracay said she was not too worried because this is unlike a past incident when there was a blanket ban resulting in zero Chinese arrivals.

She is already seeing bookings from China for September, an indication that the market would normalise soon.

SRI Lanka’s national carrier is cancelling six flights and rescheduling ten others due to next year’s three-month partial closure of the country’s main international airport for urgent maintenance work on its aged runway.

Colombo’s Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) is to be closed between 08.30 and 17.30 from January 6 to April 6, 2017.

SriLankan Airlines last week had a meeting with the slot committee, which decides on all flight schedules, and the carrier decided to cancel day flights to Singapore, Chennai, Trichy, Male, Cochin and Bangalore.

The flights that are being rescheduled involve services to Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Trivandrum, New Delhi, Karachi, London and Jeddah.

The trade has expressed concern over the closure but acknowledges that maintenance work is also essential for passenger safety.

GENERAL Hotel Management (GHM), in a joint venture partnership with van de Bunt Partners, has unveiled Tin Hotels, a new mid-tier lifestyle hotel brand.

GHM, traditionally a luxury operator, stated that the move into the mid-tier segment was done to better cater to the needs of target markets as well as to remain relevant in the current market situation.

The concept for Tin Hotels is aimed at the growing middle-class population and millennials.

“We want to challenge the status quo and bring the pursuit of excellence and style to the mid-market tier. We will create hotels that are not merely places to stay, but function as venues to connect: as social hubs, design spaces or simply, places to be seen at,” said Hans R. Jenni, co-founder and president of GHM.

The aim is to expand Tin Hotels swiftly, added GHM, starting with the launch of its first hotels in Dubai and Oman and over the course of the next few years, to grow within the Gulf region before reaching its target of 35 properties in 2022.

Properties currently under GHM management include The Nam Hai Hoi An, Vietnam, The Chedi Club Tanah Gajah, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, The Chedi Muscat, Oman and The Chedi Andermatt, Switzerland.

SOUTH Korea’s flag carrier will introduce no-show fees for international passengers who fail to provide advance notice that they no longer require a flight booking.

Korean Air said in a statement that this is being introduced in a bid to minimise seat wastage.

For tickets purchased from October 1, passengers who either do not cancel their reservation prior to the scheduled time of departure or passengers who do not board their flight after check-in has been completed, will be charged.

Passengers who fail to turn up for flights to/from the Americas, Europe and Oceania on longhaul routes will be charged US$120. Those flying to/from South-east and South-west Asia on medium-haul routes will be charged US$70.

For flights between South Korea and Japan and China or between Japan and China on shorthaul routes will be charged US$50. No-shows on domestic flights in South Korea will be charged 8,000 won (US$7).

No-show passengers booked to travel on award tickets will have either 12,000 miles, 7,000 miles or 5,000 miles deducted from their accounts, depending on the length of the flight they did not turn up for. No-show passengers booked on award tickets for domestic flights will have 500 miles deducted.

The no-show fees will be waived for infants under 2 years of age not occupying a seat.

Korean Air has been charging no-show fees for domestic flights since October 2008 and has been able to offer the cancelled seats back to waiting customers.

Other airlines that charge no-show fees include Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Japan Airlines.

Train from Nuwara Eliya to Kandy among the tea plantations in Sri Lanka

SRI Lanka is launching in November probably its first major destination campaign in seven years.

The campaign will spotlight the country as being one of the safest in the world in an effort to shed its image as a pariah.

Tourism minister John Amaratunga, speaking at a hospitality conference held in Colombo on Wednesday, said Sri Lanka Tourism will be driving the multi-channel global initiative.

“One barrier that we face is that some of our target markets (still do not know that) Sri Lanka is now one of the safest countries in the world. This is something that needs to be addressed and will be done through this campaign,” he said, without revealing further details.

Once an avoided destination due to a 30-year-long bloody civil conflict which ended in 2009, Sri Lanka has since recovered. It has set an arrivals target of 2.2 million in 2016 and 4 million by 2020.

There hasn’t been any serious tourism promotion since the war ended.

Arrivals are soaring with July being the best performing month ever on record with 209,351, up 19.1 per cent from the same month in 2015 and beating the record set last December of 206,114.

EVERY bullet train station in Japan will have a comprehensive tourist information centre by 2019.

Funds to build the new centres or upgrade existing facilities will be requested by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism before the end of this month.

Certain criteria, such as having at least one English-speaking staff and wireless internet connection will be funded by further subsidies provided to the local authorities.

The government in March announced an ambitious target of 40 million foreign visitors in 2020, the year that Tokyo will host the Olympic Games, double the number set out in the previous plan just two years earlier.

Japan is already on course to break through the 20 million barrier this year and the government has announced plans to invest heavily in the tourism sector and to make it an increasingly important source of revenue for the national economy.