Diethelm Travel Group last week conducted a ceremony to move the royal Garuda enblem to another location in the office, as part of the Bangkok-based DMC’s efforts to revamp and rejuvenate the workplace environment. The company was bestowed the royal warrant from the king of Thailand as a mark of its good standing in the Thai business sector. The sculpture-moving ceremony was presided by a high priest together with group managing director Lisa Fitzell (third from right).
Well-being is key to keeping staff motivated and retaining them. Flight Centre Travel Group managing director Singapore, Suyin Lee, shares how employers can invest in staff well-being:How does FCTG retain staff?
• Attention to detail Be mindful of employees’ needs, from their health and personal well-being to family and work-life balance. FCTG ensures comfortable and spacious workspaces, sufficient breakout areas for quiet time, pantries stocked with healthy snacks, casual Friday drink sessions in the office, and our Healthwise Fitness Studio provides personal training and group classes.
• Recognition Every employee should get recognition for hard work. Leaders need to take time to give recognition, from a compliment to a note of thanks. Each month, we organise a Buzz Night to celebrate the success and contributions of individuals who have far exceeded their targets and personal bests.
• Technology We work on automating manual and tedious processes so that our staff can focus on delivering an amazing customer experience. Utlisation of technology is key to improving our productivity.
• Bright future Employees should see a clear pathway to achieve their career goals through learning and development. Promotions and transfers ensure they continue to grow.
• Communication We welcome input from employees and maintain an open door policy by fostering a transparent and open culture. Everyone should feel comfortable in sharing their views and new ideas for improvement.
How does FCTG achieve this?
• Travel Academy Launching in 2017, the Travel Academy will allow the company to reach out to a wider pool of candidates in the travel industry and provide a platform for continuing professional education in the sector.
• Healthwise FCTG’s corporate health and wellness programme, Healthwise can help employers reduce the cost of absenteeism. In Australia, the programme reduced the average number of sick days taken by employees to 3.4 days, in comparison to the travel and hospitality industry average of 10.4 sick days.
FCTG has signed 18,000 employees up to Healthwise and estimates savings of A$30 million (US$21.3 million) over the past five years by reducing employee absenteeism.
What challenges are there and how can they be overcome?
• Participation Many young people do not see an exciting career in the travel industry. Having a quality travel education programme will be a step in the right direction but we need to promote the benefits of the travel sector jointly with industry bodies.
For Healthwise, getting employees to take the first step will be the greatest challenge. For example, FCTG Singapore launched a Step Challenge recently. Participants were provided with a Fitbit or step counter and the individual or team that walked the most steps in that month won a travel prize.
• Investment Financial investment, time and resources are needed for the successful implementation of these programmes and to ensure momentum is maintained.
This article was first published in TTG Asia, March 4, 2016 issue, on page 10. To read more, please view our digital edition or click here to subscribe
Article written by Suyin Lee.
TTG Asia e-Daily will be taking a break tomorrow, March 25 to observe Good Friday.
News will resume on Monday, March 28.
Have a Good Friday and blessed Easter!
Victor Mogilev, general manager, Thailand
DIETHELM Travel Group (DTG) has newly appointed three senior staff as part of plans to further strengthen its management team.
Jean Francois Redl has been promoted from country manager for Vietnam to managing director, replacing Torsten Edens who is now group operating director.
Redl brings more than 25 years of professional experience in the tourism industry to the role with an emphasis on operations, sales, marketing, and business development.
In addition, Victor Mogilev has moved from his role as sales director for emerging markets to general manager for Thailand, and will support Edens in Bangkok.
Mogilev originally joined DTG in 2012, guiding the growth of its partners in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern Europe, before going through two promotions.
Finally, Louise Lithgow has been employed as group sales director, responsible for managing the entire sales team and activities across the 12 countries DTG operate in.
Lithgow joins the company with 14 years of experience working for STA Travel as well as time spent with various hospitality groups, such as Millennium Hotels.
Steam train from North Borneo Railway
A locomotive from North Borneo Railway was unable to complete its journey yesterday due to a missing bolt pin.
The steam train departed as scheduled from Tanjung Aru Station but made a turn back after arriving at Kinarut, the halfway point, around 10.30.
According to a source at North Borneo Railway, all passengers affected will be given a 50 per cent refund which will take two weeks to process. Services will resume as per normal on Saturday.
The North Borneo Railway provides the oldest running steam train in Sabah and Borneo and runs two-weekly return departures on Wednesdays and Saturdays from Kota Kinabalu to Papar, all year round.
Laksa dish from Langkawi International Laksa Carnival 2015
THE Langkawi Development Authority (LADA) hopes to grow gastronomic tourism in Langkawi through its homegrown Laksa Carnival this May, which is expected to attract some 60,000 visitors.
At the fifth edition of the Langkawi International Laksa Carnival, which will run from May 27 to 29 at Laman Padi, over 10 participants from all over Malaysia will showcase laksa creations from the various states.
Asian rice noodles specialists from China, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines will also be dishing out their local noodle dishes.
Other activities include laksa cooking contests, art performances and live laksa cooking demonstrations by four local celebrity chefs.
While laksa and noodles are the main highlights, other local delicacies will also be on sale during the three-day event.
Deputy CEO of LADA, Rozaina Radzi, said: “The purpose of the carnival is to complement domestic and international tourists travelling to Langkawi during this period with live activities that engages the taste buds.”
Lake Toba
GARUDA Indonesia has launched the Jakarta-Silangit route via Pinangsori as part of ongoing route expansion plans and in support of Indonesia’s efforts to develop tourism to Lake Toba.
Arif Wibowo, president and CEO of Garuda, said: “The new route is part of the company’s continuous route expansion and a commitment to support the government’s programmes (to improve) connectivity between islands and cities to develop tourism as well as the national economy.”
The thrice-weekly service will be operated on the CRJ-1000 aircraft with 96 all-economy seats.
I Gde Pitana, deputy minister of international marketing development at the Ministry of Tourism, said: “One of the issues in developing Lake Toba is the fact that it is only accessible by road from Medan (and the route takes between five and seven hours). We expect that the new service will entice more travellers to go there.”
Garuda also has plans to connect Silangit with other cities in Sumatra like Medan, Sibolga, Gunung Sitoli, Dumai and Pekanbaru.
Meanwhile, the government is setting up the Lake Toba Tourism Authority with the aim of better coordinating development and management efforts.
Arief Yahya, Minister of Tourism said: “The tourism authority will be tasked with developing infrastructure such as road and airport on Lake Toba area. Such development has been very slow because of the overlapping authorities among seven government agencies in the area,” he explained.
Al Meroz Hotel Bangkok
THE nations of Malaysia and Singapore have once again claimed top spots in the annual MasterCard-CrescentRating Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI), which covers 130 destinations, ranking them as the most Muslim-friendly tourism destinations worldwide.
Malaysia retained its number one position on the list of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries, with the UAE moving up one spot from last year to second place. Turkey, Indonesia and Qatar comes next, rounding off the top five OIC countries.
For non-OIC destinations, Singapore kept its crown, with Thailand, the UK, South Africa and Hong Kong making up the top five.
Just last November, Thailand’s first halal hotel, the Al Meroz Hotel Bangkok, soft-launched in Bangkok’s predominantly Muslim enclave of Ramkhamhaeng, bolstering its position as the second-most Muslim-friendly non-OIC destination.
The study further revealed that in 2015, there were an estimated 117 million Muslim visitor arrivals globally, representing close to 10 per cent of the entire travel market. This is forecasted to grow to 168 million visitors by 2020 with a market value spend projected to exceed US$200 billion.
Countries analysed in the GMTI are scored against criterias including suitability as a family holiday destination, the level of services and facilities provided, accommodation options, marketing initiatives as well as visitor arrivals. This year, two new criteria – air connectivity and visa restrictions – were added.
Todd Arthur, managing director APAC, HRS
CORPORATE hotel booking platform HRS is set to offer meeting planners in Asia-Pacific its global events space inventory, a result of its partnership with MICE expert Meetago last year.
HRS has been offering MICE booking capabilities in Europe since 2015, and will officially be launching in Asia-Pacific in 2H2016, when users in the region can begin booking meeting venues in other parts of the world. Meanwhile, corporates worldwide will be able to book MICE facilities in Asia-Pacific come end-2016.
The platform is currently in its beta phase here, and was first announced during Travel X’Change 2016, HRS’ own corporate travel trade event which took place yesterday, March 23.
Commenting on the meetings and groups sector in this region, Todd Arthur, managing director APAC, HRS, said: “In the past it is a really fragmented approach where you (manually) contact maybe six hotels and hope some of them get back to you and then there is this long back and forth process.”
He went on to explain that the Meetago system, which is integrated into HRS’ current portal, eases that painful process by allowing meeting organisers the ability to specify exactly what they need – from room size to number of flip charts – and then allowing four suppliers the chance to bid for the job, ensuring competitive pricing.
“It’s a bidding system and if they can meet the client requirements, they can then put a price in. The meeting planner then gets four quotes that meet their exact needs,” explained Arthur.
He added: “It’s a fair system. I think hotels will really embrace it as they have in Europe and they love it because they get a uniform RFP (request for proposal) coming in. Since we’ve launched this, the quickest turnaround time was 47 minutes. It’s almost like booking a room.”
Suppliers don’t get to see the competing bids on the platform and are not able to change the requirements of the client.
“HRS’ extensive portfolio and global reach means we can guarantee a consistent standard of offers and RFP monitoring at a local market level. In addition to the savings gained by the simplification of the process, meeting organisers will benefit from transparent reporting across all booking activities in real time,” added Udo Lülsdorf, founder and CEO of Meetago.
“The process will be completely seamless with customers having access to all of this via the same portal they use for making hotel bookings, meaning they will not have to switch providers or systems.”
HRS currently has an inventory of 75,000 conference venues and 300,000 hotels worldwide.
AFTER three years of construction, the 40,000m2 Suzhou Jinji Lake International Convention Center officially opened on March 18. The opening ceremony took place concurrently with the 2016 China (Suzhou) Convention and Exhibition Industry Fair.
This is the third facility to be built as part of the larger Suzhou International Expo Center. The convention centre offers 60 types of meeting and convention spaces, with the capability of dividing and combining the spaces as required. There is also the 8,000m2 pillarless banquet hall, the largest of its kind in Asia.
As well, a four-star conference hotel directly connected to the Suzhou International Expo Centre, the 307-room Novotel Suzhou SIP, has also opened.
