SALE of ancillary services by agencies have risen 85 per cent in 3Q2015 compared to the same period last year, according to data released by Amadeus, attributing the surge to efforts by OTAs.
Online agencies are fast becoming leaders in the merchandising market due to greater customer demand and as airlines increasingly allow ancillaries on GDSs.
According to Amadeus, 15 per cent of air bookings by OTAs include an ancillary sale, and that figure rises to 40 per cent for certain carriers. There are also three times more OTAs with integrated airline ancillaries this year compared to 2014.
In another report, airlines made a total of US$38.1 billion in ancillary sales in 2014, a year-on-year growth of 21 per cent, equating to $17.5 earned in revenue per customer.
EMIRATES will be retiring 26 aircraft while taking delivery of 36 new aircraft – 20 A380s and 16 Boeing 777-300ERs – in 2016 as part of plans to rejuvenate its fleet.
The planes being retired include 12 A330-300s, 4 A340-300s, 1 A340-500, 6 Boeing 777-200ERs, 2 Boeing 777-300s and 1 Boeing 777-300ER.
By the end of next year, Emirates’ average fleet age will stand at 5.6 years.
The airline will also be retiring 26 more aircraft by end-2018.
Inauguration of the Joint Visa Application Centre in New Delhi, India
VFS Global opened its largest visa application centre in Asia in New Delhi last week, equipped to process 12,000 visa applications per day for 31 countries including Japan, Australia, Austria, Belgium and the UK.
The US, China, Thailand and Malaysia will be serviced at VFS Global’s other centres in the city.
The facility is located at the heart of the Indian capital, at Connaught Place, spread across an area of 6224m2 with a total of 153 counters. It offers premium lounges, an intelligent queue management system, play area for children and a food court among other amenities.
“We may also look to open more such facilities in other Indian cities after gauging the success of the new centre,” said Vinay Malhotra, COO, South Asia, VFS Global.
Travel agents interviewed said the centre will benefit the leisure segment most. “It is great convenience for outbound tour operators and even the end consumer to have visa application facilities available for so many countries under one roof,” said Ashwani Sharma, CEO, Sheraton Travels.
“Leisure travellers are likely to benefit more as they prefer to avoid service charges incurred when availing the services of a travel agent,” said Sharma, adding that he expects outbound travel in north India to increase as a result.
ASIA’s 50 Best Restaurants, which will be held in Bangkok next year after being staged in Singapore for the past three years, said the move had nothing to do with Michelin’s announcement of launching a guide in Singapore.
William Drew, group editor of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, said the intention had always been to move the event to different host countries across the region, although sources speculated it was probably due to the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) cutting back its support as it had the Michelin Guide in mind.
A new willing partner, the Tourism Authority of Thailand, sees the awards ceremony for Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants taking place on February 29 at the W Hotel Bangkok. Drew is unfazed by Singapore’s Michelin Guide, saying: “Since its launch in 2013, Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants has established itself as the ultimate reference point for gastronomy across the continent, celebrating great restaurants and great chefs and providing a unique guide to the finest dining destinations.
“We will continue to build our presence and profile in Asia, using our panel of over 300 independent expert voters from every corner of the region.”
While hoteliers and restaurateurs in Singapore welcome the guide, they too do not expect its entry in the second half of next year to add fire to an already sizzling dining scene.
Said Beppe de Vito, owner of a string of restaurants in Singapore including Aura at the National Gallery, said: “It is definitely a positive thing to finally have Michelin in Singapore, especially since none of the other local guides have ever been able to offer similar professional reviews.
“Personally I doubt it will change anything as Singapore’s dining scene has been steadily improving over the past 10 years, and especially since the arrival of the two casinos.
“Most surely it will inflate some egos and destroy some others, especially in the Western dining scene. I also believe it is still just a minority of the whole customer spectrum who ‘listens’ to Michelin.”
Loh Lik Peng, director of Unlisted Collection, which also owns trendy restaurants apart from boutique hotels in Singapore, agreed. He said: “I think the guide will be interesting for Singapore’s dining scene… I’m not sure if it will make a difference to the vast majority of restaurants here, but our world-class restaurants will have another avenue to really showcase what they are doing. Overall, probably a positive for Singapore but I do hope our local cuisine gets a good shout out from the list.”
Olivier Bendel, CEO of Deliciae Hospitality Management, is more enthusiastic, saying: “The Michelin Guide is a real institution for over 100 years in France and probably the leader in restaurant classification around the world. It’s amazing to have it here soon and it will help even more to promote Singapore and our profession. We all hope that the guide here will be as accurate and as independent as in France, promoting ingredients, dishes, talent and hard work. It will for sure push all of us hard to do even better as of today.”
Hilton Worldwide Asia-Pacific’s vice president of F&B, Markus Schueller, believes the guide will elevate Singapore’s culinary scene to the level of other cities in Asia that already have it, namely, Japan, Macau and Hong Kong. “Having said this, the Michelin Guide is just one of a number of ways guests today are assessing restaurants.
“Fundamentally, more guests are looking for authentic dining experiences that give them a way to experience the city or locale they are visiting, or that offer something not currently found in the local market,” said Schueller.
This is why the chain is continually investing to ensure “we are future-proofing our dining concepts that are relevant to people living and working in that city”, said Schueller.
“Across our portfolio in Asia-Pacific, we have invested in key masterplan projects… most recently Opus Bar & Grill at Hilton Singapore.”
Schueller works alongside chefs and designers to redevelop F&B concepts at Hilton hotels in the region. Aside from the Hilton Singapore, multi-million dollar refurbishments of dining areas in properties such as Hilton Kuala Lumpur, Hilton Tokyo Bay, and Hilton Tokyo have also been carried out.
THE travel industry needs to keep an open mind and continually adapt in order to cater to the needs of millennial travellers, according to a report by travel search engine Wego.
“It’s not quite as simple as relying on a set of common and rather vague signals, including reliance on travel review sites, the use of metasearch, mobile usage, social media and continuous connectivity,” said Rick Mulia, chief advertising and sales officer at Wego.
“Travel reviews are popular, however millennials are far more influenced by family and friends when it comes to making travel choices,” he added, saying that many of the common beliefs about millennial travellers may be misinformed.
For instance, they are value hunters who look for comforts at reasonable prices, rather than being extremely budget conscious to forego premium amenities. As such, premium economy airline seats cater specifically to the millennial traveller, according to Wego, as they are affordable, yet offers a more comfortable flight experience.
“No matter what, if you’re in the business of travel it’s imperative you consistently evolve and deliver fresh experiences that provide great value, and approach your marketing strategies in the same manner,” said Mulia.
CARNIVAL Corp’s Princess Cruises will call at Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei for the first time through its upcoming 2016/2017 homeporting season.
The 2,678-guest Sapphire Princess will begin its homeporting season from November 2015 to March 2016, making three- to 11-day roundtrips from Singapore to destinations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
Features aboard the Sapphire Princess include staterooms with private balconies, F&B outlets such as a steakhouse, wine bar, patisserie and a pizzeria, boutique shops, spa, poolside theatre, an internet café and more.
The Diamond Princess will also make its debut in the region in 2016, offering an array of itineraries with 16 cruise trips ranging from three to 10 days and 14 long voyages of nine to 21 days.
Both the Sapphire Princess and Diamond Princess will have multi-lingual crew members onboard as well as dining room menus that include local dishes along with the line’s international offerings.
FORMER Best Western International (BWI) head honcho in the region, Glenn de Souza, has set up his own hotel management company and wants “the good old GMs” to come back to run the hotels, which will carry a Wyndham Hotel Group (WHG) brand.
Glenn de Souza
Since setting up the company, Kosmopolitan Hospitality in March, with offices in Bangkok and Singapore, De Souza has already signed up nine hotels: Days Inn Rest Sea Jomtien Beach Pattaya; Days Inn Siam Central Pattaya; Days Inn Pratamnak Hill Pattaya; Ramada Suites Wong Amat Pattaya; Ramada Chaofa Phuket; Days Inn Patong, Phuket; Tryp by Wyndham Yangon Boutique; Wyndham Legend Ha Long; and Ramada Encore Niigata (Japan).
Kosmopolitan is WHG’s preferred development partner in Asia, excluding China, with de Souza concentrating in particular on five of 15 WHG’s brands, Wyndham, Ramada, Days Inn, Howard Johnson and Tryp.
The arrangement is win-win, said De Souza, as WHG is relatively a newcomer to Asia while Kosmopolitan needs established global brands.
Kosmopolitan manages all the hotels while franchising the brands from WHG.
A hallmark of Kosmopolitan-managed hotel will be “bringing back the true, personalised service that is lost today”, said de Souza, who wants to hire retired GMs who may wish to return to the industry.
The fast-growing company needs people. Aside from the nine already signed up, Kosmopolitan has another 27 projects in negotiation, both new-builds and conversions, in Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives and Japan. De Souza expects to flag another five to six hotels under a WHG brand before the year is out. He intends to take Kosmopolitan to 50 hotels within the next three years.
The former BWI vice president of international operations for Asia & Middle East took BWI from only six hotels to 200 in the region over the 13 years he was with BWI.
Kosmopolitan has 10 staff currently, including a couple from de Souza’s previous team at BWI such as Paul Suvodip, now his regional revenue manager. Other professionals include managing director-development Akarapong Sukjit, regional operations manager Wassana On-Putta, regional director of brand management Dominique de Souza and regional sales manager James Ross. The staff strength is expected to increase to 15 by mid-2016.
De Souza speaks to Raini Hamdi about his new company in this Newsmaker interview:
When did you set up Kosmopolitan and what’s the business model?
We set up in March. We’re pretty much like any other hotel management company, i.e., we offer technical services, sales, marketing, revenue management, finance, human resources, etc, and we have the right contacts with services such as interior design and landscaping.
The difference is the support we give to owners. We are ethical, transparent, honest and we live by our commitment. We manage all their projects and while most hotel management companies rather the owners stay away, we’d rather the owners work with us. At the end of the day, owners always want to know what’s happening with their hotels, otherwise the seeds of distrust are planted.
How did the partnership with WHG come about?
Wyndham is a relatively new company in this part of the world. It lacks the awareness and it wants to piggyback on our expertise and the contacts we’ve developed in our previous life with other brands. It wants to be a lot more aggressive than it was before and sees us as an opportunity to enable them grow very quickly in this part of the world. In the last four months we’ve given them nine hotels and we expect to give them another five to six hotels by the end of this year.
We have established a lot of owner relationships, from Chinese to Thais to Koreans, and they all have different mindsets and needs. We have the local culture knowledge and the infrastructure, which Wyndham does not have, to expand quickly in this region.
Basically, we share our pipeline with Wyndham. We don’t compete with them – if they are looking at a property, they can go ahead with it.
Are you working with partners other than Wyndham?
Realistically, the partnership with Wyndham is more than enough at this stage. We will take this company (Kosmopolitan) to 50 hotels within the next three years. We’re quite comfortable to give them (WHG) 10-15 hotels a year. That’s not to say we are in a hurry to grow. What is important to us is our commitment to owners.
Why do you need WHG?
When you set up a company, you need a brand. People buy a brand because it gives them a sense of security and assured standards. Owners need a brand to facilitate the bank loan and they are buying a platform that’s already been established by a global brand. It takes a lot money to build a new brand and it might not even work, as you have seen with some brands.
Wyndham is the right brand for us in terms of positioning. Upscale and midscale brands are what’s viable for Asia at this time. Construction-wise a three-star hotel costs less than four, and four less than five. But the ROI for three and four-stars is within seven years while luxury is about 10 years. We leave the luxury hotels to the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carltons. So Wyndham is a good match for us.
So what will define Kosmopolitan’s hotel management style from others?
I think today, we need a different breed of hoteliers in terms of commitment and integrity – I believe we need to go back to the basics of operating hotels.
Why did the industry lose its basics?
People have been promoted too quickly. Technology also has a lot to play, because of it, people have lost the contact, the personal touch, with customers. You don’t see the GM; they are on Facebook. In the past, you see the GM at breakfast, lunch and dinner, because they want to know who the customers are, they want to interact with them personally, not via social media. Today you don’t see GMs and people keep changing jobs. I go through resumes, six months here, three months there.
I want to bring back the 60-year-old GMs or the old timers those who have retired and want to come back. I give them a 200-room hotel and they will know how to operate it, they will know how to handle the owners and they will know how to train the staff. I’ve spoken to quite a few; they are not after the money, they want to do something meaningful. These are the real hoteliers, the real pros.
Do you think younger travellers, or your owners for that matter, want old GMs?
It will be nice for the young travellers to meet real hoteliers for a change. They never experience that kind of service. And it’ll be great for young hoteliers to learn from the professionals and the legends who came from the established hotel schools.
As for my young owners, and I have plenty of them, they do not mind at all. In Asia, many are from the family business and they are used to looking up to the elders.
What about distribution?
Actually, the occupancy a brand can deliver to a property today is diminishing. If you can get five per cent occupancy from a brand, you’re very lucky. At the end of the day, you need to drive sales yourself and I believe in running a high occupancy even if I have to compromise on my average rate, because rooms are perishable and cashflow is important for owners.
I have a sales team that drives the volume. We have the contacts and network with the volume producers and top agents. Let the brand deliver five per cent of the volume and do the marketing. This is why we can open with a 75 per cent occupancy.
Does it feel like starting all over again as when you were with BWI with only six hotels 13 years ago?
Yes, but today it is my company and it is more interesting, more viable and pleasing. I can be as flexible as I like, I can decide who I work with and when, and there are no restrictions on who I can hire.
THE Hawai‘i Tourism Authority (HTA), Hawaii’s tourism agency, is making a big push into Asia with the appointment of Aviareps Southeast Asia and Brandstory Asia to provide destination management services in South-east Asia and China respectively.
Aviareps Southeast Asia, which has offices in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Jakarta and Bangkok, will focus primarily on Singapore and Malaysia, with Indonesia and Thailand being secondary markets. Both leisure and business segments will be targeted.
Meanwhile, Brandstory Asia, headquartered in Shanghai and with offices also in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore, will begin representing HTA from January 1, 2016.
In a statement, the company said it will employ “a strategic mix of airline and travel trade partnerships as well as consumer marketing via advertising, PR and social media programs to increase the desire for and actual travel to the Hawaiian Islands.”
DATA from travel search engine Skyscanner has revealed the cheapest months in 2016 to book a flight to locales featured in James Bond blockbusters through the years.
In Asia, flights to Khao Phing Kan, Thailand, featured in The Man With the Golden Gun, can cost as low as US$119 in September next year. Meanwhile, flying to Shanghai, as featured in Skyfall, will only set you back $115 when booking in January, while flying to Tokyo, filmed in You Only Live Twice, is as affordable as $163 in February.
Further afield, jetting to St Andrews, Scotland, featured in Goldfinger, will have fares starting from $616 when flying in February, and as filmed in James Bond’s latest film, Spectre, bookings to Mexico City will only cost $946 in May.
TRAVELLERS from Helsinki via Finnair will be able to connect to codeshare services operated by Singapore-based Jetstar Asia from December 15, 2015 onwards.
Finnair’s code will be added to Jetstar Asia’s flights to and from Singapore’s Changi Airport, as well as services in Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City, Phuket, Perth and Darwin.
Guests flying on Finnair will retain its baggage allowance aboard Jetstar Asia’s flights.
Barathan Pasupathi, CEO of Jetstar Asia, said: “The collaboration between Jetstar Asia and Finnair is a welcome enhancement towards the codeshare and interline model at Jetstar Asia. The Finnair service from Helsinki will connect to Jetstar Asia’s services at Changi Airport.
“This will allow customers from Europe to connect via Singapore onwards to Jetstar Asia’s Australasia destinations”.
