HONG KONG trade players are objecting to levies that the Airport Authority (AA) is proposing to impose on passengers and airlines, saying that the entity is capable of raising funds through other means.

Following the Executive Council’s approval to buid a third runway at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), AA has suggested a HK$180 (US$23) levy on departing passengers while airlines will have to pay an additional 15 per cent in airport charges from next year. The third runway wiill be situated on 650ha of reclaimed land and is expected to take eight years for construction.

Strongly opposing the levy, Gray Line Tours managing director, Michael Wu, said: “We support the new runway but AA should explore all funding options, like issuing bonds, before charging passengers.

“As far as I know, it hasn’t even tried to approach the Legislative Council for funding so it seems to me that AA hasn’t any strong reason for such a decision.”

Airlines have also chimed in. Home-grown LCC HK Express deputy CEO, Andrew Cowen, is concerned that increased landing fees and the introduction of an airport construction fee will affect business. “If there are additional charges on top of existing fees, more and more of our guests will end up paying more to use the airport than they do to actually fly with us. This doesn’t sound quite right, or how it should be.”

Meanwhile, Cathay Pacific Airways in a statement said it believes AA is fully capable of financing the construction of the runway through its own means without the need to impose a additional financial burden on travellers.

DIFFERENTIATION through value-adds is the key for travel consultants to staying relevant and unscathed by competition from OTAs and product owners who sell direct to consumers, advised speakers at the 62^nd Convention & Exhibition of the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) last week.

Held in Bali from March 26 to 28, the theme of the convention was Reflections – Redefining Relevance, recommending tour operators to change approaches and embrace change. The conference attracted some 700 delegates.

One of the speakers, Dhananjay Saliankar, regional director, South Asia, Starwood Hotels & Resorts said travel consultants should view themselves as travel planners able to provide personalisation and unique experiences. He said: “They should ask themselves what they can do to be different from other consultants and to brush up their skills on being a ‘trusted advisor’ (to clients).

“They should be able to add-value for their customers such as providing solutions to complex trips which are not point-to-point journeys, and focus on customers with high value – those who have a lot of money but have little time.”

Niranjan Gupta, Founder & CEO of Trip 38, concurred, sharing that his company provides online solutions for travel consultants to upsell and engage with customers beyond airline ticket sales. It answers requests from customers who want complete information, from planning the holiday to experiences in the destination.

Sunil Kumar, TAAI president, told TTG Asia e-Daily that a substantial number of travel consultants across India are still dependent on ticketing. As such, the convention was TAAI’s first initiative to create opportunities for members about specialisations in the areas of MICE, destination management companies, luxury travel and destination weddings.

MELIÁ Hotels International is planting its flag on the up-and-coming holiday destinations of Phu Quoc in Vietnam, where it will open a Sol House resort.

Developed by local real estate development MIK and managed by Meliá, the four-star Sol House Phu Quoc will open in 2016 with 260 rooms and bungalows.

It will also feature a spa, two different dining spaces, a beach bar, a swimming pool and a beach sport centre.

Sol House Phu Quoc is Meliá’s third property in Vietnam. Phu Quoc island is 50km from the Vietnamese mainland and a 50-minute flight from Ho Chi Minh City.

THE scenic Huangshan is HK Express’ next landing pad as the LCC grows its network in China.

The twice-weekly service begins on March 29 and is the airline’s fifth Chinese destination.

On Mondays, flights depart Hong Kong at 09.20 to arrive at 11.15. The return leg will see HK Express leave at 11.55 and touch down in Hong Kong at 14.00.

HK Express will also fly this route on Fridays at an earlier time slot of 07.45 and reach Huangshan at 09.40. It leaves Huangshan at 10.25 and returns to Hong Kong at 12.35 on the same day.

“HK Express is unfolding the map of China and offering fresh wonders to our guests almost every month,” said Luke Lovegrove, commercial director, HK Express.

“Huangshan has always been popular with independent travellers and we are delighted to bring this great destination within easy low-fare reach of Hong Kong,” he added.

ACCESSIBILITY to the Philippines, a longstanding challenge for tourism, is improving markedly owing to the unprecedented increase in foreign ailrines flying into the country and new routes blazed this year.

Erwin Balane, head of the department of tourism’s route development team, told TTG Asia e-Daily: “The number of seats that we have already added is by the hundreds of thousands a year, which also means additional visitor traffic to the Philippines.”

According to Balane, foreign airlines coming in this year include Ethiopian Airlines’ thrice-weekly Addis Ababa-Manila service starting June 27; HK Express’ Hong Kong-Kalibo (Boracay) and Hong Kong-Cebu services, both twice-weekly with dates to be announced; and Garuda Indonesia’s Jakarta-Manila service four times a week, starting August 2.

Local carriers will also launch new routes: Philippine Airlines’ (PAL) thrice-weekly Manila-Jinjiang, China service from April 25; PAL’s twice-weekly Manila-Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea from June; and Cebu Pacific Air’s (CEB) twice-weekly Manila-Doha service beginning June 4.

This year, PAL also began flying to New York while CEB launched services to Hong Kong from Kalibo and to Tokyo (Narita) from Cebu.

Stressing the importance of air access in bringing the tourists, Balane said the Philippines is eyeing more links to Asia, including China, South Korea and Singapore.

His team is also working towards direct flights from Asia to secondary destinations such as Davao, Cebu and Boracay, since Manila’s airport is already congested for faster and more competitive travel.

IT’S game on in Australia where the city of Brisbane wants to attract Asia-Pacific’s gamblers with a ‘Singapore-style’ integrated resort.

Singapore’s The Straits Times reported earlier this week that the resort will be constructed on prime waterfront land at the Queen’s Wharf precinct to the tune of A$1 billion (US$780.8 billion).

The resort, which Queensland’s department of state development said draws on inspiration from Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands, will include luxury hotels, function centres, F&B outlets, residential units and a pedestrian bridge, as well as gaming facilities.

Competition for rights to operate the development has been intense. Crown Resorts, alongside China’s Greenland Holding is going neck and neck with Echo Entertainment that is partnering Hong Kong’s Far East Consortium International and Chow Tai Fook Enterprise, said the Straits Times report.

Australian casino giants Crown Resorts and Echo Entertainment are competing neck-and-neck for managing rights to the development, which is expected to bring in 1.4 million more visitors to Australia a year and create thousands of jobs.

INDONESIA’s MG Group has split its online hotel wholesale and inbound travel division in a restructuring and rebranding exercise, it announced today during the two-day MG Mega Table Top B2B trade fair in Jakarta.

MG Holiday’s hotel business is now MG Bedbank and its travel division has taken on the name MG Destination.

MG Group COO Raymond, who like a good number of Indonesians go by one name only, explained the name change. “The word ‘holiday’ in the travel trade refers to a set of components, including ticketing, hotel voucher and tour packages. We wanted to focus on growing each division; therefore, we separated the hotel wholesale and inbound tour division.”

The rebranding includes the revitalisation of MG Bedbank’s website to put it on a par with B2C OTAs, which is capturing a significant share of bookings even with higher prices.

Having noticed instant confirmation was a key factor to this, MG has invested in a system allowing sub-agents to access inventory and provide clients with instant confirmation.

Raymond said MG Bedbank and its sub-agents offers more competitive commissions for hotels – three to five per cent against OTAs, where rates can go up to 25 per cent.

Furthermore, with so many new hotels opening all over Indonesia, often with more than one property under the same brand, travel consultants are able to advise which hotel is most convenient for the traveller.

“Booking through a travel company also provides more flexibility in date changes and payment methods,” he added.

At the moment, MG Bedbank has more than 3,000 sub-agents in Indonesia, more than 2,500 hotels in its Indonesian inventory and 200,000 hotels overseas.

BY MARRYING reservation data with social data and guest feedback, hotels can improve the way they engage with guests to drive up customer satisfaction and revenue – the central aim of inGuest that was launched today.

Owned by San Francisco-based technology company Revinate, the guest engagement platform today became available for Asia-Pacific hotels.

It works by combining booking data feedback and social media information from the guest to create a social guest profile that will enable hoteliers to get a deeper understanding of their customer and tailor services according to customer preferences and interests.

Besides generating actionable guest profiles, inGuest also allows hotels to market to guests directly for additional revenue opportunities by sending targeted, automatic messages to past and present guests.

It also includes Revinate’s Guest Feedback Suite that allows the hotel to collate all online reviews, survey data and social media mentions into a single, integrated system for review, while a fully customizable app for all platforms brings hotel services to guest mobile devices such as advanced check-ins, room service, service and reservation requests, and concierge services.

“Before inGuest, hoteliers looking to better understand and engage with guests needed to cobble together numerous legacy systems,” says Jay Ashton, Revinate’s co-founder and CEO.

“The result was an expensive, complex system that could not produce a singular guest profile. inGuest harnesses all guest data into rich social profiles and enables precise, dynamic targeting. Our goal is to make it easy for hoteliers to better engage with guests in order to maximise revenue and satisfaction.”