ALBA Spa Hotel is the new water-themed boutique hotel that opened in Vietnam’s imperial capital of Hue last month.

Owned and operated by Hong Kong-based Openasia Group, the 58-room downtown hotel features treatments and a mineral water Jacuzzi as a unique selling point.

Besides spa treatments designed in collaboration with spa guru Florence Jaffe, the hotel’s 16.5m² Jacuzzi is partitioned into hot- and cold-water regions and filled with mineral water procured from a natural spring located 30km north of Hue.

Hijaaz Latheef, general manager of the Alba Spa Hotel, said in a release: “It’s not your everyday spa feature… It’s rare to find a hot water Jacuzzi and cold plunge pool set up like this.

“But it wasn’t built to make people say, ‘Wow, that’s interesting’. It was built for the same reason people have been going to hot springs for centuries – for the health benefits. Heat helps to our relax muscles and rid our bodies of toxins, while cold stimulates and invigorates. Our mission is to offer a wellness experience unlike any other, and having both (hot and cold) options underscores that.”

Water is also a key element in the hotel’s interior: the bubble-like décor in each room is inspired by water and Alba mineral water is used to water the plants used in the exotic spa treatments.

Standing at eight storeys, the hotel features a spacious meeting room and will eventually offer a rooftop bar with panoramic views of Hue.

LEXIS Hibiscus Port Dickson has soft opened on April 1 with 100 rooms, with more rooms opening progressively.

According to Steve Woon, vice president – sales & marketing, Lexis Hotels and Resorts, 50 more rooms are scheduled to open next month.

The property, situated along Port Dickson’s Pasir Panjang beach, is scheduled to fully open in 4Q2015 and will have 639 pool villas, with every unit equipped with its own dip pool.

The Hibiscus Grand Ballroom will have a seating capacity of up to 450 pax in banquet style and will be the only banquet hall in Port Dickson with a ceiling height of more than 7m. It can be partitioned into four separate rooms.

For meetings, the resort will have 10 functions rooms of varying sizes, a boardroom and a VIP holding room.

Saini Vermeulen, executive director of Malaysia-based Within Earth Holidays, said: “Lexis Hibiscus Port Dickson is a good product and for MICE groups, this can be combined with a city stay in Kuala Lumpur as Port Dickson is less than a two hours’ drive away. For local corporates, it makes a good weekend retreat.”

AUSTRALIA introduced three-year, multiple entry tourist visas for Chinese visitors to Australia in a move that’s been welcomed by the country’s tourism industry.

Last Friday’s announcement comes just a year after the same extension was granted to business visas for Chinese and three months on from a landmark air services agreement that will see air capacity to Australia triple over the next 18 months to 67,000 seats per week from China.

“With growing affluence and a rising middle class, China is a huge growth market for Sydney Airport, with Chinese passengers set to become our largest international visitor market by 2016,” said Kerrie Mather, managing director and CEO of Sydney Airport.

China is currently Australia’s second largest inbound visitor market. Close to 790,000 Chinese travellers visited Australia in the year to September 2014, with 47 per cent of arrivals being repeat visitors.

Andrew Robb, Australian federal minister for trade and investment, said the government is determined to help Australia capture more of the rapidly growing Chinese tourist market.

“Chinese tourists are increasingly more discerning and looking for an authentic Australian experience,” said Robb. “Repeat visitors are an increasingly important market sector as they tend to stay for longer periods and are higher yielding in terms of their spending.”

Managing director of Melbourne-based Australian Tours Management, Eng Waa Teh, said: “I believe it’s a great move by the Australian government to facilitate this visa assurance for the Chinese visitors. It will hopefully improve the numbers of Chinese visitors to Australia.”

THE US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has restored India’s aviation safety rating to Category 1 one year after lowering it to Category 2, citing the lack of full-time flight operation inspectors as a key reasons.

India has taken corrective actions to address FAA’s concerns, said US Department of Transport secretary, Anthony Foxx, who made the announcement on his visit to New Delhi last week.

“(Return to Category 1 status) means our International Aviation Safety Assessment officials have determined that India complies with the safety standards set by ICAO,” Foxx said in a media statement.

India launched an aggressive overhaul of aviation safety standards after demotion to Category 2 last year, mandating a recertification of all local carriers and employing 35 full-time flight operation inspectors.

An FAA review took place in December 2014, followed by subsequent meetings with India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and a visit by FAA officials last month.

The new safety rating is expected to benefit Jet Airways and Air India, the two Indian carriers that currently fly to the US, as it permits carriers to add flights to the US and codeshare with US airlines.

However, according to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA), the Indian government should be more proactive about aviation safety.

Associate manage of CAPA India, Vishal Bhadola, commented: “India’s safety oversight regime needs a fundamental restructuring as growth will bring more challenges, and our under-preparedness might become visible again if long-term strategic correction is not initiated.

“The first step is to have a technical professional head the DGCA. Without that, a real change will not be possible.”

A NEWLY forged collaboration will allow tour operators to upload supplier rates to booking systems automatically to save hours and hours of manual data entry, a longstanding bugbear within the travel industry.

Creating this solution are TourConnect, which offers traditional travel suppliers online tools for distribution, and tour operator software solution provider Tourplan, both of which reached an agreement last week.

The integration allows tour operators to load partner suppliers’ rates directly onto their systems at “the touch of a button”, with the first version of the integration to be rolled out for the 2016-2017 contracting season.

Mike Herrmann, president and founder of TourConnect, highlighted the scope of the problem to TTG Asia e-Daily. “Many tour operators have developed their own website to let suppliers load rates directly into their system (to solve the manual entry problem); however, that’s a problem because that means a supplier then has to go into each individual system to load their rates. It’s also just shifting the burden of data entry to the supplier.”

TourConnect offers the world’s first solution that “skips the manual loading part of the process regardless of what booking system the tour operator is on”.

“The integration with Tourplan is simply the first booking system we are proving this with.  We can add more tour operators and more booking systems because we are a neutral third party,” he explained.

“As we add more partners, it means suppliers can enter their rates one time, in one place, but have them automated into many tour operators. This entering of rates once is truly where the skipping of the manual data entry is achieved.”

Asked how TourConnect helps tour operators that its suppliers work with but who are not under Tourplan’s network, Hermann said TourConnect provides a “clean” and standardised PDF sheet with supplier rates that makes processing easier.

But he added: “Our tour operators often introduce us to the booking management systems they are using, as we can integrate with any booking system.

“Our ultimate goal is to automate the entire rate process for everyone in the industry, regardless of the system they are on.”