SINGAPORE Airlines (SIA) is stepping up India services by introducing a third daily flight to the country’s capital of New Delhi.
With the beginning of the Northern Winter season on October 27, the carrier will launch the additional flight with Boeing 777 aircraft.
From October 27, SIA and SilkAir will operate a total of 107 weekly services to 11 destinations in India.
Destinations served include Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi.
BEST Western International has signed a franchise agreement with local Eden Palace Company for a new hotel project, the 205-room Best Western Premier the Grand at Nay Pyi Taw.
The hotel, due to start operations by 2Q2014, will become one of the first international-brand hotels in the city, which is also the seat of Myanmar’s government and one of the world’s fastest-growing hotel markets.
Glenn de Souza, vice president international operations-Asia and the Middle East, Best Western International, predicted Naypyidaw would experience a surge in business and leisure tourism in the coming years.
With the new Best Western Premier hotel, the hotel company would be perfectly placed to help the city grow.
He commented: “Being an American hotel, we are glad that the sanctions were lifted and we see Myanmar as a country with a lot of opportunities for tourism business. We are seeing a huge influx (of arrivals) but not enough international hotels. So that’s why we are here.”
U Tin Htwe, chairman of Eden Palace Company, pointed out that the hospitality industry in Myanmar was booming due to the reforms of late.
“The existing number of hotel rooms is not sufficient to meet the influx of tourist arrivals in Naypyidaw. Therefore, we have decided to develop an international-class hotel to plug this gap,” U Tin Htwe said.
Best Western earlier this year announced it would take over the management of and rebrand an existing hotel into the Best Western Green Hill Hotel (TTG Asia e-Daily, May 22, 2013).
According to de Souza, the company is looking at opening an upscale hotel in Yangon.
“We will probably have two hotels in Yangon. The owner of Green Hill Hotel is giving us the second hotel, which will have 100 rooms, in the Chinatown area, and (development) will take six to eight months to complete,” he shared.
Bagan and Mandalay were other cities the group is currently eyeing, he added.
THE Malaysian Association of Hotels Training and Education Centre (MAHTEC) will introduce its hospitality course in Brunei for the first time, as the association explores new international markets for its programmes.
MAHTEC commences its one-year Diploma in Hotel Management course for staff of The Empire Hotel & Country Club, Brunei on July 29.
“Twenty employees of the hotel have enrolled for the course,” said Reginald T Pereira, director, MAHTEC.
He added that the course was part of MAHTEC’s initiative in developing human capital within South-east Asia and beyond.
The association is also exploring the possibility of offering its range of hospitality courses in Vietnam, India and Mauritius.
In January this year, MAHTEC announced its collaboration with the Lao Hotel & Restaurant Association and its training partner, V Serve, to run the Bartender Management Certificate Programme in Laos (TTG Asia e-Daily, November 27, 2012).
DUSIT Fudu Hotels and Resorts has launched its first China project, the dusitD2 Fudu Binhu Hotel Changzhou.
The soft-opening is also the first Dusit-brand hotel in China, managed by the joint venture hotel management company between Thailand-based Dusit International and China-based Changzhou Qiao Yu Group (TTG Asia e-Daily, January 24, 2013).
Located within the Wujin Hi-Tech Industrial Zone, the hotel is 30 minutes from Changzhou Benniu Airport and railway station and 15 minutes from downtown Wujin.
Rooms at dusitD2 Fudu Binhu Hotel Changzhou range from 35-105m2 and feature floor-to-ceiling windows for views over West Taihu Lake.
The hotel offers three F&B outlets, including Tian Xiang Lou Chinese Restaurant, for authentic Cantonese and Huaiyang cusines; Coffee Garden, serving international fare from its signature open-plan kitchen; and The Deli, an all-day bar.
MICE planners can make use of the hotel’s 518m2 pillarless ballroom or any of the four multi-function rooms or the 100m2 foyer.
To mark its opening, the hotel is dangling a 30 per cent discount on all room types when booking through d2bcrsvn@dusitfudu.com, until August 23.
VETERAN hotelier Philip Randolph Hill has died on Monday, July 22 at his Sanur residence in Bali after battling a long illness.
Hill, aged 60, had held management positions at numerous international hotels that took him to Jakarta, Bali and most recently, the Kima Bajo Resort & Spa in Manado, reported Balidiscovery.com.
In a career spanning more than three decades in the hospitality industry, the US national also worked in China, Singapore, the UK and the Middle East.
CHINESE hotels suffered a year-on-year decline in occupancy and RevPAR during the first quarter of 2013, as arrivals fell on avian flu fears and a sluggish economy.
According to The HVS Quarterly: Hong Kong, Macau, China and Taiwan Update, China’s international visitor arrivals dropped 0.7 per cent compared to the same period in 2012, with all its top five source markets of Japan, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan and the US registering negative growth rates.
Among the top 10 hotel markets in China – Sanya, Shanghai, Changsha, Xiamen, Beijing, Shenzhen, Fuzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu – all posted year-on-year falls in occupancy.
Average room rates increased across the board, except for in Nanjing and Shanghai.
For RevPAR, only Changhsa, Sanya and Shenzhen were able to boast of year-on-year increases of nine per cent, 0.4 per cent and 0.1 per cent respectively.
Sanya had the highest RevPAR of the major 30 cities in China, but posted the second highest decrease in average occupancy among the top 10, with a year-on-year decline of 8.2 per cent to occupancy of 70.3 per cent.
Meanwhile, Changsha maintained the top occupancy level out of the top 10 at 81.7 per cent, and also registered the highest rate growth of 11.7 per cent to RMB376 (US$61).
Chengdu was the biggest loser in terms of largest RevPAR decline during the first quarter, falling 8.5 per cent to RMB227.
Within Greater China, the report stated that hotel occupancy for all markets dropped, but Taiwan managed to increase its average rate.
Arrivals-wise, Hong Kong saw more than 12.7 million visitors in the first quarter, reflecting 13.5 per cent year-on-year growth over the previous year. The territory’s share of overnight visitors account for 46.9 per cent of arrivals.
In Macau, arrivals rose 1.9 per cent to 7.1 million, of which overnight visitors were 48.1 per cent.
Taiwan saw a surge of 10.7 per cent to 1.9 million international visitors, said the report.
FOLLOWING a surge in the number of attacks on foreign tourists in India, the country’s tourism ministry has exhorted state and union territory authorities to set up tourist police as soon as possible.
The ministry said tourist police could be culled from the police department or ex-servicemen, and that cases involving tourists should be investigated immediately and trials sped up.
An awareness campaign sensitising travel service providers towards the safety needs of female tourists, was another of the ministry’s suggestions floated at last week’s national tourism conference in New Delhi and attended by 23 tourism ministers.
“We need to instill confidence among foreign tourists coming to India. The safety and security of tourists is of utmost importance to us and I expect all the states and union territories will consider deploying tourist police,” said K Chiranjeevi, India’s tourism minister.
At present, 13 states have tourist police. Inbound travel to India plunged 25 per cent in April as female travellers shunned India (TTG Asia e-Daily, April 2, 2013) and Western nations issued travel advisories against the country (TTG Asia e-Daily, March 22, 2013) after a spate of high-profile rape cases.
Iqbal Mulla, president, Travel Agents Association of India, applauded the ministry’s calls: “Of late, a lot of negative publicity has been generated about the safety and security of foreign tourists in India. The move by the tourism ministry has come at the right time and I hope that all the Indian states will soon form tourist police.”
Brijmohan Agarwal, tourism minister, Chhattisgarh, said his state would consider setting up tourist police.
However, PP Khanna, director, Diplomatic Travel Point, said: “Tourist police alone cannot ensure the safety of tourists. The change will come when every citizen of the country is educated to respect foreign tourists coming to India and is made sensitive to their well-being.”
At the same time, Chiranjeevi also pointed out that India’s high taxes were driving tourists to neighbouring destinations instead, and urged the states and union territories to discuss the rationalisation of taxes with their finance ministry.
THE European Union is reworking its visa regime for Chinese tourists and is likely to propose a new visa policy in November.
According to a report by Xinhua news agency, European Commission (EC) vice-president, Antonio Tajani, said the EC aimed to make visa application easier for Chinese nationals, describing the current procedure as “time-consuming”.
He also proposed a pilot visa project to boost Chinese arrivals to Europe and Europe tourists to China during the 2015 Expo in Milan, Italy. The EC and China’s National Tourism Administration also sealed an agreement to cooperate for sustainable tourism, said the Xinhua report.
Tajani said this during his two-day visit to Beijing, where he and a 60-strong delegation from Europe met with Chinese officials.
Data from the United Nations World Tourism Organization has pegged China as the world’s largest source market for tourism in terms of expenditure, displacing Germany and the US (TTG Asia e-Daily, April 8, 2013).
EMIRATES is set to launch a daily Airbus A380 service on the route between Barcelona and international transit hub Dubai next February, a move which will likely boost traffic to and from the Far East.
Route capacity will increase by 44 per cent, thanks to the deployment of the 517-seat version of the A380. Through Dubai, the service links to 12 other A380 routes to Australia, the Middle East and Asia.
While the new service would benefit especially from corporate traffic between Spain and Asia, with 70 per cent of existing traffic already using Dubai solely as a transit point, the new link is expected to substantially boost holiday traffic in both directions and an already-strong expatriate market, said Fernando Suárez de Góngora, area manager for Spain, Emirates.
He also said that main onward destinations eastbound were currently China, Thailand, Pakistan, Australia and India. For Barcelona-bound flights, the airline is looking to market the route mainly to major commercial cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong, as Spanish companies are now turning from traditional markets to the east to sell their products.
The visiting friends and relatives market, especially among Chinese, Pakistani and Filipino communities, made up 20 per cent of existing traffic and helped make the route “less seasonal”, he added.
Francesc Escánez, managing director of Barcelona-based Atlàntida Viatges, an outbound operator whose main destinations include much of South-east Asia, believes the A380 service would boost outbound travel to countries such as Laos, Malaysia, Singapore and China.
According to him, “although (tours to these countries) sell, (they) could sell much more”, and while many of the company’s clients are professionals, the economic crunch in Spain has not put Asia beyond the reach of the less well-off.
“We have middle-level clients who enjoy travelling and save up part of their income for that one big trip a year, such as people who have a shop or a market stall,” he added.
STARWOOD Hotels & Resorts Worldwide will cease managing Le Méridien Khao Lak next January, ending the hotelier’s decade-long relationship with the resort.
The announcement puts an end to recent disputes between the global hotel brand and the resort owner, clearing the way for Anantara Hotels and Resorts to assume management of the property, according to a well-placed industry source speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Vitya Holding Company announced that the management agreement of Le Méridien Khao Lak would cease on January 15, 2014. The resort is owned by Vitya Holding Company and has been managed under the Le Méridien brand,” said Starwood in a joint statement it issued with the resort owner.
“Both companies have discussed and re-evaluated their strategies for the future and mutually agreed to de-flag the hotel under the Le Méridien brand moving forward… Starwood Hotels & Resorts will continue to explore opportunities to further expand the Le Méridien brand throughout Thailand, as well as its other brands into Thailand in the near future.”
While the termination of the management contract had been on the cards for some time, negotiations had recently reached a deadlock over the exit date, said the source.
“They’ve (Starwood and Vitya) been in a termination dispute over the precise exit date with Starwood obviously wanting as much time as possible before ending its management of Le Méridien (Khao Lak),” he said, adding that Anantara would take over management of the property.
Minor Hotel Group, which owns the Anantara brand, would not comment directly on whether the company has an interest in the 258-room property.
“Minor Hotel Group is currently considering many growth and development opportunities across Asia-Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and Africa, especially for key brands such as Anantara and AVANI,” said a spokesman.
