EXOTISSIMO Travel has gained a foothold in Kyoto, marking its second office in Japan.
Already operating out of Tokyo, the Kyoto set-up aims to offer better service to the DMC’s growing client base in the Kansai area and offer increased assistance to local enquiries. This is Exotissimo Travel’s 20th Asian establishment.
Peter Cools, product manager for Exotissimo Japan, has relocated from Tokyo to Kyoto. He is joined by Katalin Racoczi, product/operations supervisor.
PHILIPPINE Airlines (PAL) will roll out six new international flights over the next few months, upping its total number of international services to 34.
The network expansion begins with the launch of four-times-weekly Manila-Kuala Lumpur flights on May 1.
Thrice-weekly services to Darwin and Brisbane as well as four-times-weekly flights to Perth and Guangzhou are scheduled to begin on June 1.
Finally, daily Abu Dhabi services are to take off on October 1.
PAL president, Ramon S Ang, said PAL was introducing the new flights to meet higher demand for these routes. “Australia, Kuala Lumpur and Guangzhou are major destinations for business and leisure. Abu Dhabi, on the other hand, has a large concentration of overseas Filipino workers, making it a prime destination in the Middle East,” he explained.
To celebrate the launch of these new routes, PAL is offering special promotion rates for early birds. Tickets to Kuala Lumpur and the Australian routes are already on sale, while tickets for Guangzhou and Abu Dhabi will go on sale March 15.
ANOTHER four-year MICE promotion programme has been put in place beginning 2013, following the conclusion of the Taiwan MICE Advancement Program last December.
Initiated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) and executed by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), the new Taiwan’s MICE Industry Pilot Program will continue to focus on growing the number of corporate meetings, incentives, international conferences and exhibitions held in the country.
The new programme will also take a keen interest on using technology to further Taiwan’s event capabilities. For instance, cloud technology would be used to build a systematic MICE database that event organisers could access at any time.
A MICE e-institute has also been created to provide digitised education and expand existing database, enabling better job matches for professionals and volunteers.
For greater efficiency, TAITRA has brought the three departments of Overall Implementation, International Marketing & Promotion and International Meeting Hosting under one roof, leaving the Training & Certification department to retain its own office.
Commenting on the Taiwan’s MICE Industry Pilot Program, GIS Group’s CEO Jason Yeh said: “It has been a scant month after TAITRA took the lead on the MICE project and I have not seen much information on its new objectives. If (TAITRA) can really (focus) their energy (on) promoting Taiwan as a meeting destination, that would be a great push for the market.”
WHO
Established in 2006, Miramar Travel has 11 branches in Hong Kong and two in Macau. Positioning itself as a one-stop department store for the mass market, group tours comprise half of business, followed by FIT packages (30 per cent) and air tickets (20 per cent).
WHAT
Online sign-ups for group tours have historically been rare in Hong Kong, but Miramar pioneered such a concept in October 2012, rolling out a group tour online booking system that enables consumers to instantly book and pay by credit card. Last December, the agency went further by making this service available to mobile phone users through an app.
General manager, Alex Lee, said: “In order to help clients familiarise with our tour choices, we have invested in a multimedia programme called V-itin that features our tour destinations worldwide with day-to-day itineraries combining attractions, luxury hotels and cuisines.
“The app is tailormade, and videos are recorded by our film crew then uploaded to the website for viewing. Unlike FITs, our target clients have a destination in mind but no idea what they will be doing. This tool shows what they get and helps save time and effort for our counter staff.”
Additionally, Miramar has introduced its own Guide Apps covering Taipei, Tokyo, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Jinan for FITs. Content includes information on hotels, cuisine and shopping, as well as maps and transport options.
Miramar’s app for Hong Kong
WHY
Post-financial crisis, Miramar relooked at the potential of technology in the wake of staff cuts and tighter budgets.
Lee said: “Moreover, the Internet has transformed how people work. Devices like email, tablets and smartphones keep people online anytime and anywhere so they have to bear with longer working hours while private time suffers.
“I foresaw that consumers would have lesser time to visit agency branch counters and shop around, so e-commerce could be an alternative to help them search for travel information and make instant purchases.”
TARGET
Besides reaching out to young, tech-savvy locals with its latest initiatives, Miramar is also targeting overseas Chinese visiting Hong Kong who have started to use online booking tools to purchase tour products.
Declining to reveal specific figures, Lee said online transactions have been growing and performance even exceeds physical stores. “I reckon this can be attributed to our better price strategy for online. It’s usually about HK$100-300 (US$13-38) lower than what we offer at our travel counters,” he explained.
MORE than 400 of the world’s best concierge from over 43 countries are expected to sweep into the Malaysian capital for the 61st Les Clefs d’Or UICH International Congress next year.
Kuala Lumpur was chosen as the preferred destination by the International Board of Directors of the Union Internationale Des Concierges D’Hotels, headquartered in Paris, following a competitive bid by the Malaysian team in Toronto, Canada.
The successful bid was initiated by the Society of the Golden Keys Malaysia and supported by the Malaysia Convention and Exhibition Bureau, Kuala Lumpur City Hall and its hotel partners.
Ragu Kumarasamy, president of the Society of the Golden Keys Malaysia, said: “Malaysia’s intention to bid was presented at the International Board of Directors Meeting in Dubai in October 2010. Even at the preliminary stages, (the directors) were very impressed with the preparation made by the Malaysian team. In 2011 we were officially awarded the right to host the conference after United Kingdom (2012) and New Zealand (2013).”
He added that “many industry partners ranging from restaurateurs, transportation and tour service operators to even tourist destinations have stepped forward to show their support to help make (the congress) happen”.
The six-day congress will have a busy programme that includes an opening ceremony, the General Assembly, the International Board of Directors Meeting, an after-dark tour of Kuala Lumpur, a street food fair and a shopping trip.
THE historic water town of Wuzhen in Zhejiang Province is banking on international trade shows to raise its profile among foreign meeting and incentive planners.
Yao Jie, marketing director, sales department, Wuzhen Tourism Co, told TTGmice e-Weekly that the tourism body had exhibited at several international trade shows in recent years (such as ITB Berlin and IT&CM China), and its participation at AIME 2013 was its second to-date.
Yao said: “We did not get many business leads from AIME 2012, but I’m certain that our presence at the show last year helped place Wuzhen in the minds of buyers. I realised that many AIME buyers this year came to us with an existing knowledge of Wuzhen, which was not the case in 2012.
“Furthermore, at AIME this year, we had several buyers from Singapore, Malaysia and Australia who came by to say that they were impressed by what we offer and were considering taking events to Wuzhen.”
She added: “We get 1,000 domestic meeting and incentive groups on average every year, but international events come nowhere close. It is a shame because Wuzhen has many top quality resorts and unique venues that can do wonders for high-end corporate events.
“We recently had a private dinner event at Zhaoming Academy (an ancient architecture with a library, exhibition hall, courtyards and gardens, etc) for members of the (US-based) Rolls Royce Owners’ Club. Dinner was set-up on a long banquet table, just like what was done in the past.”
Yao believes that much more branding is needed to truly grow the destination’s international MICE business, and said Wuzhen Tourism Co would continue to showcase the destination’s MICE capabilities at international travel shows.
TOURISM Australia will receive A$12.5 million (US$12.8 million) for the second tranche of the government’s Asia Marketing Fund by July 1, an amount dedicated to growing Asian footfalls during the 2013/2014 financial year.
Speaking to TTGmice e-Weekly in an interview, Andrew McEvoy, managing director of Tourism Australia, explained that the fund was a percentage of the Passenger Movement Charge. “So the more people travel, the bigger the fund will get,” he said.
The Asia Marketing Fund comes on top of Tourism Australia’s overall budget for destination promotion across the world.
According to McEvoy, part of the second phase of funding will be used to “up the ante on business events in Australia”.
He said: “We will invest some of the money into doing what we do well in this business events sector. That means the usual trade shows, road shows, but more importantly, efforts to get planners to come to Australia. We will be doing familiarisations bigger and better.
“We have Dreamtime (a premier incentive business showcase) at the end of this year (in Melbourne), and we will do that exceptionally well. We will have 125 (MICE) buyers from around the world, a lot of them – perhaps half or a little more – will be from Asia.”
The fund will also be used on “aviation attraction or aviation partnerships” across Asia to create more air access from the region into Australia.
Tourism Australia’s efforts to attract more Chinese leisure and business travellers will get a financial boost too.
McEvoy said: “We undertook last year our second-tier city strategy in China. We have been very active in 11 cities around Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. This year we’ve gone into Chengdu, Chongqing and Qingdao. A good example of our success is Sichuan Airlines’ launch of its first direct flight from Chengdu to Melbourne. That will really help to open up the rest of the country directly to Australia.”
Meanwhile, Tourism Australia has beefed up the Business Events Australia website (www.businessevents.australia.com) with an intensive library of business events case studies. Featured events include the 51st Annual International Conference of the Society of Petrophysicists and Well Log Analysts which took 623 attendees to Perth in June 2010, and the 9th World Indigenous Women and Wellness Conference in Darwin which was attended by 560 delegates.
“We are using advocates to tell our story. We are letting other people tell our story because they will tell it almost more passionately and through different eyes,” he said.
PARKROYAL Darling Harbour, Sydney reopened in February after an A$20 million (US$20.5 million) rejuvenation that gave it new interiors and the latest in hotel technology.
Acclaimed design firm Hassell employed a bright palette of natural and earthy shades and textures, inspired by the Australian landscape, for the 340-key hotel’s new look.
The new interiors extend from the hotel’s lobby to guestrooms and five meeting rooms. The event spaces, which were gutted and recreated, now feature state-of-the-art technology and are supported by an in-house staging and event service. Blackwattle Room is the largest event space in the hotel, capable of hosting 200 banquet guests or 280 cocktail-style. It is adjacent to a spacious pre-function space that overlooks Darling Harbour.
There is also a new club lounge on the top floor, as well as rejuvenated dining establishments.
Meanwhile, new technology systems installed in the hotel allows guest preferences, such as their ideal check-out time, to be conveyed to relevant staff ahead of their arrival. Room keys are able to track guest movements so that staff can be alerted if a guest with messages or a package waiting has just returned, or if they are leaving the hotel and their room door has been left ajar.
The hotel is looking to streamline the check-in process further by encoding smartphones as room keys.
GERMAN and Swiss tour operators are reporting a huge spike in stop-sale notices, particularly from Thai beach resorts, which they say is hindering growth.
Luzi Matzig, group CEO of Asian Trails, said that while he received two to five stop-sale mails daily in the past, the number was now between 12 and 25. He confirmed both Hotelplan and Kuoni Switzerland were seeing this.
Likewise, Wettstein’s product director Asia, Africa, Latin America, Christoph Infanger, said he was receiving at least thrice as many stop sales now, particularly for Thailand, despite the Swiss market being stable overall. “We could still generate more business but are closed out,” he said.
Some German tour operators too, are getting more stop sales despite strong growth. Marco Polo Reisen’s managing director, Holger Baldus, said for the first time ever, there was even “overbooking” in Hoi An, Vietnam. UK operators, however, said they did not notice changes beyond the usual festive periods.
Centara Hotels & Resorts’ SVP sales and marketing, Chris Bailey said the big issue was that European wholesalers had to keep prices down, especially in today’s financial climate, but there was only so much supply of lowest category room types.
“Often, the complaints come because lowest room type is closed yet others are all wide open. They need to work on their ability to up sell. This is where OTAs score over operators as they will sell what rooms there are available and at rates hotels want to sell at,” he said.
XML, which allows everyone to see and access available inventory, was the way to go, rather than giving allocations to operators, said Bailey.
– Read more in TTG Show Daily – ITB Berlin
ACCOR Asia-Pacific has launched Indonesia-centric brand, Grand Mercure Maha Cipta, with the new-build, 483-room Grand Mercure Jakarta Harmoni set to debut in a few months.
Like the China-centric Grand Mercure Mei Jue, Maha Cipta is designed to appeal to the huge domestic market – a chief reason why chains such as Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group are making a beeline for the country (TTG Asia e-Daily, March 6, 2013).
Maha Cipta’s touch points include welcoming guests in Bahasa, along with a treat of durian- or jackfruit-flavoured French macarons. F&B restaurants feature local favourites alongside European cuisine. Spa treatments use local spices. Traditional music and dance performances, batik painting workshops and modern Indonesian art exhibitions will be staged.
Graham Wilson, Accor’s SVP sales and marketing, said Maha Cipta would not alienate international guests: “In fact, there is a growing market of international travellers who want a more local experience. They might see it as Grand Mercure, but locals will relate better to Maha Cipta.”
He added that Indonesia’s middle class was “growing rapidly in numbers and sophistication”. “They want an upscale product, but they also want an Indonesian flavour,” he explained.
Mei Jue has also been a success in China, with the number of hotels to double to 26 in the next three years.
– Read more in TTG Show Daily – ITB Berlin
