AS PART of a strategic move to align service standards with Philippine Airlines (PAL), Airphil Express is now officially PAL Express, effective March 15.

PAL Express will don PAL’s sunriser livery and logo on its tail and fuselage, and offer passengers full service including free refreshments, reading materials, etc.

The carrier’s frontline staff are undergoing training to ensure PAL and PAL Express customers receive the same standards of service. Policies, procedures and standards are also being adjusted.

However, a press statement said the two carriers “will remain distinct and independent airline companies”.

Ramon S Ang, president, PAL, said of PAL Express’ rebranding: “It’s not just a name change, but an alignment of two standards into one. With this rebranding, PAL and PAL Express will be full-service carriers in terms of service, but LCC in terms of managing costs.”

ROYAL Caribbean International has announced 34 itineraries for the Alaskan cruise and cruise-tour season between May and August 2014, which are already open for booking.

The cruise line will dispatch its revitalised Radiance of the Seas and Rhapsody of the Seas on seven-day sailings for the 2014 season, departing from Vancouver, British Columbia and Seattle, Washington.

Radiance will alternate north- and south-bound routes between Vancouver and Seward respectively. Passengers will be taken through the Inside Passage and Hubbard Glacier, and call on Ketchikan, Icy Strait Point, Juneau and Skagway. The ship’s Alaska season will be bookended by a roundtrip from Vancouver, calling at Icy Strait Point, Juneau and Ketchikan, and cruising up Tracy Arm Fjord to see Sawyer Glacier.

Rhapsody will ply the waters between Sawyer Glacier and Seattle, passing through the Inside Passage. It will dock at Juneau, Skagway and Victoria, British Columbia. There will also be two itineraries calling at Ketchikan instead of Victoria, sailing from Vancouver to Seattle.

Royal Caribbean Cruisetours can also combine a sailing aboard Radiance with a three- to six-night land tour adventure, allowing travellers to spend at least one night in Denali National Park and one leg on the Wilderness Express, a glass-domed train car, for example.

The other option is for cruises on any of the two ships to be paired with one of four pre- or post-cruise land tours throughout the Canadian Rockies and the Okanagan Wine Valley, the latter a new addition for 2014.

THE Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) has rolled out incentives targeted at the wedding and student segments.

MGTO will reward groups of at least 50 people who stay a minimum of two consecutive nights at Macau’s hotels with MOP$300 (US$37.50) per overseas guest. Applications for the scheme must be submitted to MGTO 15 days before the first day of the event.

Overseas weddings are gaining traction among Gen Y Indians. Said Anshuman Mitra, managing director, Starlite DMC, a major wedding organiser: “This will be a year of weddings in Macau if they can also facilitate the ancillaries that are needed for Indian weddings, as these are easily available in Thailand.”

MGTO’s India representative, SanJeet, said: “In 2013, we expect to capture a bigger market share of outbound tourists from key tourist markets like Kolkata.” The NTO is intending to call on the trade in cities it has not ventured to before, such as Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Guwahati, Indore, Kolkata, Nagpur and Thiruvananthapuram.

In addition, MGTO is looking to bait school groups by increasing its incentives for this segment. MOP$300 per person will now be offered instead of MOP$200, plus welcome gifts.

Sanjay Maniar, director, Travelaid, who specialises in school group tours, said: “There is already good interest from school groups for Hong Kong and Macau. The MOP$300 incentive will certainly encourage greater numbers. Instead of the usual one-night stay, two-night stays will become more feasible.”

JAPAN may have ceded its position as Asia-Pacific’s largest travel market to China, but it will retain the crown as the region’s biggest leisure and unmanaged business travel market for online bookings.

According to PhocusWright’s Japan Online Travel Review, the East Asian nation continues to face economic stagnation and a sluggish recovery from the March 2011 earthquake. Growth in the overall travel market has been forecast to slow to two per cent by 2015.

But Japan’s online travel market, the biggest in Asia-Pacific and third largest in the world, is proving to be the silver lining. The study predicted that online travel would sustain double-digit growth through 2014.

“Japan’s travel industry has endured numerous challenges to growth for some time now, but the country’s substantial online travel market should not be written off,” said Douglas Quinby, senior director, research, PhocusWright.

“In fact, by 2015, the value of Japan’s online travel gross bookings will still be more than double that of China.”

Aviation was also another bright spot. The emergence of LCCs – some with the backing of legacy carriers – has helped to spur air travel demand.

The report also expected that supplier websites, buoyed by LCC gains, would grow faster than OTAs through 2015.

JETSTAR’S subsidiaries will commence domestic flights to new destinations in Asia – Buon Ma Thuot in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and Matsuyama in Japan.

Beginning March 26, Jetstar Pacific will operate five-times-weekly flights from Ho Chi Minh City and thrice-weekly flights from Vinh to Buon Ma Thuot.

On June 11, Jetstar Japan will launch daily flights out of Tokyo’s Narita International Airport to Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture, but will adjust frequencies to 21 weekly flights after July 25 and 16 weekly flights after September 24.

The new service follows the announcement of new flights to Oita, Nagoya and Kagoshima made earlier this year (TTG Asia e-Daily, January 24, 2013).

Jetstar Group’s CEO, Jayne Hrdlicka, said introducing first-time LCC services to new markets previously only served by full-service carriers continued to be a key part of the group’s pan-Asian growth strategy.

TRIPZILLA is stomping into Malaysia with a localised version of the travel deal search site, my.TripZilla.com, its first overseas market after Singapore.

The Malaysian portal had been under construction since October last year, and now offers some 3,000 packages and itineraries from 69 travel agencies. It also aggregates promotions from 13 daily deals sites, LCCs, airlines, credit card companies and hotel chains.

“Technically, from the onset, TripZilla’s architecture was built such that it can easily be scaled to many other countries in the region. However, the team wanted to validate the product and ensure that we are profitable, before we took on regional expansion,” said Eric Koh, co-founder and CTO, Travelogy, the Singapore-based start-up that built and runs TripZilla.

“As more businesses move their marketing dollars online, and more people perform their travel research and bookings via the web, we are confident that our market will keep growing,” he added.

INTERCONTINENTAL Hotels Group (IHG) has outlined emerging categories of travellers moulded by socioeconomic trends of the day in a new report, The new kinship economy: from travel experiences to travel relationships.

The report, containing research by The Futures Company and IHG input, said Asian travellers would account for 20 per cent of global travel spend by 2020.

New global explorers come from high-growth countries such as China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam, and are keen to explore traditional must-see destinations. They also prefer hotels that provide a balance between the familiar and unfamiliar for a “home away from home” experience. As a result, many leading hotels have created Chinese menus and hired Mandarin-speakers.

Another group of travellers identified are evolving families. Multigenerational parties, traditional in emerging markets and increasingly common in the West, are challenging the idea of the standard room layout. On the other hand, the growth of the single person household has also driven demand for stimulating independent travel.

Millenials have also come out as a new breed of business travellers. Rejecting notions of the traditional work environment, this laptop and latte brigade enjoy working in intimate coffeehouse-style environments and are spurring a rethink in hotel business spaces.

Meanwhile, expansive mid-lifers, travellers over 50 years of age, are for the first time the fastest-growing and most affluent age group. They seek new experiences, but find amenities or services labelled “for older people” alienating. To reach this group, hotels should develop products and services for all age groups while being supportive of older guests.

The report also highlighted challenges of having to balance a growing guest preference for independence with a desire for hyper-personalisation from other guests.

Invisible travellers, made possible by the increased application of technology, are opting for an independent, human-free travel experience from booking to room service.

Simultaneously, customers are increasingly demanding predictive service or highly personalised and customised service. Hotels can provide this by hiring staff who speak multiple languages or chefs who can whip up vegan meals at short notice.