TTG ASIA’s Facebook Contest finds its lucky April winner in Khoi Huynh, a travel consultant with Vietravel in Vietnam.
Huynh won a three-night stay in a deluxe room at Destination Surin Resort & Spa in Phuket, after ‘liking’ the TTG Asia Facebook page and subscribing to the travel trade magazine.
TTG Asia has now come to the end of its Facebook Contest, and would like to thank its readers and sponsors for their continued support.
For more details, visit www.facebook.com/ttgasia
BEST Western International (BWI) has opened Best Western Premier Sukhumvit Hotel, its fifth property in Bangkok and 14th across Thailand.
Located on Sukhumvit Soi 1 opposite Bumrungrad International Hospital, the 145-key hotel offers a mix of premier studio rooms and suites, ranging in size from 32–54m².
Facilities include a rooftop swimming pool and bar, a business centre, all-day dining restaurant, a wine lounge, and a meeting room with capacity for 40 pax.
“With the advantage of its central location, Best Western Premier Sukhumvit is an excellent option for travellers wishing to explore (Bangkok),” said Glenn de Souza, BWI vice president, International Operations – Asia & the Middle East.
BWI’s Bangkok portfolio now consists of 600 keys across its Best Western, Best Western Plus and Best Western Premier brands.
ALTHOUGH China has yet to issue an official travel ban over the ongoing territorial dispute in the South China Sea, the Philippines’ travel industry is bracing for the worst amid rumours that Chinese travel firms may suspend tours to the destination indefinitely.
So far, the Philippine Department of Tourism has acknowledged the cancellation of at least 10 group tours from China – mostly pre-paid and each with 50-100 pax – to Boracay, Cebu, Bohol and Davao.
The high cross-straits tensions have also spooked Cebu Pacific into suspending its twice-weekly Shanghai-Clark charter flights, which were scheduled to run till September.
Zest Airways has also discontinued its twice-weekly Shanghai-Kalibo and thrice-weekly Jinjiang-Manila charter services, as well as shelved Shanghai-Cebu and Beijing-Kalibo flights orginally slated to start next month.
– Read the full story in TTG Asia, May 18, 2012 issue
SPAIN has become the latest country to provide a simplified visa application process for Chinese nationals.
The system – the first of its kind for Spain – will become fully operational “very soon”, said a spokesperson for Turespaña, the national tourism promotion board.
While declining to speculate on how much quicker the new system would be, the spokesperson said it would enable Spanish consulates to “increase the number of visas (handled) without (having to boost) staff (numbers)”.
Visa processing centres have been installed at three Spanish consulates in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to test the new system. These centres will handle applications from all over China, and there are currently no plans to extend the system to other provinces.
VFS Global, which also works with the Canadian, French, Indian and British consulates in China, has been appointed to manage the visa processing facility.
Last year, the number of Chinese tourists to Spain rose 25 per cent, from 128,454 in 2010. No predictions have been given for growth this year, but the market is described as remaining “buoyant”.
MARRIOTT International will introduce another of its hotel brands to the Indonesian market next year, as part of its regional expansion strategy.
Neelima Chopra, Marriott’s chief sales and marketing officer, Asia-Pacific, disclosed this to TTG Asia e-Daily during a recent visit to Singapore, but declined to elaborate further on the development.
Chopra also revealed that the hotel chain was planning to introduce a new MICE concept in Asia next year, as well as roll out a new marketing campaign for the Renaissance brand in 3Q2012.
“There’s a world of opportunity out here in Asia to capitalise upon, and we expect all segments of the (hotel) market to perform well. Marriott is always on the lookout for the right location and owners to work with, wherever that might be on the Asian continent,” she said.
When asked if Marriott was exploring the feasibility of developing an Asia-centric brand, Chopra replied: “As far as I know, Marriott does not have any such plans in place, as Asian customers know and love our current brands.”
TRAVELPORT is set to unveil a host of new mobile solutions for its travel agent partners in Asia-Pacific.
The Viewtrip Mobile app, first released in the UK and Ireland in January, will be launched in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Singapore and Thailand this June. Viewtrip Mobile allows travel consultants to post itineraries, messages, reminders and updates to clients using an Android or iPhone smartphone. It is free to download, but consultants looking to display their own branding will have to pay a fee.
A tablet and smartphone version of Galileo Terminal, which allows consultants to access both the Galileo and Apollo GDS remotely via the Internet, is also scheduled for release in Asia-Pacific within the next two months. The product was first introduced in the US and Europe last year.
Expressing confidence in the uptake of these new products, Linda Kelly-Smith, Travelport’s head of solutions and customer support for Asia-Pacific, said: “Based on our past experience, adoption rates (for Travelport products) have always been good, and so far, feedback for our existing products has been quite positive.”
“Usually, there is some resistance initially, but once consultants start using our products, they become more receptive to trying new solutions,” she added.
Travel consultants whom TTG Asia e-Daily spoke to at the recent Travelport roadshow in Singapore said they were keen to find out more before committing to any new solution.
“It is costly to integrate brand new systems, so it is imperative that we weigh both the cost and benefits, and compare Travelport’s product suite to other GDSs before we make a final decision,” said Tang Hoe Kun, general manager, Diners World Travel.
HAVING set up Asian offices in Bangkok and Hong Kong recently, the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) has now formed an Advisory Board for Asia to provide strategic direction for GBTA Asia.
The four appointments include two buyer members, Jenny Ng, corporate business travel manager, Procurement Asia Pacific for Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp, and Debbie Winston, regional head, Travel APAC, for UBS Hong Kong.
The two supplier members are Roger Pfund, general manager of corporate sales and client services, Asia-Pacific, RADIUS, and Paul Boyle, global business travel consultant, Carlson Wagonlit Travel.
Welf Ebeling, regional director, GBTA Asia, said: “Our first tasks as a group will be to establish the roadmap for education in the region and to identify a chairman to head up the new GBTA Asia advisory board in the long term.”
More members will also be appointed to the board later.
LOGAN Velaitham is AirAsia’s new country head for Singapore, effective May 9. He was previously the airline’s regional head of customer experience.
Velaitham has 20 years of experience in the aviation industry. The appointment comes as AirAsia seeks to gain a bigger foothold in Singapore, where it already operates 10 planes and 554 frequencies.
In addition, Velaitham has been tasked with operations development at Senai Airport in Johor, which AirAsia group CEO Tony Fernandes bets will be “an important hub for commercial and tourism activities” in the future, considering the many ongoing developments such as Iskandar Malaysia.
LOW-cost brand AirAsia is morphing into a global player by connecting its shorthaul and longhaul networks, and entering into joint ventures to establish multiple hubs in key cities.
Giving the conference’s opening keynote yesterday on the changing travel landscape, AirAsia X CEO, Azran Osman Rani, said: “Traditionally LCCs said we’re just these simple regional networks; we fly people from point to point…With AirAsia X, we found there were tremendous advantages in linking up the longhaul to the shorthaul model.”
He added that a huge percentage of Australian passengers flying AirAsia X into Kuala Lumpur were taking connecting flights on AirAsia to nearby destinations such as Bangkok, and even farther north to China, South Korea and Japan.
“An LCC that doesn’t have a longhaul component will suddenly find itself at a significant disadvantage. For example, in South-east Asia, how does a standalone LCC compare to an AirAsia network which is not only capturing the market within South-east Asia but able to tap markets from Australia, North Asia and the Middle East who are also flying within the South-east Asia network.”
Closely related is AirAsia’s strategy of adopting a multi-hub model in cities across Asia, with its longhaul arm acting as a feeder. Azran said this would involve “using joint ventures as a way of bringing in partners and dealing with a lot of the regulatory issues on foreign ownership”.
– Read more in TTG Asia May 18, 2012
THE ABILITY of social media to translate into profits is overhyped, said Scoot’s head of commercial, Steven Greenway, during a panel discussion at EyeforTravel’s Travel Distribution Summit Asia.
“Not a single airline has been able to co-relate how engaging consumers through social media adds to the bottom line,” said Greenway.
In addition, social media could potentially wipe out the intangible benefits it brings. “Scoot’s Facebook page, for instance, has also become a platform for customers to air their angst and complaints, which can be erroneous and highly damaging,” he said.
Grand Hyatt Singapore’s director of revenue management, Fiona Lau also pointed out that social media works better for leisure-oriented hotels rather than properties with a multi-market mix. Unlike leisure travellers who can make decisions based on recommendations, corporate travellers are “constrained by corporate travel policy that dictates where they can stay”, she added.
Greenway emphasised the relevance of social media in brand management, but concluded that it was hard to justify its use for revenue generation. “At the end of the day, someone has to pay the (advertising) bills,” he said.
