THAI Airways International (THAI) is adding new services to Brussels, Copenhagen and Seoul, and will ramp up frequencies on existing routes for its upcoming winter programme.

Besides launching thrice-weekly Bangkok-Brussels flights on November 17 (TTG Asia e-Daily, June 28), THAI will start Phuket-Seoul (Incheon) and Bangkok-Copenhagen-Phuket flights – both thrice-weekly – on October 30 and November 11, respectively.

The flag carrier will also be converting its Bangkok-Phuket-Perth route to thrice-weekly Phuket-Perth, and its Bangkok-Narita-Phuket-Bangkok route to daily Bangkok-Narita.

Meanwhile, THAI is planning to boost frequencies on popular routes for the upcoming winter season, which starts on October 30.

Its five-weekly Bangkok-Oslo flights will be hiked to daily services, while Bangkok-Moscow and Bangkok-Perth will each be bumped up from three-weekly to four-weekly.

In Asia, Bangkok-Singapore will be boosted from 28 to 35 flights per week; Bangkok-Osaka from 14 to 17 flights a week; Bangkok-Chengdu from four-weekly to five-weekly; and Bangkok-Mumbai from five to six flights per week.

Bangkok-Nagoya, Bangkok-Xiamen and Bangkok-Beijing services will each be increased from three to four flights a week.

SINGAPORE and Taiwan signed an open skies agreement in February this year (TTG Asia e-Daily, February 18) which will be rolled out progressively in four phases till 2018.

“Beyond 2018, all flights between the two countries that are intercontinental and beyond – fifth freedom rights – will be liberalised,” said a source at Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA).

Under the current first phase, nine flights frequencies per week are allowed for flights between Singapore and Taiwan’s Taipei or Kaohsiung. The second phase, effective 2013, will raise the allocation to 14-weekly. This will be followed by increases to 21-weekly in 2016, and unlimited flights after 2018.

The CAA source confirmed that only one additional carrier, TransAsia Airways, had begun new services between Taiwan and Singapore (TTG Asia e-Daily, July 5) since the open skies deal was struck.

By Glenn Smith

FINNAIR is hoping to tap Indonesia’s growing outbound market through the appointment of AVS Indonesia as its GSA in the country.

Finnair sales director for Singapore and Southeast Asia, Petteri Kostermaa, said the timing was right for the flag carrier to promote travel from Indonesia to European destinations.

“We are interested in exploring the Indonesia market. With the country’s robust growth, more and more Indonesians are travelling to Europe for business and pleasure,” he said.

“Setting up a sales office is the first step in a process that may lead to Finnair opening a route to Indonesia.”

The airline is partnering Singapore Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, SilkAir and Value Air to connect passengers from Jakarta, Denpasar, Surabaya, Medan, Makassar and Palembang to Europe, via daily Singapore-Helsinki direct services launched in May (TTG Asia e-Daily, March 4).

“We are now looking at the market potential from Indonesia to Europe,” Kostermaa said. “Depending on the size of the market, we are targeting between two and six per cent (market share), comprising of leisure, corporate and MICE market segments.”

FOUR industry veterans have come together to launch what they say is the first “low-cost marketing” alliance for hotels, saying they could offer what current hotel marketing organisations do for a fraction of the cost.

Alwin Zecha, founder of Pacific Leisure Group Thailand, is chairman of Ideal. Its three directors are David Paulon, former head of Holiday Inn Asia/Pacific; Terry Francis, chairman of PATA Foundation and travel and tourism consultant; and Sanjeet, owner, Durga Das Publications India.

Zecha told TTG Asia e-Daily there was a gap in representing independent, mid-range hotels as the crop of umbrella marketing bodies largely looked at the upmarket segment and “charge an arm and leg” for their representation.

Ideal charges an annual fee of US$3,000 per property, which Zecha said was an “all-inclusive” fee to market the hotel via the website, newsletter and at key trade shows.

“The other representation companies charge a much higher fee to join and, on top of that, everything else is an extra cost,” he added.

The latest member to join Ideal is Gallery Hotel in Singapore.

– Full report in TTG Asia, October 14 issue

CHAN Brothers Travel signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chengdu Culture and Tourism Development Group yesterday, for the purpose of ‘promoting exchange and strengthening strategic cooperation in the development of tourism through destination marketing’.

The two-year MOU, which will cover joint product development, funding of cooperative marketing efforts in the Singapore market and collaboration on major promotional campaigns, is expected to be made more definitive within the next few months.

Chan Brothers sent a record 10,000 travellers to Chengdu last year, with inventory boosted by the chartering of four flights.

“This strategic collaboration provides an excellent fit for our strategy of developing China products suited not just for regular senior travellers to China, but also new-age travellers and PMEBs,” said Chan Guat Cheng, executive director of Chan Brothers Travel.

“We have a strong portfolio of Sichuan travel programmes and will continue to diversify our product range to suit varied palates, and in doing so, achieve a minimal 30 percent year-on-year growth in volume of outbound Singaporean travellers to Chengdu.”

Chan Brothers recently launched the 8/10 days Jiuzhai Valley Picturesque Tour under the Chan’s Premier Edition series, featuring accommodation at five-star hotels throughout, luxurious intra-province travel by domestic flights, and tour highlights, among others.

THE INDONESIA Ticketing Agents Association (ASTINDO) and non-IATA domestic airlines are seeking a better payment system to address cases of airline default.

The move is in response to agents losing deposits when airlines go bankrupt, like in the case of Adam Air in 2008 and Mandala Airlines earlier this year.

ASTINDO chairman, Elly Hutabarat, said: “We are currently working on using credit card deposit payment instead of cash deposit, which is actually an option suggested by an airline company. This way, it will not disrupt agent’s cash flow, while airlines get payment directly from the credit card company as soon as the sales are made. Agents will bear the merchant fee.

“There are still a couple of loopholes we need to fill, like what happens if the airline stops operations after tickets have been issued and paid. We will probably need insurance to cover this.”

Another proposed solution is the use of an escrow account at an appointed bank, agreed upon by both airlines and agents for the agency deposits, so that agents could get their money back in case of airline default.

Elly is expecting that both options would be implemented, giving agents and airlines a choice on what would work better for them.

KOSMOPOLITO Hotels International (KHI), a developer, owner and operator of 24 hotels in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and China, has appointed Winnie Chiu Wing Kwan as its president, effective November 1.

Currently serving as KHI’s executive director, Chiu will replace Bill Mok, who will become a non-executive director of the company.

KHI chairman, David Chiu, said: “Winnie has been an executive director of KHI since June 2010 and currently is the chief strategy officer. She is instrumental in (leading the) corporate development and branding strategy of the group.”

Set up in 2007 and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last year, KHI has 24 hotels under its portfolio, of which seven are under development. Their brands range from the Dorsett Regency to Cosmo and Silka.

By N. Nithiyananthan

AIRPORTS of Thailand (AoT) will be launching a new incentive scheme to boost the number of passengers and airlines flying into the country, according to its executive vice president for business development and marketing, Sirote Duangratana.

Valid from November 2011 till October 31, 2013, the scheme will offer airlines up to 95 per cent discount on landing fees at Suvarnabhumi Airport during the end-October till end-March winter season, and up to 75 per cent discount in the summer.

Sirote said airlines must fly in a minimum of 2,500 passengers during the calculation period to be eligible for the incentive, and must not have any outstanding payments with AoT.

The scheme will also involve a cash-back incentive arrangement for airlines registering a significant increasing in number of passengers. For a five per cent increase, airlines will receive a US$2.33 rebate per passenger. A five to seven per cent increase will earn US$2.45 per passenger; while any increases above 20 per cent will net US$6.42 per passenger.

Meanwhile, AoT is expanding Suvarnabhumi and Phuket International Airports. Suvarnabhumi Airport, which is poised to served 47 million passengers this year, will see its capacity expanded to 60-65 million passengers per year from 2017.

Aircraft and passenger handling capacity at Phuket International Airport is being bumped up from the current 6.5 million passengers per year to 12.5 million by end-2014.

By Sirima Eamtako

FLAG carrier Royal Brunei Airlines (RBA) is shaving off flights from the capital of Bandar Seri Begawan to Kuching, Ho Chi Minh City, Brisbane, Perth and Auckland for the time being, a move that members of the trade say will impact transit traffic.

Flights to Kuching service have already stopped, while flights to the other four cities will operate until end-October.

RBA controller direct sales Kelvin Goh told TTG Asia e-Daily the performance on those routes was “just not there”, although he was not informed when flights would resume.

In a press release, the company said this was part of a stabilisation plan, in order to allow it to “improve its operations, financial performance and customer service experience”.

Said Anthony Tours & Travel Agency commercial director Nordin Besar: “ Although it’s just a suspension, it will affect the trust people have (in RBA) if it wants to resume those routes or start new services. We have started looking at other Asian carriers, and perhaps will use Singapore or Bangkok as a hub.”

RBA had just launched flights to Melbourne in March, while Brunei Tourism appointed a marketing representative for Australia/New Zealand earlier this year.

Nordin did not want to comment on what kind of difficulties the airline was facing, but cited the emergence of low-cost carriers and diluted marketshare as possible reasons. AirAsia currently operates flights to the sultanate, and Cebu Pacific Air recently started serving the destination.

Megaborneo Tour Planner managing director Khirul Zainie said the changes would require some re-routing of itineraries. UK travellers, for example, flying from London into Bandar Seri Begawan en route to Kuching would now use Singapore or Malaysia as a transit to Kuching.

“We will lose out on transit traffic from Australia, but for leisure operators packaging Borneo, the pinch probably won’t be much,” he added.

ZHEJIANG province in China has introduced an eight-day tour itinerary to help boost the number of European visitors.

“It’s a market with big potential,” said provincial vice director of tourism Xu Peng in Madrid, during the agency’s first stop of a European trip that included London.

Although Zhejiang is the third most visited province in China, especially its capital of Hangzhou, the number of foreign tourists remains at just 6.8 million. Last year, majority was from intra-regional markets, led by Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Japan, with less than 120,000 from Europe.

Spain, France and Italy are seen as ‘particularly promising’ markets because majority of Chinese emigrants here are originally from Zheijang.

The tour itinerary, presented to Spanish operators in Madrid, has been designed to showcase a mix of landscape, culture and other attractions, especially shopping.

It includes Hangzhou and the nearby ‘water cities,’ as well as the massive ‘small products’ market complex at Yiwu and the province’s TV and film studios.

To boost European tourism, the provincial government is also working on encouraging airlines to add new direct flights – in particular from Paris and Moscow – to those already operating to Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

And as part of a current five-year, RMB300 billion (US$47 billion) infrastructure programme, Zheijang is scheduled to get 200 new hotels in the four- and five-star categories, he added.

The importance of the European tourism market was highlighted by the size and make-up of the visiting delegation, said UNWTO regional representative for Asia and the Pacific, Xu Jing. The delegation was headed by the provincial vice governor, Jianman Wang.