AUSTRALIA’S aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), initiated over the weekend a review of maintenance practices at Jetstar Airways, the budget subsidiary of national carrier Qantas.

This comes just a week after the CASA took unprecedented action to ground its rival, Tiger Airways Australia, for safety violations (TTG Asia e-daily, July 7).

Jetstar reported last Thursday that it temporarily took four A320 aircraft out of commission for overdue maintenance, and consequently, two return flights had to be cancelled. According to a Jetstar spokesperson, the planes were grounded after crews discovered a prior mix up in their maintenance schedules.

The four planes were serviced overnight and returned to operation the following day, with Jetstar reassuring passengers that there was “no risk to the safety of the aircraft”.

While a spokesperson for CASA confirmed it does not believe there were any serious safety issues with regards to the maintenance oversight, he said that CASA’s review of Jetstar was ongoing, and that they would be “looking carefully at the low-cost carrier’s actions, and checking to ensure Jetstar’s maintenance systems are robust and operating correctly”.

GLOBAL hotel chains Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Hilton Hotels & Resorts will introduce in their properties worldwide a range of in-room amenities and services tailored specifically for Chinese guests.

French hospitality giant Accor introduced earlier this year a similar initiative in Australia (TTG Asia e-daily, April 1).

Starwood’s Personalised Travel programme will debut in 19 hotels across the globe today. The programme features teapots for brewing Chinese tea, packets of instant noodles, translated welcome materials and travel guides, as well as on-site translation services. Restaurant menus will be available in Mandarin and offer familiar favourites such as congee – a staple for Chinese breakfasts.

Hilton’s Huanying, which borrows its name from the Chinese phrase for ‘welcome’, will provide Chinese guests with a front desk staff member fluent in Mandarin, a dedicated Chinese television channel, as well as an extensive selection of Chinese breakfast dishes. Some 30 Hilton properties have enrolled in the programme, which will debut in San Francisco on August 16.

Both Starwood and Hilton are zooming in on the lucrative China outbound market, which according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, is set to grow to over 100 million travellers by 2015.

JAKARTA will reopen Halim Perdanakusuma Airport for commercial operations to help lift the strain off Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Last year, Soekarno-Hatta airport exceeded its annual traffic capacity of 23 million by about 20 million passengers.

Halim Perdanakusuma, which has the capacity to accommodate up to three million passengers a year, was the Indonesian capital’s main airport until the opening of Soekarno-Hatta in 1985. Since then, it has been utilised for presidential, diplomatic and military flight operations.

Reinstated commercial operations at Halim Perdanakusuma will be limited to short-haul domestic services using aircraft with a capacity of 110 passengers.

Director general of Air Transportation, Herry Bakti Gumay, said Merpati Nusantara Airlines will be the first carrier to avail of the renewed commercial services at Halim Perdanakusuma, connecting with Palembang (South Sumatra), Lampung and Bandung (West Java).

SUBJECT to regulatory approval, Jetstar will start a new thrice-weekly Singapore-Ningbo service from September 9.

The service will be expanded to four weekly flights from October 31.

Jetstar Asia CEO, Chong Phit Lian, said the service would provide new point-to-point traffic between Ningbo and Singapore. “Creating new links to growing Chinese cities like Ningbo will stimulate tourist traffic for Singapore,” she said.

Singapore Tourism Board’s regional director of greater China, Edward Koh, said: “Jetstar Asia’s direct flight between Singapore and Ningbo is introduced at an opportune time when secondary Chinese cities are growing in importance.”

Ningbo, 280km south of Shanghai on China’s eastern seaboard, will be Jetstar’s fifth destination in mainland China after Haikou, Shantou, Guilin and Hangzhou.

Land access from Ningbo to Shanghai is available via the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, which has reduced travel time between the cities to around 2.5 hours.

FIRELY is planning to launch a sales promotion via its online channels, and will be offering up to one million seats at reduced fares.

Ticket prices will start from as low as nine ringgit (US$3) for a one-way, all-in ticket.

The promotion, applicable to Firefly’s entire network and even soon-to-commence routes, will run from July 11 to 12. It is valid for travel from August 6, 2011 to October 27, 2012.

Firefly’s head of marketing & communications, Angelina C. Fernandez, said: “This is the first time we are offering a mega sale of this nature, and for such a long travel period.”

“Our jet operations that began early this year have increased our seat capacity by almost 50 per cent. As a result, we are now able to offer one million discounted seats.”

TIGER Airways will relaunch a four-weekly direct service between Singapore and Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state in India, from October 31.

The low-cost carrier abruptly halted its Airbus A320 services between Bangalore and Singapore from November 14 last year.

Stewart Adams, managing director of Tiger Airways Singapore, said: “Given Bangalore’s potential as a destination that attracts both business travel and leisure, we are pleased to resume our services to this city.”

G V Sanjay Reddy, managing director, Bengaluru International Airport, said the resumption of Tiger’s Singapore-Bangalore route would “boost travel and tourism, with benefits that will extend beyond Karnataka to neighboring states”.

Tiger Airways also operates to three other destinations in India – Chennai, Trivandrum and Tiruchirapalli.

AMBARRUKMO Palace Hotel, a heritage property in Jogjakarta, will reopen in November after undergoing a major renovation. The property will be managed by Santika Indonesia Hotels & Resorts.

While the hotel will retain its original name, it will be operated on the same level as the group’s four-star Santika Premiere brand.

Santika Indonesia Hotels & Resorts corporate promotions manager, Vivi Herlambang, said: “We also have Santika Premiere in Jogjakarta, but both hotels will have different target markets.

“The old Ambarrukmo Palace was well-known among the European and US markets, and hence will target these longhaul markets. Santika Premiere Jogjakarta is popular among the domestic and Asian markets.”

The hotel, which has been closed since 2004, will be opened in phases. The first of which will involve 248 rooms, two restaurants, a lobby lounge, a ballroom, and a swimming pool.

Herlambang, said: “Being the first hotel in Jogjakarta (opened in the 1960s), Ambarrukmo Palace has a long historic glory, and we will try to retain the original concept as much as possible, while adding a classical-modern twist.”

One of the classical characteristics that will be retained is the strong use of black, green and gold colours, historically found in the palaces and homes of Javanese aristocrats.

Pesanggrahan Ambarrukmo, a semi open-air hall next to the hotel that was a residence belonging to Jogjakarta’s Sultan Hamengku Buwono VII in the 19th century, is also being renovated, and will become one of the hotel’s function rooms.

IN AN attempt to boost its share of the China outbound market, Spain is planning to introduce a simplified visa system for Chinese nationals. It will also continue to encourage airlines to launch more direct flights between the two nations.

Speaking at the recent 6th Spain-China Forum in Barcelona, Joan Mesquida, Spain’s Secretary of State for Tourism, said the plan was to follow a visa model being used for the Russian market, which resulted in the number of Russian arrivals increasing by 40 per cent last year to 600,000. The number is expected to soar by another 50 per cent in 2011.

Introducing the visa system in China will involve increased staff count, sub-contracting part of the emissary work to private companies, and extending visa periods beyond the duration of a specific journey, said Mesquida.

Last year, Spain received 102,000 Chinese visitors, but most of these came via other European Union countries. Only 42,000 were issued with visas by Spanish consulates. Miguel Sebastian, Spain’s Minister for Industry and Tourism, said the target was to reach one million Chinese visitors by 2020.

Although France is the destination most visited by Chinese travellers in Europe, Spain is the most popular for leisure trips. However, Spain just has five direct services to China a week, compared to 63 a week for France. The Spanish government is in contact with airlines to encourage more links.

Mesquida said the tourism ministry was also looking at sporting and gastronomic links to promote tourism (TTG Asia e-Daily, March 4). His department is pushing for a possible match between the Spanish and Chinese national football teams, while leading Spanish football club Real Madrid is already scheduled to go on a pre-season tour of China in early August.

SRI Lanka has lifted a ban on foreigners visiting its once war-torn north, but it might take some time before tourists actually start returning to the area.

Access to the region, where most of the fighting took place during the civil war, has been restricted to foreign passport holders for more than two decades.

Even after the war ended in 2009, permission had to be obtained from Sri Lanka’s Defence Ministry to enter, especially as mine-clearing work was ongoing.

“As normalcy is flourishing in the country, we see that travel restrictions for foreign passport holders are no longer required,” the ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Bernard Devanesan, manager of the 24-room deluxe Lux Etoilos hotel in the main northern city of Jaffna, said the hotel had previously been getting many inquiries from France, Germany and Western Europe for bookings.

“There was a lot of interest, but we had to tell them that they needed permission from the military to travel to the north,” he said.

John Keells Holdings’ executive vice-president and head of destination management, Vasantha Leelananda, said although tourism infrastructure in the region was inadequate, the renewed access was definitely a boost for the industry.

There are six to eight hotels in Jaffna, with capacity ranging from 10 to 40 rooms, plus a range of smaller accommodation options for visitors.

Hiran Cooray, chairman of Jetwing Hotels, which is building a three-star property in Jaffna (TTG Asia e-Daily, June 30), said there were many religious and cultural places of interest for tourists to visit.

Imelda Sukumar, divisional secretary and chief government officer in Jaffna, said the local road network was being developed, and that rail links, while not yet operational, were being repaired.

Meanwhile, air access is available via daily flights from Colombo. While currently operated by the Sri Lanka air force, with the lifting of the travel curb, the situation might change with a few other operators coming in.

THAILAND’s Ministry of Tourism and Sports (MoTS) is planning to ask the newly-elected government to grant it an annual budget of 100 billion baht (US$3.3 billion), up from the current 20 billion baht allocation.

MoTS permanent-secretary Sombat Kuruphan said the increased budget would help it achieve its target of 30 million foreign arrivals and one trillion baht in annual tourism revenue by 2015, when Thailand will be fully integrated into the ASEAN Economic Community.

He said the ministry would also seek to increase the budget for its tourism development plan (TTG Asia e-Daily, March 4) from 6.65 billion baht to 10 billion baht.

The tourism plan, to be executed between 2012 and 2014, covers 385 tourism development projects in eight tourism clusters, for the upgrade of basic infrastructure, landscaping and convenience at tourist sites nationwide.