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Global business travel picks up, predicted to make a full recovery by 2024

As the world opens up and economic recovery gains pace, corporate travel is likely to take wings soon. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) — the world’s largest business travel and meetings trade association in Washington DC— in its annual outlook said despite recovery setbacks in 2021, a year-over-year surge of 38% is expected in 2022 as recovery and pent-up demand rise, bringing global business travel spending back to over $1 trillion. Recovery will continue into 2023, with global spending rising 23% year-over-year as even more international and group travel comes back. By 2024, global business travel is forecast to have made a full recovery, ending the year at $1.48 trillion, above the 2019 pre-pandemic spends of $1.4 trillion. As per the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Indian carriers have increased their weekly flights by 10.1% to 25,309 this summer, compared to 22,980 last year. IndiGo has increased its domestic flights by 10.4% to 11,130 weekly services for summer 2022 as compared to 10,084 weekly services in the corresponding period last year. The Tata Group-run AirAsia India will operate 1,601 weekly domestic services — a 16% jump — in summer 2022. A definitive uptick from corporate travel has doubled month-on-month since January 2022. “A surge in positive corporate sentiment should make us close March at 80% of 2019 levels. Our key corporate sectors like IT, consultancy/advisory firms, banking & finance, global accounts, and also SMEs are fuelling demand for international and domestic travel. Destinations displaying strong demand include the US, Canada and the UK; and from a domestic perspective Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata. Mumbai is witnessing the fastest recovery for business travel across key hubs,” said Indiver Rastogi, president & group head – global business travel – Thomas Cook (India) & SOTC. As corporates are keen to utilise their budgets, there’s a robust pipeline of group sizes ranging from 50-600 with budgets as high as over Rs 4 lakh per person for premium groups, showing a clear appetite for spends. “Sporting events are of significant importance and have been driving travel intent. We have a healthy query pipeline for the FIFA World Cup in Qatar and T20 World Cup in Australia,” added Meera Charnalia — senior VP & head — MICE, Thomas Cook India. SOTC Travel has received confirmations for multiple corporate groups, travelling April onward for both domestic and international short and long haul destinations. “Multiple groups of a range of sizes are lined up from sectors such as pharma, insurance, cement, textile, FMCG, paint, automobile, banking, finance, agriculture for short haul destinations like Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Australia and Europe in the long haul,” said SD Nandakumar, president & country head, B2B & foreign exchange, SOTC Travel. The hospitality segment is also feeling the change. Puneet Chhatwal, CEO and MD of Indian Hotels Company, India’s largest hospitality brand that operates Taj chain of hotels, told FE in an interview recently that government delegations with heads of states have led the start of business travel. Added Puneet Dhawan, senior VP operations — India and South Asia — for Accor India, “Corporate travel demand has seen a multifold increase in the past 45 days, and we are witnessing an increased volume of international travellers from MNCs coming back to India for events and meetings. Overall MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) leads are seeing a positive rise with organisations planning their events that have been on hold for the past two years.” Destination specific events will also see a strong traction with return to in-person conferences this year. India continues to be in the top five key source markets for destinations like Ras Al Khaimah, one of the seven emirates in the United Arab Emirates. “With the new normal between hybrid and in-person events, we have launched offers for groups and associations and strategic partnerships with events management agencies and wedding planners,” said Iyad Rasbey, executive director, destination tourism development & MICE, Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority. Factors like safety and flexibility will also remain a top priority. Private jets are safe for reasons like minimum touch points, aircraft seating and customised services. Industrialists’ inclination towards using private jets during the last few months has increased. “Companies who couldn’t travel during the lockdown have now started using private jets. We have been receiving charter queries from corporate houses in India but they don’t intend to make bookings for more than a week due to uncertainty,” says Santosh Sharma, co-founder and CEO, Foresee Aviation, a professional private jet and helicopter aggregator, who has been receiving over 18-20 charter queries on an average per day for the past two months, of which 50 % are for business trips.

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J&K tourism department organises 7-day long food festival at Tulip Garden

The Department of Tourism in Jammu and Kashmir is holding a 7-day traditional and cultural food festival in Srinagar at the Tulip Garden to attract tourists. This festival has been attracting a large number of local and foreign visitors, who are enjoying the taste and flavour of Kashmir. Javaid Ahmad, who has a food stall at the festival, thanked the organisers as he believes the festival will help create employment opportunities. "We are providing our tourists with the flavor of Kashmir and different food items that people often love to have," Javaid Ahmad added. The food festival has a number of stalls that provide traditional cuisine known as Wazwan, traditional bread counters along with famous sweet hot drinks like saffron kehwa. "I firmly believe that the culture, heritage, art and crafts, and the valley's horticulture collectively make Jammu and Kashmir the best place for tourism," said Sarmad Hafeez, Secretary of Tourism, Jammu and Kashmir. The tourism department has organised the seven-day food festival during the ongoing tulip show, which started on 23 March 2022, and will conclude in the ending week of April. Presently, thousands of visitors are thronging the tulip garden every day. A local visitor said, "The sight of Dal lake, various Mughal gardens, and Tulips, and the food festival is worthy of appreciation." Situated on the foothills of Zabarwan Range with an overview of Dal Lake, the Tulip garden is a picture of scenic beauty with a variety of flowers apart from tulips including hyacinths, daffodils and ranunculus.

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Delhi’s Gallery Art Positive is hosting a beautiful exhibition

The famous Gallery Art Positive in Delhi is hosting more than a month-long art exhibition to showcase some of the ongoing concerns that emerged on the Indian art scene. The art gallery is noted for focusing on seminal exhibitions and art initiatives along with promoting works of young and new artists. Constructing Narratives: Art In the New Normal has been curated by Georgina Maddox and it features the works of some famous Indian artists including Bose Krishnamachari, Farhad Hussain, George Martin, Mukesh Sharma, Murali Cheeroth, Om Soorya and Vijay Sharma. The exhibition has taken into consideration some of the major crises the world and human race is going through right now, such as the COVID 19 pandemic and its ever-evolving variants, climate change and global warming. It focuses on addressing some of the major concerns of the planet by maintaining nature and ecosystems. It is the moment to reset the clock and reconfigure the relationship between human and nature to bring about a healthy change. About the gallery Art Positive is a state-of-the-art space situated in Lado Sarai region of Delhi. It is a new art hub where one can organise curated solo and group exhibitions of seminal and cutting edge art in varied modes, media and prices. It’s a perfect place for creative minds, artists, art connoisseurs, experts and educationists. The exhibition concludes on May 3, 2022.

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The RARE Showcase 2022 to be held in Delhi on 6th and 7th April

RARE India, which is a community of some of the finest conscious luxury boutique hotels, palace stays, wildlife lodges, homestays and retreats in the Indian subcontinent, will be hosting the fifth edition of its signature event ‘The RARE Showcase’ at The Imperial in New Delhi on 6th and 7th April. The event will be held in a Limited Edition format with an aim to aid the revival of inbound travel by getting the RARE Community and the travel agent fraternity to meet for discussions about destinations, sustainability, routing ideas and lessons from the pandemic. 30 of the 100 privately-owned, stand-alone RARE Community partner hospitality brands will participate in The RARE Showcase 2022 to create awareness about sustainable and slow travel that places a great emphasis on community engagement and strives to preserve and protect the planet – something that RARE has always held sacred. Sharing her thoughts on the upcoming event, Shoba Mohan, Founder, RARE India, said, “Though video conferencing and Zoom rooms helped us in the pandemic and built us stronger, personal contact, conversations and that one-on-one time together is what creates relationships and hence magic. As some of our oldest hotels and newest members gather together, it’s time to prepare for what may yet be travel’s best years, aware, mindful, transformational and a force for change.” The properties that will participate in The RARE Showcase 2022 include Glenburn Tea Estate (Darjeeling), Glenburn Penthouse (Kolkata), Neeleshwar Hermitage (Kerala), Lotus Houseboat (Kerala), Qayaam Gah (Kashmir), Sukoon Houseboat (Kashmir), The Sarai at Toria (Near Khajuraho), Jamtara Wilderness Camp (Pench), Premkunj (Udaipur), Ramathra Fort (Karauli), Manvar Luxury Camp (near Jodhpur), Chanoud Garh (District Pali), Bera Safari Lodge (Jawai), Wild Mahseer (Balipara), Haveli Dharampura (Delhi), Khem Villas (Ranthambore), Grand Hotel D’Europe (Pondicherry), The Belgadia Palace (Mayurbhanj), Windermere Estate (Munnar), The Lodge at Wah (Palampur), Mihir Garh (near Jodhpur), Bijaipur Horse Safaris (Bijaipur), Ging Tea House (Darjeeling), Bari Kothi (Murshidabad), The Rajbari Bawali (West Bengal), Kipling Camp (Kanha), Jim’s Jungle Retreat (Corbett), Cabo Serai (Goa), Shahpura Bagh (Shahpura), Assam Bengal Navigation, Svasara Jungle Lodge (Tadoba), Grand Dragon Ladakh, Rann Riders and Devshree. Mrinalika M. Bhanj Deo, Owner of The Belgadia Palace in Odisha, will also be present at the upcoming event. She said, “The RARE Showcase 2022 gives us an exceptional opportunity to meet both inbound agents, agencies and hoteliers to share ideas and understand the larger ecosystem of the travel industry post the pandemic, which has drastically altered the landscape of global travel. This is an especially important event for lesser-known destinations such as Odisha, which are of great interest to an inbound market given it is promoting a local for global narrative highlighting its nature, heritage, culture and local cuisine, all keeping sustainability with the climate and community in mind. The future of travel is most definitely local and authentic experiences in offbeat locations – luxury is now curated and bespoke – something RARE champions very well.” Sharing his thoughts on his association with RARE India and on the upcoming event, John K Simon, the host at Windermere Estate in Kerala, said, “RARE India is a unique collection of experiential stays spread across the Indian Subcontinent that are truly special, diverse and yet unified by certain ethos. We have always cherished this relationship with RARE and the partner hotels. Over time, the RARE Showcase has been able to bring together a community that can find synergies in this niche space of mindful travel; it is one of the events that we would not want to be missing. This year it is even more special to us as this would be the first participation in such an event since the pandemic.”

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Indonesia sees sharp rise in foreign visitors in Jan-Feb

reported a jump in foreign visitors entering through its main airports and seaports in the first two months of the year, after a gradual relaxation of COVID-19 travel restrictions, official data showed on Friday. The data from the statistics bureau showed 33,593 foreigners arrived in the Southeast Asian country in January-February via its main entry points, up 260% from the same period a year ago. The number of visitors in the first two months of the year though was still far below pre-pandemic levels, when typically in the same period there could be nearly two million overseas visitors. The majority of foreign visitors in the last two months were citizens from

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Airlines adhering to hand baggage policy

Airlines have been told to strictly follow the 'one hand bag' rule, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) had issued a circular on February 24, 2000 to enforce the rule, he said during the Question Hour. However, ladies hand bag, an overcoat or wrap, a rug or a blanket, a camera or a pair of binoculars, reasonable amount of reading material for the flight, umbrella or walking stick, infant's feed for consumption during flight and infant's carrying basket provided an infant is carried, collapsible wheel chair or a pair of crutches or braces for passenger's use if dependent on these and a gift item purchased from duty free shops are among the items that can be carried along with the hand bag. According to the BCAS circular dated May 11, 2000, one laptop may also be allowed as an additional item with one hand bag. Airlines are adhering to the guidelines issued by BCAS in their hand baggage policy. and are giving wide publicity to this rule through their website, social media and signages, he said. Scindia said the BCAS has sensitised airline operators for strict implementation of the one hand bag rule in its meeting on January 12, 2022.

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