Travel management company BCD Travel has signed a two-year contract with Indian hotel company Taj Hotels, Resorts & Palaces. The five-star Indian-owned hotel group will become one of BCD’s preferred hotel partners in the Asia-Pacific region.

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• PVR Cinemas is looking for Hospitality Professionals
• Culinary Academy in Hyd is looking
• Indiatimes Travel is looking ...
• Stewards for Toshali Resorts International
• Stewards - MGM Entertainment Pvt. Limited (Hotels)

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Trip Tagging & Airfare Refund Alert Service Selected as One of the Best Examples of What's New and Exciting About the Web

Yapta enables consumers to easily shop for the lowest airfare price by allowing them to "tag" specific flight itineraries offered at leading domestic airline websites or online travel agents and receive alerts via email when fares drop or fall within a desired spending limit.

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Travel portal Travelguru has unleashed a mass media campaign promising consumers a guaranteed hotel room, at any budget and any location of their choice in India.

The campaign promise is 'A Hotel Room Guaranteed. Any Budget. Anywhere.’ As part of a nationwide marketing campaign, the new television commercial highlights how Travelguru's scale can alleviate customer concerns about booking hotels.

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Plans to build a new £1.5 billion terminal at Heathrow Airport have been given the green light by the Mayor of London and Hillingdon Council.

The new Heathrow East Terminal will replace Terminals One and Two, with the first phase of development expected to be completed in time for the Olympics in 2012.

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Make My Trip.com, an online travel company, said it is likely to break even this fiscal and expects to double its online transactions as well as turnover.

The company clocked a turnover of Rs 550 crore in the financial year 2006-07. This fiscal year the company aims to double the turnover to touch Rs 1,000 crore.

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Indian Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) Ltd.(A Government of India Undertaking). Ashok Insitute of Hospitality & Tourism Management

ITDC invites applications for the industion of Management Trainees and Supervisory Trainees for its Ashok Group Travels & Tours Division Units all over India.

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Travel 2.0 is all about “empowering” users, encouraging travelers to create content online to be shared with other readers, intertwined with the official content offered by an established travel vendor.

Welcome to the world of Travel 2.0, a new approach to Internet commerce that travel providers hope will revolutionize the way you shop for travel.



If you visit Sheraton.com, you will see something completely different from other major hotel websites. Instead of the usual advertisements for exotic locations and special offers crowding the home page, you are immediately struck by the phrase “Welcome to the neighborhood” in the center of your screen, and a U.S. map covered with pop-up photographs and the words “Your story. In your words.”

The photographs are all amateur, taken by Sheraton customers with no more travel logging experience than the average person. There are no actors or models masquerading as guests in these snapshots and they are not the views most hoteliers would choose to display. There are no wide-angle, enticing displays of guest rooms, meeting rooms, the lobby, the restaurant or the grounds. There are no seductive panoramas of pristine beaches, perfectly manicured golf courses or local tourist attractions. These photos and the accompanying captions and narratives have been submitted exclusively by Sheraton customers who want nothing more than to tell you about their recent trip and stay at a Sheraton hotel.

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After revolutionising the face of travel internationally, Travelocity, a pioneer of consumer-direct online travel services is now being launched in India. Travelocity, today unveiled its Indian online travel agency web site: travelocity.co.in and introduced its India teams, based in Delhi and Mumbai.

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Despite the problems that plague tourists in India, the country has notched a place above France in terms of average earnings from foreign tourists.

On an average India earned Rs 65,085 from every foreign tourist, which is thrice of the tourist expenditure in France and nearly double of global average of Rs 37,570.

YIPPEE!!!

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Finland’s national carrier, Finnair, on Thursday announced the launch of its flights from Mumbai, starting June 17. The airline, which has had a tri-weekly service on the Delhi-Helsinki route since April last year, is scheduled to launch its Mumbai operations with a five-weekly service to the Finnish capital.

Finnair Flights from Mumbai

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Repositioning of India as a leisure destination has spelt bigger profits for the hotel industry.

As the business goes, hotels are raking in moolah. The demand-supply gap has given a boost to hotel rates over the last two years. Leisure traffic, which incidentally was the only segment that was eluding many of them of higher revenues, has now come around in the last one year owing to the push for higher-end leisure traffic by the ministry of tourism.

There has been an overall increase in yields from leisure traffic for hotels. Traditionally, leisure traffic was associated with group travel business, which was low yield. Free individual travellers (FITs) were few. This scenario seems to have changed in recent times with some hotels claiming higher leisure volume and within it, a tremendous growth in FIT traffic.



Shobu J Mathew, GM, sales and marketing, InterContinental The Grand, New Delhi, says the quality of leisure traffic has gone up and they are spending more money within the hotel. The overall yield from leisure traffic for the hotel in 2006-07 has gone up by 30 per cent over 2005-06. The leisure yield for The Imperial is also up 25 per cent.

More spending can also be attributed to an increase in FIT traffic. Certainly so for The Park in New Delhi. “Apart from the hotel room, FITs spend on the spa, food and beverages and other activities within the hotel, which the groups usually don’t,” says Rohit Arora, director, leisure sales, The Park.

The hotel’s leisure yield is up by 60 per cent in one year. This, says Arora, can also be attributed to a change in the hotel’s positioning.

Also, India as a destination is now being projected as a high-end destination, compared to its budget stance a few years ago. According to Anirban Sengupta, director marketing, Grand Hyatt, Mumbai, business customers now come all year round and since the hotel doesn’t distinguish between seasons, pricing is kept more or less constant. Higher prices, in turn, have meant improved customer profiles. Yields from leisure are up at least 15-20 per cent for them.

“Over the last two years, the difference between corporate and leisure yields has been coming down,” says Arora. The difference has come down from 40-50 per cent two years back to 12-15 per cent today. The corporates today have a structures expense control mechanism leading to price control in terms of hotel usage and rent payable by different grades of people.

As India becomes a friendlier destination for investments, more people are combining their business trips with leisure.

There are some hotels though like the InterContinental Marine Drive, where, as their GM, Romil Ratra points out, leisure yields have actually come down by half in the last one year. “This might perhaps be because of our positioning as a boutique business hotel and not really a kiddie hotel,” says Ratra.

But what takes the cake is the 150 per cent growth in leisure volume for the Trident Hilton in Gurgaon. Yield from leisure for them is higher than their corporate yield. According to the hotel, leisure yield has gone up 60-70 per cent over last year.

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The Government Museum and Art Gallery in Sector 10 here hosted a 45-minute light and sound show.

Vice-president, ITDC, Chandni Luthra said that the show was a like a Bollywood movie and said it was difficult to create it. She said that the show was the first of its kind to be held in the country. The show has been conceived and executed by the Indian Tourism Development Corporation, and Chandigarh Industrial and tourism Development Corporation (CITCO).

Around Rs 1.61 crore had been released for the project Sound & Light show (Son et Lumiere) to be set up at Museum & Art Gallery, Sector 10, Chandigarh, by the administration.

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The world's biggest tourism fair, the ITB in Berlin.

The fair opens its doors to travel agents Wednesday, with India in the spotlight as this year's 'partner' country. A record 11,000 companies from 184 nations will be displaying their attractions March 7-11.

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The Goa government and the government of the Republic of Portugal have formulated a strategic alliance to revive the state’s original flavour, which is slowly losing its identity amidst rampant urbanisation.

According to the state government’s plans, the focus of this alliance would be to develop the ‘home-stay’ concept, which has been a successful tourism tool in Portugal.

I would personally love to have a home stay in Goa.
I have been there n number of times, and cant seem to get enough of Goa!

The very fact that this is a good idea (I mean, money making, popular with tourists etc) is coz
1. its already happening (not in a structured fashion..but very much on!)
2. the five star deluxe hotels seem to have understood it too. there's been the Taj Holiday Village forever and then there is the Park Hyatt Goa with its real village inside the hotel.

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An internal report prepared by department of tourism projects that forex earning from the tourism sector may go up to $10 billion this year from $6.5 billion in 2006.

That’s not all. Foreign tourist arrivals is likely to cross the 6.5-million mark from 4.4 million last year. There has been an increase of 45.5% in arrivals during the last two. Forex earning during the same period rose by 62.2% in dollars terms.

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• eAtlantis Launches YourLatitude.com
• Get a rustic rush this weekend
• Royal Time Machine luxury coaches on Delhi roads

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With the world moving away from the sun-sea-and-sand brand of vacationing towards more experimental holidays, India can actually cash in on its roots, and help indigenous rural communities along the way. The ministry of tourism has already sanctioned 102 rural tourism infrastructure projects. With the fillip provided by the UNDP and its $2.5 million budget, this is a red-hot sector at the moment.

Just last month Kerala announced 50 such projects in that state alone. One already established destination in the state is Haritha Farms. Know more... click here

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