Awarding Excellence In Travel

Galileo Express Travel & Tourism Awards 2004 recognised the growing professionalism and higher levels of excellence in the Indian travel industry, reports Anindita Chattopadhyay

Winners all

An evening full of heady surprises, jubilant winners and a night abuzz with excitement… Simply not enough to describe the second edition of Galileo Express Travel & Tourism Awards. The gala awards nite held on November 23, 2004 at the Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi to honour excellence in the travel and tourism industry sported the right blend of ingredients to conjure up a memorable event. Bottles of champagne chilled to perfection, a buffet of scrumptious cuisine and foot tapping entertainment all chipped in to make the event a winner, hands down.

It was a veritible who's who of the Indian travel trade with both Renuka Chowdhury, minister of state for tourism with independent charge and Praful Patel, minister of civil aviation gracing the occasion and presenting the winners with a gleaming bronzed Columbus statute (award). Each time 'the award goes to,' was announced, the crowd waited in silent suspense and moments later the venue resounded with loud applause and cheers. In a long evening of accolades peppered with some sizzling entertainment, the speeches were the highlight where both ministers vied for the limelight with their crisp perspectives, which held the audience in rapt attention.

Speaking at the occasion Chowdhury averred, "India represents a large network of intelligence that contributes significantly to the economies of developed countries around the world. In the wake of this information, promoting the country as a tourism destination needs to be given utmost priority. We simply cannot afford to miss out on this opportunity. Tourism has already emerged as the third largest foreign exchange earner for the country. Even so there is an urgent need for a strong domestic campaign, to understand the role of tourism and exploit its potential to the maximum."

In his welcome speech, Shekhar Gupta, eidtor-in-chief and group CEO of The Indian Express, said, "The civil aviation and tourism sectors are vastly unexplored areas in the country because they are still under the government domain. However, things are changing and efforts are being made in the right direction to promote India as a tourist destination."

The event unfolded with clockwork precision and the timing could not have been better, as the industry is buoyant with tourist arrivals on an upward surge. VJ Rageshwari Lumba's performance was an added fillip to the buoyant mood and lit up the evening. She had the audience spell bound with her lively renditions of popular foot-tapping numbers which had guests breaking into song and dance interpretations of their own.

Tourism industry in India has a lot to sing about at the moment. The tourism sector in India is seeing a boom with revenues up by 26 per cent this year. The sector now accounts for 320 million domestic travellers and three million inbound travellers, mostly consisting of Non Resident Indians (NRIs) and people of Indian origin. With yoga, meditation, Ayurvedic, Allopathic, and other systems of medicine, India offers a unique basket of services to an individual that is unmatched by other countries.

"We simply cannot afford to miss out on this opportunity. There is an urgent need for a strong domestic campaign, to understand the role of tourism and exploit its potential to the maximum," stated Chowdhury. She also stressed on the intelligent packaging of India, the conservation of heritage monuments and fragile eco-system through a public-private partnership and extensive promotion of domestic tourism. "Packaging India as a tourist destination is a complex issue. Let alone international tourists who are familiar with destinations like Goa or Kerala, even domestic travellers are not aware of destinations in South India or the North East," she explained.

"Through the Galileo Express Travel and Tourism Awards, the Indian Express Group is doing its part to encourage the Indian travel and tourism industry to set new benchmarks and usher heightened levels of professionalism, to truly make India an incredible destination," commented Chowdhury. She was also of the opinion that the government should encourage medical tourism by undertaking an international marketing campaign targeted at select countries in key markets to further facilitate the inflow of foreign patients.

Admitting that very little has been done to make things happen, Patel said, "One key reason why tourism has not progressed in India is because of a serious lack of infrastructure, which is the single biggest challenge. We have decided to upgrade the airport infrastructure all over the country. As a policy decision, the work will start rolling from 2005. We are inviting international experts, and adopting global design concepts so as to have airports that are on par with international standards. We also intend to continue with the open sky policy."

While the positive words by both Chowdhury and Patel brought cheer to the gathering it was celebration time for Emirates (best outbound airline), Singapore Airlines (best east-bound airline) and Jet Airways (best domestic airline) as the three airlines won the awards in their respective categories for the second year in succession. Emirates left behind the likes of British Airways and Lufthansa, while Singapore Airlines won over Malaysia Airlines, China Airlines and others.

The Kuoni group made a clean sweep of the awards in the tour operators segment. While Sita Inbound won the award for the best inbound tour operator for the second year in a row, BTI Sita bagged the best corporate travel operator and SOTC the best outbound tour operator and Cox and Kings won the best domestic tour operator award.

The Oberoi Group bagged the best premier hotel brand award defeating strong contenders like the ITC Welcomgroup, The Leela, Le Meridien, The Grand and The Park. However, ITC's Fortune Park brand won in the best first class hotel brand category, while Radisson was declared the best franchise brand. Uttaranchal (best domestic tourism board), Malaysia (best international tourism board), Rajasthan (best visual campaign) and Tamil Nadu (best technology) were among the other winners.

Galileo, a forerunner in providing distribution networks in India, got associated with the award because Rahul Bhatia, managing director opines, "We at Galileo feel we have a responsibility in setting standards that the industry should aspire for." He could not have put it better as the industry reciprocated with a similar view. As Himmat Anand, COO, Sita Incoming put it, "We are proud to have won the award for the second year in succession. We will certainly work hard to achieve a hattrick." And KB Kachru, VP, Carlson Hospitality went on to add: "It feels great to receive recognition from a professional body. The tourism industry is impressed by the methodology adopted for the selection."

All in all, the awards made for a memorable evening.