Trade, State Embrace TravelWorld 2006

TravelWorld 2006, now in its second year, opened with an ever increasing and diverse canvas of exhibitors and a higher profile panel of speakers and audience for its business sessions. Bhisham Mansukhani gives a roundup.

Organised by the Business Publications Division of The Indian Express, TravelWorld 2006 was held at the Bandra-Kurla Complex in Mumbai from February 2 to 5 2006. It is India's only business-to-business travel trade exhibition for the travel industry and creates an ambience conducive for buyers and sellers within the trade to connect and explore commercial link-ups of mutual benefit. It began with a resounding industrial and bureaucratic endorsement as a key business platform for the travel trade to network, conduct business as well as ideate on formal and informal business sessions. This year TravelWorld featured nearly 60 exhibitors spread across the travel, airline and medical tourism fraternity while the Indian Express Business Publications Division flew down more than 150 hosted buyers to give their exhibitors an international market to interact with.

L-R: Sheldon Santwan, editor, Express TravelWorld, Ashwini Kakkar, TAAI president and WTTC India Initiative chairman, TAFI president Zakkir Ahmed, Sunil Tatkare, minister for food, civil supplies and consumer protection, Government of Maharashtra, A P Singh, OSD to CM of Jharkhand, S K Choudhary, Principal Secretary, Department of Tourism, Jharkhand and Sandeep Khosla, CEO, Business Publications Division, Indian Express All pics: Mexy Xavier

The Inauguration

Sunil Tatkare takes a look around the exhibition after the inauguration

The inauguration witnessed the captains of the travel trade, Sunil Tatkare, honourable minister for food, civil supplies and consumer protection, Government of Maharashtra and representatives of the Jharkhand Chief Minister who were all unanimous in not just their recognition of India's tourism prospects on the inbound and outbound front which have been improving year on year, but also of TravelWorld as an event that was helping facilitate this growth. Tatkare highlighted the bounty of tourism resource that his state boasted. He also revealed the state's strategy to tap a large chunk of the 40 per cent share of overall inbound tourism that Mumbai receives. Tatkare also conceded, however, that the tourism promotion budget for the months of September-December 2005 was a petty figure of Rs 1 crore, adding that the budget estimates for 2005-06 presented to the legislature in March 2005 proposed a provision of Rs 79.8 crore for tourism.

S K Choudhary, Principal Secretary, Department of Tourism, Jharkhand, representing the state's Chief Minister, Arjun Munda, read out his address saying that although his state was relatively new (instated in 2000), it had quickly realised the potential of tourism, implementing infrastructure development projects specifically in that direction and awarding the sector the coveted industry status. He added that the state has allocated Rs 250 crore as the annual tourism budget.

Traditional folk dance of the state of Jharkhand

Dubai tourism that was named the best stall design for international pavilion

Goa tourism board that won the award for best stall design in domestic pavilion

TAAI president and WTTC India Initiative chairman Ashwini Kakkar delved on the huge opportunity that was India tourism. He stressed on the interesting detail that Indian railways carried more passengers in a day than all Indian domestic airlines did in a year. This, he said, pointed to the immense propensity of Indians to travel and exhorted members of the Indian and international trade present to tap the sector "while the going was great" and naming TravelWorld as an effective forum to do so.

He stressed on the significance of tourism, which he claimed, provides 11 per cent of worldwide GDP and employs one of every 12 employable people in the world. "In India this opportunity exists in the form of three segments - some seven million Indians that travel abroad, the inbound international tourists who this year exceeded five million and the domestic Indian tourists who add up to some 400 million. There are still more than one fourth of a billion Indians who are waiting to travel more. Inbound tourism to India has been growing by 30 per cent in dollar terms. Equally, investment into India which until five years ago was under US $1 billion, has now mounted to US $15 billion annually. The choice for the private sector is therefore clearly one of seizing the moment when the going is great as opposed to when it is just good," Kakkar said.

TAFI president Zakkir Ahmed reiterated Kakkar's viewpoint, articulating in detail, the importance of the event insomuch as a platform to discuss potential business, exchange ideas and contemplate synergies that could catapult individual businesses and the vertical as a whole to new levels. He placed the importance of TravelWorld in context of India's buoyant tourism industry, describing the event as a great facilitator. "The event was a learning experience for industry professionals that also provided for focused marketing," he added.

Pathfinder stall that actively promotes tourism in Thailand

Malaysia - truly Asian

Andhra Pradesh tourism board makes its presence felt

Civil Aviation Summit

Audience at the Civil Aviation Summit

Apart from the impressive B2B exhibition, Indian Express also held its third annual Civil Aviation Summit that featured the quintessential heavyweights of the aviation and travel industry.

Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker delivered the keynote address in which he paid rich tribute to India's growing domestic aviation segment, the positive movement in airport modernisation and overall market potential that India contains. This was followed by four intense business sessions, namely, Boom in Low Cost Aviation - Myth or Reality, Open Skies - Boon or Bane, Airport Privatisation - An Infrastructure Issue and Agent Airline Relationship - The Way Forward.

A presentation by Jharkhand Tourism keeps everyone interested

Some of the key speakers at the summit included V Thulasidas, CMD, Air India, Jet Airways executive director Saroj Datta, John Kuruvilla, chief revenue officer, Air Deccan and Kakkar. Datta was all praise for the airport modernisation process which he said he believed had finally kicked off in earnest while Kuruvilla said there was no doubt that low cost airlines were here to stay in India and presented a slew of statistics to support his claim. Thulasidas said that the national carrier welcomed more competition in the shape of deregulated skies adding that the relationship of the airlines with agents had changed in light of operational cost pressures that were persistently mounting on the airlines. All in all, some critical issues were discussed and dissected by some of the aviation and travel industry's most experienced leaders and the niche audience took in some valuable perspective.

Medical Tourism Summit

The final day of TravelWorld witnessed the Medical Tourism Summit with the theme 'Practicing Medical Tourism'. It received some eminent individuals from within the medical and medical tourism industry like Anupam Verma, Secretary, Maharashtra Medical Tourism Council (Mumbai) and Dr Bhaskar Shah, director of Asian Heart Institute (Mumbai). Anil Kamath, senior VP and business head, Wockhardt Group spoke on Hospital Economics in Medical Tourism while Anil Maini, business head (Corporate Division) at Apollo Hospital (Delhi) spoke on Medical Tourism: Challenges and the road ahead.

The growing attendance at the event, despite the focused approach of both exhibitors and visitors to discuss and transact business, is testament to the metamorphosis of India from a diffident, nascent market to a fast maturing one that can only get bigger.