Joy Roy Choudhury – Kolkata
The Eastern Region of Travel Agents Association of India is looking at improving its relations with the airlines, allied members and other stakeholders to offer better services, apart from the traditional ticketing services. Devesh Kumar Agarwal, the new chairman of TAAI, Eastern Region said, “Today’s travel business operates in a completely different environment. Technology has changed the entire dynamics of the business. The travel professionals are no longer mere ticketing agents but are required to offer value-added services to the customers. So, we have to involve all the stakeholders like the airlines, allied members, the government sector and other stakeholders to be suitably prepared to meet the varied demands of the new age traveller. In order to strengthen our efforts, we plan to meet the TAAI members from Assam and other North Eastern states in Guwahati soon to chalk out our future course of action.”
Agarwal said that besides taking up the regular issues like reduction in agent’s commission by the airlines, parity with online transactions and other airlines and travel related issues, the regional members have decided to work closely with other stakeholders to promote inbound and domestic tourism in this part of the country. “Our objective would be to increase Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) as well as inbound domestic tourists in this part of the country,” he said.
“The Eastern and North Eastern states of the country need further support from the government and allied agencies to come up on the global tourism map. So our efforts would be to promote and market the tourist destinations of the East and the North East, globally as well as in other parts of the country like Gujarat, Maharashtra and the south,” he said. “We welcome the Union Government’s recent move to extend the Visa-On-Arrival programme to 180 countries and hope that such a move will help in bringing more foreign tourists into the East and the North East,” said Agarwal. He urged the state government to invite more foreign airlines to operate from Kolkata.
