Category Archives: Agents

Traveltek Group has launched its Middle East operation. The UK-based firm, which counts global travel brands such as Virgin Holidays, Flight Centre and dnata, as well as its sister companies, Imagine Cruises and Global Travel Group, amongst its roster of big-name clients, has established an office in Dubai and appointed two highly-experienced travel technology professionals to lead its Gulf expansion strategy. Vinod Singh comes on board as Regional Manager, Middle East and India and Vivek Katheriya joins the team as Regional Sales Manager, India and MENA. Both recruits bring vast Middle East travel technology experience to their roles, having worked for reputable industry players. Between them, Singh and Katheriya are targeting the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman, all markets where travel agents, tour operators and wholesalers in are in urgent need of sophisticated travel technology to help drive efficiencies, boost sales and meet the complex demands of their customers. “Given our proven track record delivering a powerful and successful selling platform to the international travel trade, we are well positioned to harness the healthy growth of the GCC travel and tourism industry, ” said Peter Whittle, Global Sales Director, Traveltek. “Our global expertise, combined with the market and technology experience demonstrated by Vinod and Vivek, will ensure we can cater to the needs of the region’s travel trade now and in the future, particularly as demand for dynamic packaging and cruise booking solutions grows at a rapid rate. The web-based technology enables agencies and tour operators to package and sell complex itineraries that include flights, hotels, tours, transfers, car rental, cruises, attractions tickets and more. Companies can also package their own stock, third-party stock, or a mixture of …

VFS Global has completed the acquisition of visa service provider TT Services (TTS). The transaction enables VFS Global to leverage on core competences and brands and to further enhance operating performance. TT Services is a provider of integrated visa processing solutions with global presence and a comprehensive portfolio of services. TT Services is headquartered in the United Kingdom and has a strong and long-lasting relationship with its client governments and with a commercial partner. The company operates 51 application centres in more than 35 countries and has 216 employees. TTS offers a full range of high quality visa services for its client governments, partners and applicants. Zubin Karkaria, CEO, VFS Global Group, commented: “TT Services has, like VFS Global, extended industry experience of more than 15 years and is a trusted service delivery partner for its clients. I see a strong fit by TTS joining VFS Global. This will enable us to further enhance and extend our services towards our client governments and visa applicants.” The change of control will have no bearing on the business operations of the parties and act as a catalyst to improved services and enhanced client and customer satisfaction.

Travelport announced a new agreement with First Diana Travel which will get the leading Lebanese travel agency access to Travelport’s unrivalled choice of travel content. By connecting to the Travelport platform, First Diana will now have intelligent, fast and accurate searching and booking tools to offer to its customers. It would be able to provide content from more than 400 airlines, including low cost and network carriers, more than 650,000 hotel properties and more than 37,000 car rental locations around the world. Bookers at the leisure and full service corporate agencies can use Travelport Smartpoint as their desktop tool to search beyond rate and availability while purchasing personalised travel packages, to drive performance and to increase revenues. Elcheikh Mohamed Ghouzayel, President and Owner of First Diana Travel, commented, “This is an exciting time for First Diana Travel and we’re thrilled to sign our debut deal with Travelport. Having recently extended our operation outside the Lebanese borders, into the Gulf region and Asia, we look forward to differentiating our offerings by utilising Travelport’s technology to provide our customers with a more personalised booking experience.”

Antarctica is slowly emerging as one of the most sought-after destinations by UAE’s cruise travellers, who are always on the search for something exotic and different. To help those who are still on the lookout for a tour operator that could take them to this new dream destination, India-based ‘The Q Experiences’ has announced a trip to Antarctica on a luxury cruise, starting from December 9, 2017. This will be an 11-day curated trip to the exotic, ice crowned continent, also rightly known as the White Continent. Speaking about this new adventure trip in the offing, Vasim Shaikh, founder of The Q Experiences said, “We have received tremendous response for this trip from the GCC countries. At The Q, it is our constant endeavour to create memories that last a lifetime for all our travellers; we are keen on creating a similar experience for our Gulf travellers as well, and we are hopeful to see more travellers from this region to join us in this trip of a lifetime”.

After its successful attempt at integrating the Visa Checkout facility with its tajawal.ae domain in January 2017, the Dubai-based travel-booking website has further collaborated with Visa to provide Visa Checkout to its customers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. tajawal is now rolling out the service across multiple markets to provide its users in the region with the most convenient booking process possible. Visa Checkout offers cardholders a simple and secure digital payment method that allows for registered users to complete their purchase at the click of a button. By logging into their Visa Checkout account, payment and billing information are automatically populated, eliminating the step to manually enter the information with every purchase. Ahmed Gaber, Visa’s General Manager for Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, said, “Innovations like Visa Checkout help to remove friction from the e-commerce payment process, bringing significant benefits to both the customer and the merchant. With Visa Checkout integrated into its systems, tajawal can now offer its customers an online payment experience that is as easy, convenient, and seamless as swiping a Visa card in a traditional retail setting.” To promote Visa Checkout as a payment option on tajawal.sa, a special offer has been introduced on all flight and hotel bookings that can be availed by registered users who choose to pay with Visa Checkout on tajawal.sa until August 18, 2017.

Gold Medal, a leading UK travel company, has heralded Abu Dhabi as one of the most popular destinations for this summer, following a surge in the number of British holidaymakers visiting the United Arab Emirates this year. Offering a variety of online travel services and products, including airfares, hotel reservations and car rentals to travel agents, Gold Medal has reported a 294 per cent year-on-year increase in the summer 2017 holiday bookings than 2016 holiday bookings from the UK to the UAE capital. British travel agents will get to sample for themselves the many attractions of Abu Dhabi when Etihad Airways and the Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority (TCA) host a large familiarisation visit to the emirate in September. They will be able to sample the cultural attractions, beaches, sports facilities and excellent hospitality for which Abu Dhabi is increasingly renowned.

At the glamourous Arabian Travel Awards held a few hours ago in Dubai, the dynamic and globally acclaimed Kulwant Singh, Founder and Managing Director, Lama Group, was felicitated with the Face of the Future award. Singh, with his hard work, business acumen and conviction, nurtured a small company of a few people to grow into an empire of 500 professional and skilled employees, spread across Europe, Russia, China, India, the Philippines and the CIS countries. Even within the GCC, he has offices in Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Taking his business beyond core travel and tourism, he has now successfully ventured also into marketing, representations, hotels and restaurants. Recently, his company has launched new products, namely, Luxury Yacht Cruises, Dhow Cruises, Hummer Safaris and Explore Arabia – a day long encounter in true Arabian style.

Recognising and applauding the tourism tigers of the Middle East, DDP presented the first-ever Arabian Travel Awards on July 4, 2017, at the JW Marriott Hotel Dubai in Deira. Over 150 notable personalities of the Middle East travel and tourism sector were present to honour and acknowledge the achievements of their brightest gems. Dr Tanushree Pandey, Gladrags Mrs India, along with SanJeet, Mentor, Arabian Travel Awards, and Sumeera Bahl, Director, Durga Das Publications, handed out the awards to the winners. Due recognition was given to each sector in the industry through 48 categories of awards. Welcoming the guests, SanJeet, said, “With Arabian Travel Awards, we aim at identifying and encouraging talent of all kinds in the tourism sector. Owing to these stars, the graph of the Middle East tourism industry has touched remarkable heights. It is our pleasure to honour them for their achievements. This initiative will help encourage more talent to develop and take this vibrant industry to a much higher level.”

Celebrating the hard work of the key stalwarts in the travel, tourism and hospitality industries in the Middle East, Durga Das Publications today presents the maiden Arabian Travel Awards at JW Marriott Hotel Dubai in Deira. There will be four types of awards: Personal Awards, Business Awards, Trending Awards and Partner Awards. The sub-categories will include awards for Best Business Hotel, Best Family Friendly Hotel, Best City Hotel, Best Green Hotel, Best Leisure Hotel, Best Destination Management Company, Best Hotel Apartments, Best B2B Travel Portal, Best Luxury Hotel and the likes. The Arabian Travel Awards are following a systematic method of internet-based voting. These awards are supported by Tourism Breaking News Middle East, TravelTV.news, TravTalk Middle East and TravTalk India who are premier media partners for extensive coverage.

Cleartrip has officially launched a website in Arabic to support its GCC market expansion efforts and provide users in the region with localized browsing and booking capability. The new website includes content and promotions relevant for Arabic-speaking audiences and comes with a host of useful features, tools and functionalities designed to allow travellers to more easily make and manage reservations. There are also exciting offers and benefits displayed on the website which the users can make use of when booking online through Cleartrip. Cleartrip’s website experienced a 30% increase in traffic from mobile devices during the first week of Ramadan, and the launch of a dedicated website in Arabic is expected to further accelerate bookings. Innovations in payment security, along with the launch of new government initiatives in the UAE and the proliferation of e-commerce startups, have increased consumer trust in online payments. This, in turn, is expanding the market opportunity for Cleartrip.