Tag Archives: Country Manager

Ricky Pacquing – Country Manager Philippine Airlines at a special interview with TTME shared that 80 per cent of their sales come from the travel agents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. “we owe a lot to the travel trade so we incentivise them as much as we can providing them back end and front end support.” Participating at the first ever B2B exhibition Saudi Travel Mart in Riyadh Saudi Arabia, Philippine Airlines showcased their many connectivity options to attract the Saudi market which consist both locals and expats. Pacquing reiterated that they will be celebrating their 83rd anniversary this year and they will be hosting the top performing agents across the globe to a special award ceremony in Manila next month to recognise their efforts and commitment to bring in the numbers.

RwandAir has recently appointed Cozmo Travel as its Passenger General Sales Agent (GSA) for the GCC countries (Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (Offline). “These strategic partnerships play a very important role especially for airlines entering new markets and the practice is that airlines look competitively for established and well known GSA’s when entering particular markets which saves airlines associated costs for new market entry and, or development such as infrastructure, human resource etc while focusing on results. We are already established in the UAE, flying into and out of Dubai and we do cover the entire UAE market from a passenger and cargo sales perspective. This partnership is part of a growth strategy, though offline and it gives us an opportunity to assess the GCC markets for any other decisions in the future,” stated  Timothy Njihia, Country Manager—UAE | GCC | Pakistan, RwandAir.” Jamal Abdulnazar, CEO, Cozmo Travel stated, “With Cozmo Travel’s extensive retail presence in all the GCC countries, RwandAir will be able to capitalise on Cozmo’s  network in the region ensuring a wider market reach. Likewise Cozmo will be able to represent and sell the various RwandAir destinations within the African continent as well their expanding network into Asia and Europe. With a significant population of African nationals working and residing in the GCC region, the focus will be to capitalize on the large network of destinations within the African continent served by RwandAir.”

Nour Aridi, Country Manager, Visit Indonesia Tourist Office along with the Ministry of Tourism, Indonesia hosted a brand new campaign to the travel fraternity in Dubai with an interesting presentation. Indonesia, with over 17,000 islands, has some of the best tourist spots in the world. This year, they are on a new venture to promote these picturesque destinations especially to the many travellers in the UAE. It was an exclusive event which discussed and showcased new areas of tourism as well as the infrastructure that will be developed alongside the same. The partners had an opportunity to meet the tourism board officials to discuss further about ways to promote their destination.

Travelport hosted a two-day conference to provide insight into emerging new trends in the market and future of the sector with AI technology at Shangri-La, Oman. Over 230 customers from 14 countries attended the event. Kathryn Wallington, Country Manager, UAE Travelport welcomed the guests and explained the interactive opportunities at the conference. In his opening remarks, Matthew Powell, Managing Director, Middle East and South Asia, Travelport explained that Travelport had transformed from a regular GDS to a travel commerce and distribution platform to enable more opportunities in their portfolio. He reiterated how their platform enabled travel providers and their evolving technologies to deliver relevant content for travel buyers and consumers. He also spoke of how the platform provided new tools and solutions to customers and created a frictionless path to work with speed and accuracy, automated operations and the latest B2B travel payments. He reiterated that there was an expected opportunity of $8.6 billion in mobile travel sales in Middle East and India by 2022.

To  promote destinations like Bali, Lombok, Jakarta, Bandung, Sumatra, south Sulawesi, Visit Indonesia Tourism Office is conducting workshops and roadshows in the Middle East. According to Nour Aridi, Country Manager, Visit Indonesia Tourism Office (VITO). The roadshow will begin in Bahrain on September 26 at Sofitel Manama, then move on to Sheraton Muscat on October 3, and reach UAE on October 18 in Dubai and October 19 in Abu Dhabi.