The Hindu Business Line : Travel companies dish out offers for summer, weekend breaks

Chennai, Jan. 23 With the summer vacation coming up, travel companies have decided to go the extra distance to whet the public appetite for travel once again with a slew of attractive schemes ranging from cash-back offers to free travel for the wife and child.

Ms Nalini Gupta, General Manager, Thomas Cook, says the company has taken steps to “energise the market with some phenomenal deals”. For example, the company is offering a four-night package to Thailand at Rs 20,000, a two-night, three-day package to Sri Lanka at Rs 11,000 and four-night, five-day package to Spain priced at Rs 61,000. All these packages are discounted further, says the travel company. Without providing figures, she agrees that the travel industry has been impacted by the slowdown. The market was in a wait-and-watch mode and was game to follow up on a good deal, she said.

She was speaking to Business Line while in the city for a road-show to showcase the company’s ‘holiday summer sale’. The 30-city road-show will cover Tier-1, Tier-II and Tier-III cities and will offer both international and domestic packages.

According to her, the company was renegotiating prices with all its vendors to come up with these offers. It was also working closely with the national tourism boards of various countries in a win-win effort to buck up the sector.

Talking about the impact of the slowdown on the travel business, Mr Karan Anand, Head, Relationships and Supplier Management, Cox and Kings India Ltd, says the overall holiday market was not as down as some may suggest. Most bookings were done in advance mainly to utilise the discounts and offers given by travel companies. Business at Cox and Kings was back to normal after some cancellations happened in the wake of the terror attacks, he says in an e-mailed reply to Business Line.

As for travel trends in these tough times, he says travellers were always looking for good deals in terms of destinations and offerings. While the Far East, Europe and the US were still popular, travellers were now exploring Egypt, Turkey, Kenya, Australia and Sri Lanka. Domestic holidays were also gaining in popularity, he added.

Cox and Kings has also come out with its offer for the summer break which offers the first 100 applicants a 100 per cent cash back offer with everyone else being eligible for a 50 per cent cash back offer. SOTC has also come out with its summer packages to Europe where the wife and child can travel free and it also includes discounts of up to Rs 40,000.

Besides it also has a number of packages for long weekends this year such as Republic Day, Mahashivratri and Good Friday to short-haul destinations such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

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