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Kashmir Is The Season’s Flavour For Indian
Tourists |
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| May 23,2006 |
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The
Economic Times, Sudipto Dey, Mumbai:
Where you come from may well decide where you
are going this summer. For those in Maharashtra
and Gujarat, Kashmir is the season’s flavour.
So is it for the footloose Bhadralok from Bengal
or the Jat from Punjab. Sikkim, Bhutan and Ladakh
are the other destinations generating tourist
interest from western and eastern parts of the
country this season. |
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Such is the
rush for Kashmir from west India, tour operators
claim, that every second tourist you bump into
in Srinagar may well be a Gujju or Mumbaikar.
Low-cost carrier Go Air, which flies directly
from Mumbai to Srinagar, twice a week is now
contemplating increasing frequencies in June.
“All our seats are booked till mid-June,”
said Go Air MD Jeh Wadia. Indian too has received
requests from tour operators to increase flight
frequencies to Srinagar. |
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“Thanks
to the pent up demand for Kashmir, we anticipate
that the state will be the top-draw for tourists
for at least the next three years,” said
Abhijit Patil, CEO, Rajarani Travels, a prominent
tour operator from Mumbai, which has been organising
tours to the state for many years now. The company
is now in talks with airlines for direct flights
from Pune and Ahmedabad to Srinagar. |
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With
the tourist rush, hotel rates in Srinagar, Gulmarg
and Pahalgaon have soared 30-50% compared to
last summer. Houseboats are available on the
Dal Lake for around Rs 3,000 per night, including
food. “Most tourists from Mumbai and Gujarat
prefer to cook their own food, as many of them
are vegetarians,” said a travel agent
from Srinagar who operates several houseboats
in Dal Lake. Compared to 6 lakh domestic tourists
last year, Kashmir expects to get 9 lakh visitors
by the year end, around 50% of them will be
in the state during the three summer months. |
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Charting New Airways |
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| May 12, 2006 |
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The
Economic Times, Mumbai: "My
passion is to ensure self -reliance in over
600,000 villages under the leadership of Shri
Nanaji Deshmukh, which will carry out irrespective
of what I do in business," says Jeh Wadia.
And the person he refers to is the head of the
NGO Deendayal Research Institute (DRI) where
Jeh helps out when he has free time. DRI has
adopted 2000 villages in Chitrakoot and plans
to make them completely self reliant using various
models. But back in business circles, Jeh is
more commonly recognized as the head of the
7-month old Go Air and the scion of the Wadia
Group. |
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On a more familial
level, he is also the great grandson of Mohammad
Ali Jinnah and son of the popular couple Nusli
and Maureen Wadia. "The airline sector
in India has in the past one year grown at a
spectacular 26 per cent. The reason for this
growth rate versus the historical 5-7% growth
per year has been the entry of low cost carriers
offering fares that the Indian masses can afford,"
says Jeh talking about the current scenario
in the aviation industry. Is that why he started
Go Air? |
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"Besides
being a business enthusiast, I want to increase
the standard of living in a common Indian's
life.Coming up with an airline that suits the
need of a common man's living was just the right
thing," he explains. Jeh started his career
in the family-owned Bombay Dyeing. In 2001,
he founded The Incubation Corporation, which
was setup to invest in startup companies both
in India and the US, and had investors ranging
from Ratan Tata to Rupert Murdoch. He also conceptualized
Tatanova, an ISP and horizontal website, which
is now fully owned by the Tata Group. |
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| Just
before starting Go Air, he was the Deputy MD
of the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation and
working on the restructuring of the Wadia Group,
which involved many JVs, including one with
the Port Singapore Authority. Talking about
future plans, Jeh says: "Increasing connectivity
and adding new destinations to our route network
is something we look up to in the future. Currently
we have 28 flights daily to 14 cities.This summer
we have added three destinations - Delhi, Jammu
and Srinagar." |
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Outsourcing
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| May 11, 2006 |
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| Business
World, Anjuli Bhargava, Mumbai: Jeh
Wadia of GoAir is convinced that some of the
cost differential between low-cost carriers
and full-service carriers can be increased,
provided the government makes aviation in India
more “outsourcing-friendly”. He
says that the cost differential between the
two is currently is around 37 per cent, and
this can go up to almost 60-65 per cent provided
airlines are permitted to outsource security,
engineering and ground handling. Wadia, for
his part, is in the process of setting up four
new companies — Go Engineering, Go Cargo,
Go Training and Go Ground — with separate
managements to meet future needs. Air Deccan’s
Brady agreed heartily, arguing that he has a
“small army” of security personnel
in his staff due to India’s bizarre policy
requirements. |
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Rub Your Eyes
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| May 10, 2006 |
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Business
Standard, Ravi Teja Sharma, Mumbai: Look,
and look again. But discreetly, please. It’s
only for the dreamy to know: India’s own
“Paradise on Earth”, the Kashmir
valley, is back as a holiday spot. According
to Aziz Wani, managing director of Jammu &
Kashmir Tourism Development Corporation (JKTDC),
the valley got 6 lakh tourists in 2005, and
as word-of-mouth and pictures of houseboat happiness
get around, this figure is set to touch 10 lakh
this year. To put that figure in perspective,
a mere 20,000 tourists visited the valley in
2003. Tour operators, hoteliers and houseboat
owners are understandably excited by the oncoming
tourist season. A welcome sign of change is
the introduction of flights by many new airlines.
There are currently as many as 10 flights a
day by Jet Airways, Indian, SpiceJet, Air Sahara,
Air Deccan and most recently by GoAir. |
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Abhijeet
Patil, CEO, Raja Rani Travels, a large Kashmir
tour operator, is palpably upbeat on his business
prospects this summer — a reason that
“we pushed GoAir to launch twice a week
flights to Srinagar from Mumbai” on the
assurance of “150 seats on every flight”.
Raja Rani is doing 10 tours, totalling 400-500
passengers, every week. Firoz Khan, chairman
of the J&K chapter of the Association of
Domestic Tour Operators of India, is expecting
an overall increase of 20-25 per cent in business
this summer. Visits to Srinagar typically include
day trips to Pahalgam and Gulmarg, so the operators’
role isn’t just confined to getting people
in and out of the valley. State-wise, Maharashtra
is India’s largest generator of traffic
to Kashmir, followed by West Bengal and Gujarat.
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While
the Grand Palace InterContinental in Srinagar
is witnessing high occupancy, the real buoyancy
is in the long-dormant houseboat business. The
main lake, Dal, boasts of some 1,200 houseboats,
offering around 3,000 rooms in all — in
a range of price brackets. Azim Tuman, chairman
of the Houseboats Owners Association, expects
full occupancy to rise to a nice 120 days this
season, up from the 90-odd days average that
houseboats have had to content themselves with. |
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The
lake had around 3,000 houseboats in 1947, and
if business begins throbbing the way it once
did, says Tuman wistfully, Dal could go back
to peak capacity. It may be a worthwhile investment.
Though a new houseboat that would’ve cost
Rs 2 lakh in 1980 now takes over Rs 2 crore
to make (timber cost having soared), luxury
rooms could attract tourists willing to pay
premium five-star rates. Whether that happens
could depend on how safe tourists feel visiting
Kashmir. |
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But
then, perceptions tend to lag ground conditions.
“With the relaxation of negative travel
advisories, we have started getting more international
tourists,” says Tuman. A European delegation,
adds Khan, has promised a change in safety rating
soon. “If that happens,” he says,
“Europeans will be able to get insurance
cover to travel to Kashmir, without which they
generally don’t travel.” The big
hope, though, is domestic traffic. In Delhi,
last year’s holidayers are still raving
about the bumper deals they got simply because
others were too scared to avail of the offers.
Word is out that the gentle santoor is the loudest
sound you hear in the valley nowadays. |
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| Once
a “tipping point” is reached, holidayers
long-denied this most ravishing of experiences
might just land in swarms. That would leave
everyone rubbing their eyes to see if they’re
not dreaming. |
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| SIA
Engg Calls Off JV Talks With Indian |
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| May 03, 2006 |
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The
Economic Times, Cuckoo Paul, Mumbai:
The Singapore-based aircraft
maintenance company SIA Engineering Company
has terminated its talks for a joint venture
with state carrier Indian. The two companies
had signed a detailed MoU in ‘03 to set
up a new company to cater to the maintenance
repair and overhaul (MRO) business in India,
but the plans have come to a naught. “SIA
Engineering has concluded its discussion with
Indian and is now looking at other partners
for the venture,” says Daniel Wong, the
company’s business development manager.
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The
rash of airline startups in India is currently
being followed by a rush for putting up aviation
infrastructure such as MROs. SIA Engineering
currently provides maintenance solutions to
more than 80 international airlines from the
US, Europe, West Asia and the Asia-Pacific region.
It is talking to various possible investors,
including the Wadia group airline Go Air, Mr
Wong said. India has a huge potential for the
maintenance of narrow body aircraft (with single
aisles) like the Boeing 737s and A 320 family,
which are being operated by several airlines. |
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| “Everyone
is talking about putting up facilities, but
the first one off the block will have an advantage,”
he says. India has witnessed a flurry of new
aircraft orders in the past two years. Aircraft
maker Boeing had close to 100 orders from India
in ‘05, which constitute about 10% of
its total orders worldwide. The US Company is
investing $100m in an MRO with Air-India at
Nagpur. Rival manufacturer Airbus is putting
up another venture with Indian for Airbus aircraft.
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GoAir
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| May 01, 2006 |
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| The Asian Age,
Agencies, Mumbai: GoAir expects to finalise
its proposed partnership with Singapore Airlines
to set up a chain of MRO facilities in India in
the next two month |
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