India bucks the trend..

It's great to read that Marriott International is still planning to open seven hotels in India this year. These new openings will offer employment opportunities in the hospitality sector across the country.

Marriot share our views on the Indian market, and state, “Despite the global economic slowdown and pockets of political unrest, India’s tourism sector continues to demonstrate encouraging resilience with total room-night sales increasing by over 500 percent over the past five years"

"The country’s rapidly-expanding middle class and buying power, growing industrial infrastructure, rich cultural heritage, and natural attractions are all combining to make India a strong inbound and outbound tourism market in which we are delighted to be a part.”

Marriot anticipate that they will require approximately 2,000 individuals across all operational and marketing disciplines to staff these seven hotels in the coming months, so that's great news for the Indian hospitality industry.

Marriott’s new hotels will represent three of the company’s six international brands:

luxury/The 320-room JW Marriott Hotel Bangalore

deluxe/ The 426-room Pune Marriott Hotel & Convention Center

moderate/Five new Courtyard by Marriott hotels:
- 199-room Courtyard by Marriott Gurgaon
- 153-room Courtyard by Marriott West Pune
- 193-room Courtyard by Marriott Hyderabad
- 164-room Courtyard by Marriott Ahmedabad
- 299-room Courtyard by Marriott Mumbai International Airport

When opened, these hotels will more than double the Marriott International hotel brands portfolio in India, which today consists of six operating properties. Another 14 previously-announced hotels are expected to open in India through 2012 as part of Marriott International’s global pipeline of hotels under construction, awaiting conversion, or approved for development.

Virgin trades on BA customers

We see Virgin Atlantic has managed to nearly double its pre-tax profits from £34.8 million last year to £68.4 million for the year from March 2008 to February 2009.

Virgin said the growth was down to a rise in premium travellers and “prudent management decisions”.

In a week that has also seen British Airways announce record losses of over £400m these results are even more staggering.

It doesn't need an aviation expert to spot a trend here, it's clear that BA are loosing their premium traffic, which provides a large proportion of it's profits as their customers are trading 'down' from First and Business class to Virgins Premium Economy.

We've always liked Virgin. We applaud their way of doing things, with an emphasis on customer service so we like to see them picking up business in this way.

In Richard Bransons book, 'Loosing my Virginity' he gives a speech to Airline executives which goes along the lines of:

"Its easy to become a millionaire in the airline buisiness" he says. "First of all you start off as a billionaire!"

Do what it says on the tin..

We see Thomson and First Choice have seemingly announced a new policy of allowing their overseas representatives to address and solve customer complaints during holidays. Is it just us, or is this stating the 'bleeding' obvious?

The TUI Travel companies said the rationale behind the move was ‘to recover service failures quickly and efficiently, reducing the need for customers to pursue issues with customer services on their return to the UK’.

Overseas representatives are already trained in accordance with company customer service guidelines, but are now also being encouraged to use their discretion and initiative to ensure that the merits of each case and ‘exceptions to the rule’ can be considered...

Inevitably things can and do go wrong with holiday plans, but a simple quick solution normally results in a converted customer, one who far from being a complainer becomes an advocate for the companies quick and efficient handling of any problem. Best fix things on the spot than allow resentment to grow and fester over two weeks and then result in a letter from the small claims court!

Ian Chapman, head of overseas for Thomson and First Choice, said: ‘Holidays are so important, never more so than in the current economic climate'. Meaning, we guess that clients are particularly keen to get their monies worth and less tolerant to things going wrong. All their overseas staff will undertake a three-day training programme to ‘motivate and inspire them in first class customer service'.

The fact is that you don't really need long sophisticated training programmes and dedicated phone lines to deliver exceptional customer service. You just need to do what it says on the tin! And then a little bit more.

How much more? Just a little bit. The runner who wins the 100m by 0.0001 of a second has just done that little bit more - so sometimes exceptional customer service is just answering the phone, or turning up when you say you will. Now that's good service!

All at sea with the French hoteliers..

We are pleased to see the Indian Cruise market starting to develop. Although spurred by price cuts, the Indian Cruise market is up 20 per cent in April.

Cruise tourism is still a niche segment in India and accounts for only two per cent of all outbound tourism. However, this year, travel companies are offering competitive packages to attract customers and the size of the Indian outbound cruise tourism industry is estimated to be worth about Rs 240 crore with around 80,000 people cruising per year, mostly taking shorter and faster cruises rather than those favoured by Americans and Europeans.

This reminds us of a tour we helped organise many years ago for an international coach tour operator, seeking to offer short, quick itineraries around Europe specifically for the Indian market.

The tours were a great success until we had a special tour request from a group of Jains. While their itinerary was straight forward, their dietary requirements threw our French and Swiss hoteliers into a spin!

" So that'll be 40 vegetarians for lunch, no meat, no chicken and no vegetables that grow under the ground..".

We can still hear the hoteliers response now..

Booming business for The Three Overcoats

ICELAND - It's good to see that the depreciation of the Icelandic Krona against most other currencies has meant an increase in international tourist arrivals.

Never the cheapest country in the world (we were taken aback on our first visit to this wonderful country a few years ago when we discovered that a taxi from Keflavic Airport to central Reykjvik would set us back more than USD200) the falling currency has meant that a visiting Iceland can be done without taking out a second mortgage.

One year ago, US$1 bought 75 ISK but today US$1 buys 125 ISK, much to the enjoyment of foreign visitors to the country.

In April 2009, more Swiss, German and American tourists visited Iceland than in in the same period in 2008, with an increase of over 6%, according the Iceland Tourist Board.

Political leaders and economists alike consider tourism to be a key industry to help Iceland on its way to economic recovery after the country’s bank collapse last October.

Footnote: Reykjvik is home to one of our favourite restaurants in the world - the fantastically named "The Three Overcoats". Wonderful.

In Flight Fat Tax..

We continue to be bowled over by Ryanair's brilliant skill for self promotion. Their latest headline grabbing offering is how they are considering charging a 'fat tax' after more than 30,000 passengers voted in favour of charging excess weight fees for very large passengers.

Their online poll, which is a pretty neat way of gathering customers email addresses, asked the public for cost reducing ideas. Even now, it's hard to write this blog as it is so blatenly a PR stunt. But what ever..

It seems nearly 30% of the public polled were in favour of excess fees for overweight passengers with the charge taking one of the following formats:

~Charge per kg over 130kg/20 stone (male) and 100kg/15 stone (females)
~Charge per inch for every waist inch over 45 inch (male) and 40 inch (female)
~Charge for every point in excess of 40 points on the Body Mass Index (+30 points is obese)
~Charge for a second seat if passengers’ waist touches both armrests simultaneously.

On a personal note, as one that has regularly crammed the entire contents of a suitcase into a small carry on to avoid the usual commotion at check in, one should consider if in fact, there is a grain of truth here. Why should we have weight restrictions on our bags when the passenger next to us is carrying the equivalent of two carry-ons around their stomach?

Hull FC vs Travel Trade?

Farewell and congratulations to Nick Cust who is planning to step down from the board of HolidayBreak plc at the end of the year.

Nick joined the main board in 1997, having previously served as an associate director and before that he was joint MD of Superbreaks. Nick was awarded an OBE in the 2009 New Year’s Honours List in recognition of his services to tourism.

Our own favourite story about Nick dates back to a Travel Agent conference we both attended in the rather grand setting of Monte Carlo.

During one of the conference afternoons, at a coffee break in one of the sessions, we struck up a conversation with Nick about the Rugby League Challenge Cup Final (as it then was) to be played at Wembley that afternoon. As it happened, for some reason, we had been upgraded to a room in the Grand Hotel on the square next to the Casino and one of the, rather nice, features was satelite TV.

Nick quickly demonstrated his lightening decision making facilities. Abandoning the rest of conference we quickly de-camped to our room where, complete with bottles of over-priced 1664, we spun-out the rest of the afternoon watching Hull FC vs Wakefield.

Those were the days.