Category: Top Stories

Kuwait International Airport has opened a new terminal building (T4) with an aim to increase capacity to 25 million passengers by 2022. Kuwait Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah launched the new terminal earlier this week. T4, which was planned and built within two years, is a 14-gate facility which is designed to handle an extra 4.5 million passengers annually. “Passenger numbers are expected to each 40 million annually by 2037, creating annual income of no less than $800 million and about 40,000 jobs,” Sheikh Salman  Sabah Al-Salem Al-Humoud Al-Sabah, director general of the country’s civil aviation authority. The new ... Read more

As part of celebrating its 18 years of commencing non-stop London – Delhi route on July 5, Virgin Atlantic has announced a new reward programme with additional rewards called FlyingCo for SMEs. The free-to-join rewards programme, businesses will earn FlyingCo miles on all aspects of business travel like flights, home stays, foreign exchange, in addition to FlyingClub miles that individual travellers earn being part of the regular loyalty programme. “We have been working with both bigger and medium and small corporate entities in the Indian market. But what we needed was a better proposition. That is why we introduced the new FlyingCo ... Read more

Uzbekistan will start issuing an electronic visa for citizens of 51 countries, including India, from July 15. It also announced a 5-day visa-free transit regime for 101 countries. An electronic visa will be issued for a period of 30 days in the territory of Uzbekistan with a single entry. The issued electronic visa will be valid for 90 days from the date of its issuance. The time for consideration of applications for registration and issuance of an electronic visa is two working days, excluding the day the application was filed. Therefore, the application for processing an electronic visa must be ... Read more

The world’s first Angry Birds World entertainment park has opened its doors to residents and visitors to Qatar. Located in Qatar’s largest fashion, dining and entertainment destination, Doha Festival City, the 17,000 sq.m park comprises an indoor space of 6,500 sq.m. The park also has an educational attraction, the Big Tree, intended for children to learn about science and express themselves creatively and musically. There is also the world’s first indoor and outdoor, multi-level karting track. An impressive 261 meters long, the track is modeled after “Angry Birds GO”. The tree also houses “Own the Sky”, a 106-metre zip line that ... Read more

The Israel Ministry of Tourism (IMOT) is all set to tour four Indian cities between July and August, with an aim to attract Indian tourists to the country. The campaign, which will feature roadshows in the cities, will highlight the West Asian nation as an attractive tourist destination. The Ministry will begin its maiden roadshow in Nashik on July 19 followed by Ahmedabad on August 27, Kolkata on August 29 and concluding in New Delhi on August 30. With an aim to enhance commercial ties with the Indian travel fraternity and strengthen media relations, the events will start off with ... Read more

Akash and Isha Ambani at the 41st AGM of Reliance Industries. After the mobile telephone market, Reliance Industries is about to disrupt the cable television and fixed-line broadband market with ‘JioGigaFiber’, their fixed-line broadband service. It will offer high-speed internet, ultra high definition entertainment on large screen TVs, multi-party video conferencing, voice-activated virtual assistance, virtual reality gaming and digital shopping as well as smart home solutions It will be launched in 1,100 cities. Registration will begin from August 15. Along with the launches ultra-high speed fibre-based broadband services Reliance Jio will offer a Set Top Box for TV, which is ... Read more

Kerala Tourism has always been lauded for its thought-provoking, creative social media campaigns. And, this time, the Tourism Department is competing in SAMMIE- Best Social Media Brand Award. Announcing this, P Bala Kiran IAS, Director, Kerala Tourism, has tweeted saying,” Our Kerala tourism is a big contender in the running for the prestigious SAMMIE- Best Social Media Brand Award, this year. Together, let us ensure Kerala Tourism’s win by casting our votes right away. Everyone, flock this way to vote: https://newsfeedsmartapps.com/BSMB/2018/index.php#/userSelection/2101020858/Travel/Kerala%20Tourism“. The second edition of Best Social Media Brands is looking for human brands, managed to have disrupted a fairly new ... Read more

Sri Lanka has recorded a growth of 15.3 per cent in tourist arrivals during the first half of 2018 compared to the same period last year. According to the statistics from the Tourism Ministry, 1,164,647 tourists arrived in Sri Lanka between January and June. 1,010,444 tourists visited the country during the same period previous year. In June, 146,828 tourists arrived in the island country, registering 19 per cent increase from the arrivals recorded in June 2017. India remains the largest market for Sri Lanka in June, followed by China and Britain. Visitors from India grew 18.4 per cent to 32,971, and arrivals from ... Read more

A private tourist bus operator – Chikkoos Travels- at Varkala in Kerala has painted his buses with the pictures of famous porn stars Johny Sins, Keiran Lee, Ava Addam, Mia Malkova and Mia Khalifa. A twitter user Alok Sharma tweeted the pictures of the buses saying, “The tourist buses in Kerala are way too BOLD with their art. From JohnnySins to KeiranLee AvaAddams to ALETTAOCEANXXXX to MiaMalkova and miakhalifa they’ve got’em all covered. Its like Brazzers on Wheels!” Lots of people shared and re-tweeted the message and in due course it came into the notice of Johny Sins himself. In ... Read more

While most of the football fans spend their time in front of the TV to cheer up their favourite teams, 30 football enthusiasts could witness the pre-quarter finals at the Russian stadium itself. And, it was Bon Voyage International, a Trivandrum-based tour operator, made their dreams a reality. Bon Voyage, headed by Sujith Vaidyan, conducts tour programmes worldwide, with specialization in Sports tours, Destination Weddings etc. “Majority of the inquiries we have received this time for the World Cup special tour package, were from the casual travellers in Kerala,” said Sujith Vaidyan . The FIFA World Cup package was for ... Read more

A forum on China-Maldives Tourism Cooperation was held in the Maldives on Tuesday, 3rd July 2018 to expand tourism ties between the two countries and attract more Chinese tourists to visit Maldives. Government officials and leading travel operators from both Maldives and China has attended the meeting. “The contribution of Chinese tourists to the tourism industry of Maldives is considerable,” said Moosa Zameer, Tourism Minister of Maldives. “China stands first in the number of tourism arrivals in the past few years,” he added. “This is a remarkable step in our efforts to increase the number of Chinese tourists and to strengthen ... Read more

ITC Kohenur Hyderabad ITC Limited said it plans to add 2,500 rooms to its hotel segment to take the total inventory to 12,000 in five years. At present, the group has 9,500 rooms. Sanjiv Puri, Managing Director, ITC said the company would invest Rs 2,500 crore in the next two to three years in Telangana, among others, to set up an integrated consumer goods manufacturing unit and logistics facility and for the capacity augmentation and efficiency of Bhadrachalam Paperboard. ITC has appointed a committee internally to examine the possibility of foraying into the healthcare space. Once it submitted its report, ... Read more

“Non-participation of Kannur Airport in the UDAN scheme is due to the possible loss of income for our state,” said Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarai Vjayan. He was delivering his keynote at the MP’s meet in Thiruvananthapuram. “If we are part of the UDAN scheme, only one aviation company can operate in a particular route. It will adversely affect Kannur Airport, which is striving to be one of the best airports in India. The union ministry has assured to complete all the formalities related to the airport by 15th August,” he added. The inauguration of the airport is scheduled in ... Read more

The new, improved infrastructure facilities and air connectivity to the North-East have made it a tourist hotspot among travellers, and is expected to grow by 10-12 per cent in 2019. “The bookings for North-east have gone up by 18 per cent as compared to the same period (April-June) last year. Tourism in the North-east region is expected to grow by at least 10-12 per cent even in the next year,” Cox & King’s Head, Relationships, Karan Anand told PTI. Improved air facilities is considered as one of the prime reasons for an increase in tourists in the eight northeast states. “Air connectivity ... Read more

With an aim to increase the domestic tourist inflow to the state by 50 per cent by 2021, the Kerala Tourism Department is planning to have a five-month promotional campaign in nine states. The outbreak of Nipah virus has adversely affected the tourism industry of Kerala in recent months. The five-month promotional drive is to overcome this situation and attract more tourists to the Gods Own Country. Fifteen B2B meetings are scheduled between July and November. The first phase of the campaign will commence with a Travel and Tourism Fair in Kolkata (West Bengal) from July 6-8, followed by tourism ... Read more