Category: News

Mandovi Bridge Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways will inaugurate the newly built, 5.1 km long, four-lane, cable stayed bridge over river Mandovi in Goa on Sunday, 27th January 2019. The bridge will support and sustain burgeoning traffic in Panjim. It will facilitate routing of Mumbai bound traffic coming in from Bangalore via Ponda route and Old Goa towards NH-17, bypassing the main Panjim City. It will also help overcome the bottlenecks caused at Panaji KTC Circle, and Panaji Entrance as the same route is currently being used by local traffic as well as NH-17 Highway bound ... Read more

Kannur Airport Services under the union ministry’s UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) scheme have been launched in Kannur Airport, to provide air travel for Indian cities at low rates. IndiGo launched its first service under the scheme from Friday, 26th January 2019. Buying Tramadol http://www.pharmacynewbritain.com/tramadol/ The service is available from Kannur to Hyderabad, Chennai, Hubli, Bengaluru and Goa. SpiceJet will also start service under UDAN scheme soon. Besides the existing UDAN services in the country, the services will also be launched in Ghaziabad and Thiruvananthapuram. Earlier, KIAL has opted out of the UDAN scheme, citing it would adversely affect ... Read more

A workshop on ‘Andhra Pradesh: Building a Global Tourism Destination’ was organized at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi by Centre for Strategy and Leadership (CSL) in association with Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority (APCRDA), Government of Andhra Pradesh. Amaravati is aimed to become a world class capital and a tourism hub as envisaged by the Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. The Amaravati Tourism City is planned in proximity to the historic Undavalli caves along the river Krishna water front with the objective of boosting leisure, business, eco, health as well as religious tourism. APCRDA is the nodal agency which is developing ... Read more

The fifth National Budding Chef Competition by AURO University attracted over 15 teams across India with more than 75 participants. The participants were from Mumbai, Pune, Vadodara, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Rajkot, and Bengaluru. “The three-day gala chef competition marked the beginning of new era, which will surely establish Surat, Gujarat as the new culinary hub in western India,” said an official release. Chef Davide Cananzi (F&B Wizard), Chef Parvinder Singh Bali, Chef Sudev Sharma, Chef Veena Picardo, Reju S, Abhijeet etc were present at the event. The three-day annual National Budding Chef Competition, conducted from January 20-22, 2019 at the School of Hospitality, AURO ... Read more

Goa, the state known for its beach tourism, is planning to ban drinking liquor in public places and beaches.  Goa Cabinet has approved the amendment to the provision of strict disciplinary measures to ban food and cooking food besides drinking alcohol. As per the new law, the offenders will be imposed a fine of Rs 2,000 or three months imprisonment. Goa Tourism Minister Manohar Ajgaonkar said the amendment was aimed at preventing liquor bottles in the beaches, discouraging alcohol and cooking food. “Nobody can drink alcohol on our beaches and tourist places any more. Bottles cannot be carried there. Food ... Read more

Air India Express is all set to launch its first direct flight service from Surat to Sharjah on February 16, 2019 and will also expand services from Gulf to Kannur in Kerala. The carrier will deploy Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on this route and will be upgraded to four flights a week in the summer schedule. Surat-Sharjah will be the 47th non-stop direct connection of Air India Express between destinations in India and the Gulf region. Air India Express is set to further expand its operations in its summer schedule 2019, which shall commence on March 31, 2019.Operating with a ... Read more

Kenya Airways plans to launch flights from Nairobi to Rome, Italy and Geneva, Switzerland on its Boeing 787 Dream-liner four times a week starting in June this year. Kenya Airways previously operated to Rome and with the resumption of flights plus the addition of Geneva; this will bring the destinations Kenya Airways serves in Europe to 5. With this route, Kenya Airways will offer excellent connections from these two cities to its 43 destinations in Africa for business, diplomatic missions, and tourism. “The addition of flights to Rome and Geneva will be welcomed by both our leisure and business customers. ... Read more

Indian railway extends 22 pairs of train services running on Indian Railways system. It was announced by Piyush Goyal, Minister or Railways and Coal, in Rail Bhavan on Wednesday. These extensions will provide additional connectivity between various places in the country. Vinod Kumar Yadav, Chairman, Railway Board; Girish Pillai, Member Traffic, Railway Board and other senior officers were present on the occasion. Speaking of the occasion, the minister said, the extension of train services will reduce additional lie-over time of the trains across various Zones of Indian Railways. “The first successful experiment of extension was introduced on Gatimaan Express, which ... Read more

Fortune Park Hotels has opened its 47th hotel, ‘Fortune Select Forest Hill, Solan’. Owned by Forest Hill Resort, the property is located amid a forest and on a hill that offers a wide range of guest services and facilities to today’s traveller. Set in the Solan Valley, the hotel is located 300 km from Delhi and 50 km from Chandigarh and can be reached in less than 20 km of hilly drive. “We are extremely delighted to partner with the Owning Board of Forest Hill Resort. This is a crown jewel in the brand’s collection of hotels in leisure destinations. We ... Read more

Photo Courtesy: The National As per a recent report in China Daily, China’s performance the tourism has boosted the travel and tourism sector in the Asia-Pacific region in recent years. Number of overnight stay travellers in China had gone up 2.5 per cent during 2017, compared with 2016, reaching 60.7 million.  Meanwhile, around 140 million outbound trips are recorded during 2018, depicting an increase of 11 million from 2017. It said that international visitors bound for China accounted for nearly 20 per cent of all travellers and 8.4 per cent of the tourism revenue generated in the Asia-Pacific region. It ... Read more

India once again earned the distinction of being the fastest growing inbound market for Australia. Arrivals for the year-ended November 2018 stood at 352,500 – a growth of 18 per cent over the previous year. During October 2017 to September 2018, Indian tourists spent $ 1.6 billion on their Australia trip, a growth of 10 per cent over the previous year. India is now on track to achieve fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth in arrivals, as well as spend. Over the past few months, Tourism Australia executed few marketing activities to raise Australia’s appeal and attractiveness among the Indian ... Read more

Taiwan has recorded 10.8 per cent growth in Indian arrivals from January to November 2018 against 4.2 per cent growth in the previous year. India is Taiwan’s one of the major focus markets. “We feel great that we have double-digit growth from India and for the 2019-2020, we have a new strategy which is called ‘2 20:20’. In this campaign, the ‘2’ means that we focus on the top 2 per cent of higher income travellers who have the purchasing power to travel overseas. Then the first ‘20’ represents our aim to cooperate with top 20 tour operators in India, ... Read more

Outbound tourism from emerging markets, “especially India and Russia”, but also from smaller Asian and Arab markets is expected to continue to grow strongly, predicts World Tourism Organization. Based on current trends, economic prospects and the UNWTO Confidence Index, UNWTO forecasts international arrivals to grow 3 per cent to 4 per cent next year, more in line with historic growth trends. As a general backdrop, the stability of fuel prices tends to translate into affordable air travel while air connectivity continues to improve in many destinations, facilitating the diversification of source markets. Trends also show strong outbound travel from emerging ... Read more

Travellers can experience Abu Dhabi without entering the emirates now; leading media company Lonely Planet and the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) has signed a first-to-market agreement. As per the agreement, lonelyplanet.com will host the ‘Abu Dhabi Adventure Builder’ video player at www.lonelyplanet.com/abu-dhabi-adventure-builder For the next 12 months, enabling travellers to sculpt their own personal, visual itinerary from afar. Featuring 15 bespoke videos of experiences in and around Abu Dhabi, visitors can add up to five videos to the player at any one time, allowing them to explore the city and its surroundings in ... Read more

Preferences of Chinese tourists have been undergoing changes and more destinations are in their preferred lists, other than Paris and Eiffel Tower, said a tourism official from France. “Chinese tourists prefer to travel in smaller groups or alone. As per records around 48 per cent of Chinese tourists have been to Paris at least once during the past five years. Currently they prefer to visit lesser-known destinations and experiencing local culture as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre no longer enough,” said Christophe Decloux, managing director of Paris Region Tourism Board. China is the third biggest tourist source country for ... Read more