Saurabh Gupta | 29 Jan, 2010
Keeping the view that the year 2009 has been a tough year for the travel industry and the coming year will gather more momentum, CII and SATTE on Thursday joined hands to organize India Business Travel Conference as a companion event of SATTE 2010 in New Delhi.

Business travel bookings are expected to show a gentle upswing, as economy steps in 2010. Asia/ Pacific region has registered a much higher growth rate of 5.1 percent in November 2009 compared to 2.1 percent globally. As India’s economic prospects improve further with Asia’s financial recovery the business activities and travel is expected to shoe more volume growth in the second half of 2010. This is likely to gather more momentum in 2011, say experts during the conference.

Last year the travel industry plummeted by nearly 15 %. With reduced budget, business travellers started looking for lower fares, budget hotels and to control the number of trips it resorted to virtual alternatives like video conferencing.

It also outlined the challenges impeding growth of business travel in India which included Poor Urban infrastructure, inadequate facilities for development of the Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE), Expensive hotels and flights, shortage of trained manpower, experts added.

In his welcome address, Ankur Bhatia, Past Chairman, CII Delhi State Council & MD, Managing Director, Amadeus India Pvt. Ltd, spoke on the future of Corporate Travel and highlighted the needs of the new age business traveler, role of technology and the innovation which is driving the business travel to new scales across the globe.

Jyotsna Suri, Chairperson & MD of The Lalit Suri Group, in her theme address, mentioned that India as a country is not geared up for Business Travel, particularly MICE travel as the infrastructure is not up to mark.

It was also recognised that India currently attracts a very negligible share of USD 300 Billion Global MICE Market. Limitations of Infrastructure such as Convention & Meeting Centres, Hotels and high cost of travel are largely responsible for this situation.

It was believed that both Private and Public partnership is required to get India its fair share of this very lucrative tourism segment.

In terms of Domestic and Outbound MICE, it was felt that corporate buyers have an opportunity to structure their MICE programmes on a timely basis if they are to reap full benefits towards motivation and enhanced productivity of employees, as well as recognition & high sales from channel partners.

Similarly suppliers and travel agents can better leverage the MICE opportunity with specialist staff and MICE focussed offerings. In conclusion, all participants agreed that while all segments of the value chain is not ready there is an immense opportunity to quickly come up to speed and extract value for all stake holders.

The Conference was attended by large gathering of professionals across the travel industry spectrum & corporate buyers and supported by Amadeus India & Via World and KPMG India was the knowledge partner for the event.