With the international travel still marred by the pandemic, a third of the countries still under lockdown and those that have opened are allowing cross-border travel under strict vigil and conditions,tourism buyers in India are increasingly looking at the domestic tourism market and to SATTE 2021, scheduled on March 24-26, to conduct their first face to face business meetings in more than a year, says K. Vijay Mohan, Managing Director of Vizag based Holiday World and ADTOI Chapter Chairman of Andhra Pradesh & Telangana. VijayMohan is also President of Tours & Travels Association of Andhra (TTAA) and Coordinator – Southern Region of Network of Indian MICE Agents (NIMA).
“In the current scenario, SATTE would be a very important event. We may not have many outbound players because of the pandemic, but the event is very important for the domestic players to come to a single platform. Now is the time when all of us want to meet more of domestic players, talk to more hotels, talk to more transporters and try and buy some pre-purchases with the hotels. Keeping all this in mind, SATTE 2021 would be a very important event. I don’t see anything other than domestic travel happening for the next six month. It could even go up to one year. Domestic is the priority for all travel agents. And SATTE is the place to shop,” stressed Mohan.
Further underlining the importance of SATTE for the much needed contracting with suppliers in order to remain competitive, Vijay Mohan said, “I have to heed the OTAs, if I have to beat them. I will have to do some pre-purchases and get some very good rates from the hotels where I will be able to compete with them and be able to do business.Suppliers like hotels are all looking for serious buyers. Hotels are running huge losses, in crores, because of unsold inventories. Now is the time for me to fill that gap. I am confident of meeting some serious sellers, and face to face.”
He also underlined buyers’ much-needed face to face interaction in order to conduct meaningful business which he said has not been possible in virtual shows and meetings. “For whatever reasons, ‘virtually’ we have actually not been able to convince the hotels and other suppliers in the real ways we wanted to convince them. If you ask me, I will say, SATTE probably would be a savior for a lot of agents to do a lot of negotiations and get things going.”
Mohan informed that he has attended some 80 webinars, virtual trade shows, but says that he was barely impressed by most of the presentations. “To get a rate that I want I need to physically meet my suppliers. The suppliers needs to come forward and support travel agents rebuild our and their businesses. It’s a win-win situation for both of us. The travel agents can deliver better than OTAs if they get better rates. With all the story unfolding, we are hoping SATTE 2021 will be a real deal for all of us,” Vijay Mohan said.
