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Kolkata: The Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) and the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) have decided to support Air India and other national carriers to during their hour of crisis.
Hence, they will now ‘persuade’ their customers to fly Indian and avoid the foreign carriers. This decision was taken at a committee meeting of TAFI and TAAI earlier this week. This was confirmed to The Hindu by Vijay Mohan Raj, Chairman of TAAI, South India. Mr. Raj denied that there was any appeal by the Centre to the over 51-year-old body in this regard.
Rajji Rai, TAAI, president, said that the organisation felt that it was its duty to offer all support and provide all possible assistance to Air India, in order to improve its profits and the bottomline.
Rai stated that the associations would help all the national carriers like Kingfisher, Jet, Indigo and SpiceJet besides Air India. Travel Agents will promote the Indian carriers with customers who wish to fly abroad and promote offers of Indian carriers only.
He informed that 85 per cent of the total ticket bookings are done through travel agents in India with the foreign carriers accounting for about 60 per cent of the business.
Pradip Lulla, president of TAFI, said that discussions were going on with senior officials of the national carriers. He informed that the CMD of Air India has been most pro-active in his approach and had expressed his eagerness to consider any constructive proposal from the travel agents which could help Air India. However, the TAAI and TAFI decision is also linked with the zero commission regime started by most foreign carriers.
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