Keeping members e-ngaged

In a bid to engage its members during these tough times of COVID-19, TAAI-Northern Region has been organising a number of webinars covering a range of topics and will be continuing the same in the future.

Nisha Verma

The latest webinar by TAAI-NR in the series was the Online Travel Webinar by Avi Arya. Sharing key takeaways is, Neeraj Malhotra, Chairman, TAAI-NR, who says, “The purpose behind the webinar was to learn how to use social media in business. Avi shared many points and it was amazing to see how one can grow their business just by using the right tools. The idea was to educate members on using social media in their business so that they can grow.”

The team has already done some webinars earlier, says Gaurav Dogra, Hony. Secretary, TAAI-NR. “We did our first webinar on April 16 with motivational speaker Manish Behl, one with GMR on its readiness and preparedness before opening, and another with Expedia TAAP prior to this one. The next webinar will be with OYO on July 16. All our webinars saw an attendance of around 100-125 members. Other than these, we have also conducted our members’ meet and discussed many issues like airline refunds and even Vande Bharat mission flights. We will have another members’ meet soon,” he shares. Malhotra adds that they have been continuously organising such webinars ever since the lockdown started, so that the members remain motivated and sail through these tough times.

When asked about his views on IATA’s relevance during a crisis such as COVID-19, Malhotra said, “Almost 90 per cent of our members have already renewed their IATA certification. However, it has not been of much help to the agents in COVID times. Our members are really disturbed about the way IATA has handled the entire situation. They are only working for the airlines and not the agents because all their revenue comes from the airlines. They don’t get anything from us. For us, they are just collecting payments and giving to IATA. Their main clients remain the airlines.”

Malhotra further added, “Just like IATA has fixed dates to collect money from us, they should have fixed dates with the airlines as well to refund our money. We haven’t received any money for refunds filed in March also.”