SKAL Mumbai extends invitation to govt

The association will now be offering its membership to government bodies like MTDC and India Tourism as well as hospitals to encourage growth of medical tourism.

One of the main aims of ParthaChatterjee on taking over as President of SKÅL Club of Bombay this October is to offer memberships and actively engage with all government bodies that are involved with travel and tourism and invite them to be members of the club. This includes the Maharashtra Trade Development Corporation (MTDC), IRCTC, as well as India Tourism. Chatterjee adds, “We will actively engage with MTDC for all our events and offer our membership to their senior executives. We will be meeting the MTDC Chairman and some of their senior executives this month to finalise our partnership. It is important to involve the government. IRCTC is also an important constituent as is India Tourism and we will be approaching them as well. The Principal Secretary of Maharashtra Tourism is already our member.” Another entity that SKÅL Mumbai will be tapping is the airport, which is relevant to its entire member base. “We want to get them more involved with the trade. We are also talking to premium restaurant owners who have never been part of SKÅL. We will be introducing medical tourism for the first time this year and we are approaching some of the top hospitals and their doctors to join us as well. In fact, we have invited some of them to be part of our event for them to see how we function,” the president adds. This year, SKÅL Mumbai introduced something new in the form of SKÅL Bazaar, where destination companies can set up stalls and talk about and expose their destinations to the travel agents at special prices. SKÅL Mumbai has 170 members right now. Chatterjee says, “For 2017, one of the events we want to organise is the SKÅL Ball around the March-April period. We are also planning a unique event for which we are partnering with Chambers of Commerce as co-hosts. One of the first will be with the British Business Group, the Cigar Club, Indo-German Chamber of Commerce and the European Business Group to give members an opportunity to interact with them.”