TravTalk India Online Magazine
The travel company will focus on unique segments such as women-only, differently abled and mature groups this year as well as introduce newer experiences and destinations, informs Bharat Bhushan Atree, Managing Director, Caper Travels.
Caper Travels has constantly been reinventing their products to better suit the evolving clients and to keep up with the changing times. This year is no exception as the travel company has plans to launch innovative and offbeat programs for those with wanderlust. Atree informs that the new offerings will revolve around the North East as well as unexplored parts of central India. He adds, “For the niche market, we are also focusing on neighbouring countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Dubai which can be combined with India for long-haul tourists coming from far off places.”
Caper will also concentrate on promoting special segment group programmes for women only, elderly 60+, and differently abled groups while scanning newer destinations especially for adventure activities. The wellness segment has shown promising growth thanks to the increasing interest among Westerners towards holistic and traditional forms of wellbeing. “We are also eagerly awaiting the launch of our new software which will assist the agents and clients both in making travel bookings hassle free,” he adds. An ongoing project, the online portal for travel aims to provide interactive end to end solutions for all processes and for all departments be it sales, operations or accounts and for any other travel related query. With its use, the partner agents will be able to view all the travel products and inventory online while booking and generating flight tickets will get more convenient with instant confirmation vouchers. An extensive type of MIS with a log and history of all activities is being used and the portal can handle boundless number of users and a cosmic amount of bookings simultaneously.
Giving an update on it, Atree reveals, “The program is in the trial stage and is being used and developed for in house requirements but I plan on launching it globally for the benefit of other travel trade partners. This will not only eliminate human error and cost, but also save the operators time and cost. A handful of trained manpower can handle volumes of reservations and operations’. We handle about 6000 – 8000 passengers every week and get numerous bookings on a daily basis, it would not have been humanly possible to handle these large numbers without our automated system.”
As 2017 has begun with ambiguity with a clouded picture of changes in rules and regulations concerning service tax and the new GST regime,Atree opines that it maybe challenging to understand and incorporate in the current constitution of business and says, “Outbound tourism can become expensive because of elevated tax structure which in turn will impact the demand.”
He also mentions that the yet-to-be-introduced GST has caused anguish among many as the law is yet obscure.“Handling of the same would be our first challenges implementing the GST may alter the requirement.
Secondly, working on shrinkingprofits to sustain oneselfbecause of competition, theoperating expenses are escalatingas we have to keepour trained human resourcestable,” he elaborates.Atree draws attentionto one of the biggest challengesfaced today which isthe lack of skilled staff in theindustry. Talent is scarce andthose present are always onthe lookout for more lucrativeoffers creating disruptionand disturbance in thefraternity. “It is becoming theneed of the hour to not just\ to strengthen but to be capableof adapting to the latestand newest that the contemporarytimes have to offer. Itis important for the companiesto provide and invest intheir employees for bettertraining and keeping themfresh with all the currenttrends globally.”
