C&K’s ‘Grand Celebration Offer’

Cox & Kings has launched a series of year-long events and offers curated for clients to mark its 260th anniver-sary in the travel business. The company recently hosted a glitzy evening to thank partners.

TT Bureau

The event was graced by KJ Alphons, Minister of State (I/C) for Tourism amongst many other key stakeholders and who’s who of the travel and hospitality fraternity. Alphons commented, “Cox & Kings has done an amazing job for the country by bringing international guests into India and taking Indians to destinations across the globe.”

Under the ‘260th Grand Celebration Offer’, customers can book any Duniya Dekho, Gaurav Yatra, Aamhi Travelkar, Instant Holidays tours, enter exciting con-tests and win 260 free holidays to Dubai, Thailand, Oman; Optional tours, 260 gift vouchers of `26,000 and `5,000 each.

Anthony B M Good, Global Chairman, Cox & Kings, attributes the success of the company to its foresight to changing trends, He said, “Progress only comes to those who keep their eyes and ears open and I hope we’d never be accused of not listening to the market feedback.”

With a legacy dating back to 1758, when Cox & Kings was appointed as general agents to the regiment of Foot Guard in India, Peter Kerkar, Group CEO, Cox & Kings believes the company has shared not only the nation’s history but also world history, making it relevant even today. “One of the significant milestones was when we went public. It was ironic that the Anglo-Indian company became an Indo-British company because we did a reverse merger, taking over our parent company. Another major milestone was when we did a 780 million buyout of a London FTSE 250 company— Holiday Break which was the market leader in edu-cation, camping and long-haul tours. It gave us a global scale in terms of opera-tion,” added Kerkar.

“Progress only comes to those who keep their eyes and ears open and I hope we     would never be accused of not listening to the market feed-back”- Anthony B M Good

Commenting on future trends, Karan Anand, Head Relationships, Cox & Kings, sees demonetization and GST as major economic changes in India. “This has resulted in more compliance among businesses. In travel, the immediate impact is the shift of business from the disorganized sector to the organized sector. Small family running businesses will also do well if they concentrate on segmentation. Technology companies are going to continue to disrupt but the hybrid model of marrying the offline with online is relevant today especially for complex packages.”

Kerkar opines that the travel agents need to skill themselves in terms of destina-tion knowledge. Once they become destination experts, clients will pay for their expertise and not the commoditised products like hotels and airlines. He further adds, “Our franchise partners are critical to growth. Our future investments will be putting in lot of money in marketing and driving clients to the franchise partners.”