Every business counts …..

Early preparation to work through the pandemic has made Travel Designer Group look at a positive future for the company. Jaal Shah, Group MD, Travel Designer Group, shares his story.

Nisha Verma

As an organisation, Travel Designer Group went through one of the most challenging times throughout its existence since 1999, claims Jaal Shah. “We started tracking the developments as early as January. When some parts of the world started going into lockdown, we started preparing, in early March, for a similar scenario in the countries where we operate. This helped us settle in seamlessly to work from home. However, with leisure, business and M!CE restricted, the only business left was from stranded travellers and quarantine requirements. It is all behind us now and we are seeing green shoots in some of our major markets. We should see more recovery in the coming months,” he says.

In the last few months, the company has launched REZ2020 and redesigned the Rezlive.com booking engine to suit new-age requirements. Shah says that personally, he spoke to over 400 clients globally via video conferencing to thank them and to learn about their post-COVID business expectations and how the two could work together.

What helped them ward off the evils of the pandemic is also their strong financial fundamentals. “Over the last two years, we analysed all risks associated with our business model such as currency exchange, credit and business disruptions, and strategically worked on strengthening our organisation on all these aspects,” he explains.

Affiliate.travel

The programme allows agents to distribute their own hotel booking platform without any investment. The platform is powered by Rezlive.com’s booking engine and comes with a payment gateway. “We launched a prototype earlier and after its success, released a full-fledged product in India. We launched Affiliate.travel in UAE and it has proved to be a success story so far,” Shah shares.