Focus on developing soft skills

Travel trade associations are a great way to reach out to small and medium-sized travel agents from remote parts of India through their membership. Aviareps India recently hosted an exciting evening for members of TAFI Western Region Chapter to showcase their various products.

Hazel Jain

Taking advantage of the large database that the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) has, Aviareps India, along with TAFI’s Western Region Chapter, hosted an educational event in Mumbai recently. Sharing some details of the event, Jitul Mehta, Western India Chairman, TAFI, said, “We recently had a Western India Chapter meeting in Mumbai, followed by a presentation by Aviareps India about its various products. This event was fully sponsored by them. They showcased various products including Utah, Budget Car, Belgium, and Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts Sri Lanka. It’s a great value-add for our members. More than 100 members attended this event.”

He is happy that the chapter’s members are an active lot. “It is one of the best chapters of TAFI, thanks to our members. They keep us on our toes. They are highly active and demanding, they are asking questions, so we have decided that we will do a lot of product presentations for them, working with different consulates, as well as other stakeholders like the airlines and VFS. We are providing them a platform to network so that they can do business easily. We are also working on couple of projects to educate them on some soft skills,” Mehta added.

“I want our members to develop soft skills for themselves and their staff because we are in the service business. So, it is upon TAFI to educate its members so that they can sustain and grow their business in the long run and are equipped to deal with future challenges. A lot of them have registered for our online courses that we are offering free of cost on our website,” he continued.

TAFI has tied up with a company to offer more than 100 skilling courses, which include soft skills and education on specific topics.

Ajay Prakash, TAFI President, said, “This will be offered on our website free of cost to all our members. The integration is happening right now and these courses will be online soon. These are some of the things we will be building upon.”

Ellona Pereira, Head, Aviareps India, said, “We have been working with various national and regional travel trade associations. We find it a great experience imparting training on all our products. We recently hosted an event for the TAFI members. We covered some of our products such as Utah, Visit Brussels, and some of our new products like KKday, Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts and Budget Rent-a-Car.”

She added, “Destinations like Utah are unique products and since it’s a relatively new entrant to the Indian market we feel it is important to reach out to every travel agent to create awareness about the destination. Our target is to reach out to as many travel trade associations as possible and we have done similar events like this in Delhi as well as other cities in India.”