OTOAI gears up for elections

Outbound Tour Operators Association of India (OTOAI) will also be organising workshops in cities like Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Chennai.

NISHA VERMA

Outbound Tour Operators Association of India (OTOAI) recently organised a trade workshop with the Chinese province Yunnan for its members. Guldeep Singh Sahni, President, OTOAI, said, “We collaborated with Yunnan to bring information about the province to our members. We had earlier announced that we will now be focusing on provinces of various countries, so that the members come to know about different locations that they can sell. Yunnan has a lot of natural beauty and is a great destination for families, honeymooners as well as MICE. There is also a direct flight of four hours from Delhi to Kunming. Kunming has many good hotels with good MICE facilities, and is a gateway to Asia, with great connections to Burma and Laos. Packages can be designed involving different countries, which could be attractive for Indian customers. Today, Indian travellers want to see new places. Hence, after Yunnan, we also organised another workshop with Nanjing province in China on March 9, 2017.”

Apart from that OTOAI will also be organising educational workshops around the country, revealed Sahni. “We will be doing educational workshops in Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Chennai,” he said. Speaking on the Turkey educon, which was previously scheduled for March and was later postponed, he said, “We are planning to revive the educon and are looking at possible dates for the same.”
When asked about the convention, Sahni said, “We are working on the fi- nal details of planning our next convention. We will be making a formal announcement once the venue and dates are decided.” Another agenda on their cards is election. “We are preparing for our next election and the announcement for the dates will be coming soon,” he revealed. However, after the Service Tax amendment and Budget, the association has been trying hard to present their case in front of the government.

“We are in talks with the Finance Ministry regarding Service Tax and we will be following up on the same. We are reaching out to the GST committee as well, and are requesting them to look at outbound tourism separately when it comes to taxation, as we don’t even get CENVAT credit,” he said.

“We are preparing for our next election and the announcement for the dates will be coming soon”

– Guldeep Singh Sahni, DDP Trail Blazer 2016 and President, OTOAI