TravTalk India Online Magazine
In a marathon session of Q&A for its members, TAAI discussed their woes while answering and guiding them on some of their queries. From Air India to bank guarantee, MOT and IATA, this was a no-holds-barred virtual meeting.
Hazel Jain
In a marathon session that lasted about three hours, the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) national office bearers fielded a myriad of queries from its members recently and offered guidance wherever required.
Jyoti Mayal, President of TAAI, who was chairing the session, also urged members to register themselves on the Ministry of Tourism website. She said, “I have said this before and I will say it again – please register yourself on the MOT website. Very soon, agencies who don’t do this may not be allowed to call themselves a travel agent.We have actually gotten every document simplified. But if you still face any problem with registering, please reach out to us and we will sort it out.We are sure it will happen, may be not in the form of licensing, may be in another form, but it will.”
Adding more details to this is Jay Bhatia, Vice President, TAAI, who said, “Our regional chapter chairmen are also taking it up with their respective state governments and our Andhra Pradesh and Telangana chapter has already gotten an approval. It is mandatory to register with the government first. We got that breakthrough because the representation from our chairmen was then submitted to the government – so every person who wants to become a travel agent or a tour operator must now register themselves with the government and needs to be a member of any national recognised association.”
Air India woes
Answering questions on Air India issues, Bhatia added that the TAAI team is aware of the situation. “We completely accept and acknowledge the challenges members are facing with Air India. We have taken up the matter with Air India multiple times and we are not stopping. But they don’t understand. The same has been highlighted to MoCA. The association has also written to MoCA to help resolve matters with Air India bookings multiple times and has sought an online appointment directly with the PM. Even if it’s after 15-20 days, we want the Air India issue to be resolved once and for all. They have been taking travel agents for granted for a very long time,” he explained.
Adding to this, Mayal said, “We were the first people to get appointments with Air India but now associations are not even getting any meetings with them. I had made a request to consider all our points in my last meeting with them. We continue to talk to them. The new Secretary is too new right now. We need to just continue our talks with Air India which we will do.”
COVID task force
Bhatia also shared that some of the TAAI office bearers are now part of a COVID task force set up as part of FAITH, along with other associations and they are working towards plasma donations, oxygen concentrators, etc that may be required by members. There will be a centralised team that will be available to assist with this. Sharing her perspective on the role of testing for safe travel, Mayal said, “Our regional chapters have been requesting their respective states for lowering the rate for RT-PCR tests wherever possible. At a lot of airports also, we managed to bring it down to `600-700. However, we must remember that TAAI is not into business, we are only there to help people.”
