Tailored holidays for Indians

Saffron World B.V., the Netherlands based Destination Management Company (DMC) handing Foreign Independent Travel (FIT), Leisure Groups and M!CE to Europe, is making sure that they are catering to specific requirements of Indian travellers, as they gear up for better business after reorganising and revamping the office as well as the sales team.

TT Bureau

Saffron World B.V. is the Netherlands based DMC handing foreign independent travel (FIT), Leisure Groups and M!CE to Europe and is working towards recreating its hold on the market. Ravi Gosain, Managing Director, Saffron World B.V., claims that they are strategically placed in the Netherlands, which has better connectivity to all parts of Europe.

“We have set up this company in late 2018 and did good business from India and other parts of the world before COVID hit tourism sector. We have now reorganized and structured our back office and sales team in India to handle B2B clients,” he said. “All our products and services are built as per the requirements of Indian travellers. Our sales teams are based in Delhi and Mumbai to help travel agents and tour operators for services in Europe,” he added.

He mentioned that most of the European DMC’s either have less staff or no time to handle FIT business. “This makes us different from them because we have full-fledged sales team to reply to clients effectively. Saffron team is doing direct sales calls, attending various travel trade marts, and doing roadshows in all major cities as well as Tier II & III cities to network with existing as well as new customers. Presently, we are getting excellent response from B2B agents, especially after exhibiting at SATTE 2023 and we are quite hopeful to do good business despite challenges like delays to get appointment for Schengen visa and expensive flights tickets.

To make further headway in the market, Gosain informed, “In last one year we work hard to create our supplier across Europe and contracted with many hotels, transport companies to curate best value packages for our customers. We are focused to specialize in tailor made packages which is time consuming but have a great business opportunity. We have set up the targets to get sizeable share of this segment and working hard on strategies to achieve that.”

Talking about the Indian market, Kumar Utkarsh, General Manager-Sales, Saffron World B.V., said, “India is one of the important outbound market for us and we are very happy to see that travellers demands are expanding beyond traditional tourism products and destinations. The most important for us is to understand tour operators or travel agents’ requirements, which they send us on behalf of actual travellers.”

He further added, “Thus, unless we have good destination knowledge and experience, it is impossible to create an appropriate or rather saleable product for them. Our management invests maximum time in searching for good places to stay, local tours and experiences, food choices, transport etc and get the best available options to maintain quality and provide best value for every single rupee travellers spend on their holidays through Saffron world.”

He shared that they have strategically planned activities to market their products in India by rebuilding the sales team in major source markets.

“We also take part in different city roadshows and trade fairs like SATTE and OTM. Similarly, our online presence and activities are moving with its pace and will get required impetus depending upon future demands and market growth,” he added.