TravTalk India Online Magazine
Swiss DMC Watch & Cow, represented in India by Apsara Voyages, has trained its eyes towards the India market to get more Indians to explore the Alps through its bespoke offerings.
Hazel Jain
Representing Watch & Cow in India is Sushil Bhatt, MD, Apsara Voyages, who introduced this product to the travel trade in Mumbai recently at the event. “We have been talking about this for the last couple of years and once it was ready, we wanted to announce it to the trade. We recently did our first event in Mumbai and plan to have similar presentations in other cities in India to create awareness. People know Switzerland anyway, but this is going to offer a totally different experience. It will offer only customised, high-end programme,” he says.
“Demand for Switzerland in India is huge. Group tours are off the shelf products and that is only to make people understand what Switzerland has to offer. In Watch and Cow, they pick and choose and we customise for them. I see good demand for that, specially from the high-end travellers – they don’t want anything off the shelf,” Bhatt adds.
The company is very well-established globally. “Their philosophy is that they don’t want to try the entire world at a time. So, they start with South America and India is the third country on their list. They see demand for customised products from India. I feel even if we do 200 pax, we are happy. We want quality people, who appreciate the destination, New Delhi, Kolkata, South India, we already have a customer from Bhubaneshwar. We will try and select 8-10 cities with repeated efforts,” he further adds.
Indians want to explore
Pierre Jaccard, President, Watch and Cow, has been in this business for many years now and he started this company for incoming into Switzerland. He started with two countries and the third one he wanted to start was India.
He says, “Our product is a way to promote tourism throughout the Alps. There are many different ways to discover Switzerland, but we concentrate on exploring the Alps.
