TAFI TN Chapter Gets The Green Signal

Lakshmi Subramanian - Chennai

Until recently the Tamil Nadu operations of the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI), a representative body of the travel industry was managed by the Karnataka chapter. Nonetheless, with a budding tourism market, the need for an office was certainly the need of the hour. In this regard, on September 11, 2004, the TN chapter was successfully launched in Chennai. "There are several members in TN and we found that TN has huge potential. Therefore, we decided to launch an exclusive chapter for the TN members. We have 70 members at present," said Nawaz Sharif, chairman, TAFI. Galileo sponsored the inaugural function of the TN chapter.

When asked about the reasons for the delay in opening the TN chapter, the chairman said, "There were several issues such as delayed ECMs that had to be resolved before launching this chapter. Once the new managing committee took over, the issues were resolved and this chapter was launched." There are plans in the pipeline to open chapters in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir and strengthen the existing chapters at Hyderabad and Kerala.

The main activities of the TN chapter will be to work for the upliftment of the travel industry and fight for the rights of travel agents. The chapter will also ensure that the grievances of travel agents are represented appropriately. The membership fee is Rs 4,000 with Rs 2,000 going towards initiation and Rs 2,000 towards subscription. Thereafter, the annual subscription will be Rs 2,000. The office bearers include the chairman, N Ramji (Travel Masters India Pvt Ltd), secretary, H M Talha Rehman, and treasurer Basheer Ahmed (Chennai Metro Travels Pvt Ltd.) The travel agents in TN are very confident about the success of this new chapter.