‘From now you’ll see TAAI in an all-new avatar’

An all new vision, a refreshed attitude, path-breaking business initiatives and an entirely new spirit of positivity is what TAAI 2006 is all about. Ashwini Kakkar, its president, tells Reema Sisodia about the convention and TAAI’s constitution, which will be amended for the first time in its history to make it more relevant today

Ashwini Kakkar President, TAAI

How would you like to describe the experience in the year that has gone by?

I can say with pride and satisfaction that the year that went by was absolutely fantastic. I was blessed to have the most brilliant team along with me through out the journey - the best thinkers and doers that the industry has - and together we could bring in and achieve path-breaking developments and success in the organisation.

We have been successful in bringing in a revision to the organisation and have given it a new direction. There have been some major positive developments. For example, we were successful in getting the railways and the travel agents to work together for the first time, which has revolutionised the business style of travel agents. On an experimental basis, we also managed to get some Web crawls and mobile commerce and other tech initiatives for the travel agents. We now intend to take it to the second level wherein we intend to make this technology commercially beneficial to the agents.

We were also successful in reducing the cost of insurance, which was brought down by almost one-third of the existing amount. Moreover, domestic BSP is getting steadily introduced in the course of this year.

What are the path-breaking changes that one will witness in the future with regards to TAAI?

After 55 years, we have taken a decision to bring about amendments in the constitution of TAAI to meet the requirements and demands of today. This change will be announced and done at the convention itself. Everything around us is changing at an extremely fast pace, the spectrum of services is changing and we have to adapt to it. We had to put things on the right track and we have tried to future-proof the organisation. We are taking a leaf out of the Indian software industry to be more professional and work as consultants.

This year our Mumbai office is also getting completely renovated. There is new enthusiasm in the entire team today and we have worked brilliantly together.

You have been successful in bringing UFTAA back into India after 22 years.

Yes, it is definitely a matter of pride to be successful in bringing UFTAA to hold its congress in India again after 22 years. Our team left no stone unturned at Turkey when we had the last lap of meetings to negotiate with the authorities to bring UFTAA to India. This is UFTAA's fortieth anniversary and it is a matter of pride that it will be held in India. It will definitely leverage our position further. Jimmy Guzder will be honoured at this year's UFTAA convention.

How was your recent meeting at Cambodia?

We had a tough and exciting meeting in Cambodia. In fact, it was rather historic since we had the highest attendance at any managing committee meeting ever. We doubled the average attendance with 38 attendees. We have also built strong ties with the Egypt trade that will enable us to do a lot of business with Egypt. We also did a country-to-country link with the Egypt association. We have also built strong ties with other travel associations like TAFI and IATO. The future is definitely bright.