Channel Chat

The Official Voice Of ETAA

ETAA in talks with OTAs for exclusive co-branded products

Chetan Kapoor - Mumbai

Karl Dantas

The Enterprising Travel Agents Association (ETAA) is in talks with leading online travel agents (OTAs) to sell products specifically co-branded with the association. Speaking exclusively to Express TravelWorld, Karl Dantas, president of ETAA, said, "There are many OTAs and we are in discussions for the benefit of both parties. However, the module would be non-IATA centric but retail-agent centric, which is a new idea and we will see how it will turn out."

According to him, both the OTAs and the association's members are positive about the step taken in this direction. "This move will help in the growth of the OTAs and also ETAA as we would help each other. We have been in talks with these OTAs since the last four months and it will take couple of more months for us to officially announce the partner as there are certain technical grounds that we need to work upon," Dantas stated. Before finalising the OTA, another aspect that needed to be evaluated was the high overheads that it incurs so that not much impact falls on the association's members.

Membership for the ETAA, on the other hand, is also seeing interesting developments. The association's constitution has been recently amended to allow IATA agents as affiliate members. Dantas added, "Since TAFI opened its doors to us - the non-IATA agents - as affiliate members, it was only right on our part to do the same on our end. So we are now open to even the IATA agents to join us as affiliate members of ETAA." The association established its first chapter in Pune about two months ago and it now has a total of 105 members.

Talking about the long-awaited ETAA convention, Dantas seemed positive about holding it around February or March 2008 with the possible location of Dubai, Turkey, Greece or the United Kingdom. "We are looking at these destinations for our convention. However, it may not necessarily be in association with the tourism boards and we can also do it with independent hoteliers and travel agencies of that destination," he stated.