Strengthening the roots

By CV Prasad
President, TAAI

This year we have consciously tried to urge our members to broaden their product portfolio and include more services. It was especially heartening to see that no issues were raised regarding ticketing at this year's TAAI convention.

The major achievements in the year gone by have been to revive the insurance scheme for travel agents and operators, which had been lying in cold storage. Most important has been the amendment to Resolution 832 of the travel agent's guidebook. If an agent has a dispute with an airline regarding an ADM, the operator can complain and the BSP will be removed immediately.

For the coming year, we have lots of expectations from a plethora of activities at hand. It would be wrong to attach a definite timeframe to any of these things because these are goals which are realised over a period of time.

An important policy towards which we are working, is on the service tax on travel agents. The methodology is wrong. Therefore we are working on it along with the airlines and ministries.

We are also trying to start programmes of three to four days duration in-house training sessions in order to inculcate entrepreneur skills in travel operators. We are already in talks with a few professors from IIM-B and IIM-A. We also have plans to commission a survey for which we are in touch with a reputed research company. There is also a programme for online segmentation of travel operators - the idea is to get agents classified in different categories as part of membership services.