By Sandy Hendry
March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Kay Yew Koh, regional manager for Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea at Jet Airways (India) Ltd., comments on demand for travel to India in Asia following the Mumbai terrorist shootings in late November that killed 164 people, fare cutting and the past year’s 22 percent decline in the rupee. Jet Airways, the nation’s biggest domestic carrier, sponsored screenings of the Oscar-winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire” for travel agents around Asia to promote India. He spoke in an interview at a March 14 book signing.
“We find there is an increase in interest in India. The screening of the movie as well as the number of Oscars it has won have been a godsend. It has greatly helped India to offset the negative image from the November incident.
“Bookings were slow until February and I would attribute that partly to the recession, partly to the aftermath of the November incident. But we have attempted to stimulate the market by dropping fares and by working with retail agents to drop prices for packages to India. We have found that as long as the price is right people will still travel because there is still disposable cash lying around. I would say we dropped fares by about 20 percent.
“On the daily Hong Kong to Mumbai route we have seen the seat factor climb from the low sixties to the high sixties. Of course, we hope to bring it over 70 percent in April with the Easter holidays.
“The rupee has helped us but the decline is not as dramatic as the decline in the Korean won. We are also encouraging the government of India to do more advertising. If you have the time and the disposable cash, 2009 is the best time to travel because you will have bargains all over the world, especially in India.”
“Slumdog is certainly an advert for India, even though the focus is on the slums, it gives a very balanced, colorful perspective of the slums. This rags-to-riches story is quite typical of many Indian success stories, our own Chairman Naresh Goyal started out as a humble office boy earning $40 a month and today he is one of the wealthiest men in India so his story typifies the story that is in the book and the movie.”
“So far, the Taj Mahal is one of the icons of India but I think Slumdog is a more recent version of the vibrance of India. The real story is the vibrance of India and success amidst adversity. We are exploring different avenues for marketing tie- ins with the movie.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sandy Hendry at shendry@bloomberg.net
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