Travel Tuesday connects corporates

In a move to bring together corporates, MICE and travel trade decision makers on a single platform, Ashwin Singh, Managing Director, Plus Point Hospitality, along with support of Singapore Tourism Board and Singapore Airlines held their maiden industry networking event at Taj Dubai.

TT BUREAU

The event was conducted in two parts – the first one included decision makers from various corporates while MICE organisers attended a presentation by the Singapore Tourism Board and Singapore Airlines where they received very valuable information about the destination and the airline. The attendees stated that it was a very good meeting point as they were able to obtain valuable information as it was a personalised meeting with the two partners and they looked forward to another event in two months.

Fawad Khan, Sales Manager for Gulf and Offline countries in Dubai
I think it is a very successful collaboration with Singapore Airlines and Singapore Tourism Board. We appreciate the initiative by Plus Point Hospitality because there are not many opportunities to push the MICE segment from this market and grow Singapore more in terms of MICE movement. The best way to go to Singapore is through Singapore Airlines. We have lots of value additions that make the Singapore Airline ticket very unique. We have special offers, fares, MICE fares for our corporate customers and in terms of travel agents we provide them incentives in terms of group movements. At the end of the day, it is beneficial for Singapore Airlines and their stakeholders we have in the market for MICE movement to Singapore. We cover our travellers in terms of Singaporean Dollar vouchers, we have boarding pass privileges as well and a lot of sales enablers that help to sell our Singapore Airlines tickets with value adds for the travellers. We have expanded our network to many new destinations. For example we are operating to Wellington and Canberra from Singapore which is a new destination. It is called the ‘Capital Express’ because it is connecting Singapore, Canberra and Wellington; all three capitals in Australia, Singapore and New Zealand. Also we have enhanced our capacities to the South West Pacific Region and Europe as well. Currently, we are operating daily 777- 300 from Dubai, the only one in the city with four cabins onboard.

Ashvin Singh, Managing Director, Plus Point Hospitality Marketing
I started Travel Tuesday with an intention to bring together destinations and airlines, to create an ROI so that they get the chance to meet corporates directly. The opportunity here was to directly meet up with the corporates and see what they can offer in terms of airlines and destinations. There are many corporates from different sectors like automobile, banking, trading and various others who attended the programme. The reason to initiate this programme was that there are many regional offices in ME which need to find a contact so that they can connect with them and work together. A lot of regional offices are available here and most corporates don’t know that, so it is important to have some person who could be contacted. We will have Travel Tuesday every two months on a Tuesday. We decided that Tuesday was the best as the mid-week is a little easier for the clients to spend time away from office.

Abdul Rahman Mohideen, Area Director for ME and Africa Singapore Tourism Board
This is an important event as it gives us the chance to meet the corporates directly and share our message on what Singapore has to offer and what incentives schemes we have that we can check and request them to send groups to Singapore. For this market, people have a misconception that we are just a cosmopolitan and urban destination only for business but in fact we have unlimited experiences based on every city you name it we have it in one small destination; leisure, business etc. Singapore is more like a theme park. We expect and encourage meetings and incentives travel to Singapore to have many memorable meetings. In Singapore we have private villas and private pools which is more the type of requirements for ME travellers.