TRAVELPORT By choosing big shopping malls, Travel Port is venturing into travel services through retail outlets. Javed Akkhtar, founder managing director of TravelPort, talks about their company and the changing travel scenario.

"We are a full fledged travel agency catering to both inbound and outbound travel services with main branches in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Pune. We are expanding in a major way with branches in other cities to be opened very soon. We have 65 franchisees and most of them are new entrants to this field. We have identified another 450 locations across India and by March 2008 about 150 of our out­lets would be operational," he explained citing that "for smaller agencies we pro­vide technological platform for their ticketing needs."

Akkhtar said, "What makes us different from the rest of the travel agencies is that we have innovative services - Travel Port is the first agency to provide trav­el services through a 100 sq. feet area in the atrium area of shopping malls. Our people at these retail out­lets not only advise and book tour packages but in many cases help out trav­elling people in getting their documentation done and provide them all the required assistance for travel and tourism related activities."
Presently, "We have 140 people employed by us and recently we took over Balaji Tours in Goa. In October 2008 we are launching our inbound division in Goa. We are now specialising in three segments of our travel trade i.e. sports, honeymoon and weekends. We have 350 destination options for weekend travels which can be accessed from eight big cities in the country," he revealed.

"Under the brand 'weekend breaks', this package has become immensely pop­ular with the urban crowd. Today, week­end travel has become a big thing with huge spending," Akkhtar explained.

TravelPort's future plan include hotel booking engine along with sup­porting the travel back office of Suvidha. He said, "We already have online B2B presence with travelportair.com and hotelbook.in which would be launched in September this year."

Source : Travtalk

Source: The Times of India, Edition: Pune, Supplement: Pune Times