Gaurav Bhatura
Country Head-India Thai Smile
MICE offerings
It is the policy of the Thai government to give priority to promote MICE industry and tourism business as one key engine of economic growth. With warm hospitality and the easy-going nature of the Thai people, Thailand offers a very welcoming environment to tourists and businesspersons alike. Through our easy accessibility as an aviation hub, legendary hospitality and value-for-money services, you stand to gain from choosing Thailand as your vacation and business destination.
At Thai Smile, our business policy is definitely in line with the government policy. Excellent customer experience is one of Thai Smile's key strategies. Thai Smile Airways offers excellent services in every touch point from reservation, check in until in-flight service. In addition, passengers can enjoy the comfort in the new Airbus A320-200, which offers smooth and safe travel. Thai Smile Lounges will serve food and beverages with complete comfort. As such, excellent service from Thai Smile Airways flight attendants, who are committed to providing comfort and warm Thai hospitality with heartfelt services through their smiles, a unique Thai character, that is internationally recognised. Furthermore, passengers are able to enjoy the food of your choice. For Indian travellers, meal will be prepared in Indian style cuisine under strict faith based guidelines. Jain vegetarian and non-vegetarian will be your choice of meal on board.
Forging partnerships
The partnership is in our marketing plan. Thai Smile applies stringent standards of partner assessment to its implementing, planning and policy partners. We look at standards across a range of key indicators according to criteria of long-term adherence, compliance, and procedure implementation. All this helps to ensure that Thai Smile partners can work sustainably and deliver the highest-quality support where it is most needed.
Incentives
Our flight will operate with A320-200 aircraft which will offer a Premium Economy Class (12 seats) and Economy Class (150 seats) and host of features for passengers, such as the in-flight entertainment experience and specially designed Indian cuisine & beverages to passengers. Thai Smile offers free of charge baggage allowance of 40kgs for Premium Economy or Smile PLUS and 30kgs for Economy or Smile Class. Moreover, all passengers of Royal Orchid and Premium Economy Class can enjoy a privilege lounge at Suvarnabhumi where passengers can treat themselves to a multitude of free snacks and various choices of hot or cold drinks with free Wi-Fi Internet access.
Thai Smile offers free of charge baggage allowance of 40 kgs for Premium Economy or Smile PLUS and 30 kgs for Economy or Smile Class
Zhou Zengrong, General Manager-India China Eastern Airlines
China Eastern Airlines has a daily service between Delhi-Shanghai/Beijing and ex-Kolkata to Kunming/Hangzhou. 2016 has been a great year for us as an airline as we have added new international routes and continue to expand our domestic and regional services in China. We have been adding new planes in our fleet regularly. We tremendously value the business that we generate from India and have seen a great year in terms of revenues and load factors. We have an all-time average load factor of over 85 per cent (average) and have improved our share of revenues from India to North America, Japan, and South Korea in particular. We connect to almost 14 cities in Japan from our hub at Shanghai-PuDong. India continues to be an important market for us at China Eastern and we keep evaluating new routes that will connect Shanghai to different cities in India.
MICE offerings
Since we fly from both Delhi and Kolkata, we are able to carry sizeable business from India. We work very closely with our partners, travel agents and tour operators and ensure that we provide them with best possible airfares and seats on our flights and ensure that we have separate check-in counters, in-flight announcements, and vegetarian meals (including Jain meals) on our flights.
Forging partnerships
We have not been part of any specific events/exhibitions from India. For us each and every business is equally important and we give equal attention to all movementsMICE/groups and to all our regular FIT travellers as well.
Incentives
We have special dedicated check-in counters for MICE travellers and also have staff dedicated to assist all our customers. We currently have a scheme wherein we allow a waiver of 3-5 kg excess baggage for each passenger who enrolls in our frequent-flyer program; this additional baggage allowance is applicable from Delhi to Shanghai only. For anyone travelling to a point beyond China, say for example from DEL to Japan or South Korea or Australia / New Zealand we have a 2 PC baggage concept. Our Business Class fares are extremely attractive and we have seen a surge in our loads in Premium cabin. Since our loads are good even in the front-cabin, we don't generally offer any free upgrades.
Also, take note that China Eastern offers a unique city tour product to our customers while they are in transit in Shanghai. Passengers travelling to any point beyond China and have a transit of more than six hours, the passenger has an option to either avail a free hotel room or a meal voucher or a round-trip ticket on Maglev high-speed train or can have a foot-massage at the airport. Passengers have to carry an e-voucher before leaving Delhi. It takes us approx. 72 hours to get the necessary confirmation.
We have separate check-in counters, in-flight announcements, and vegetarian meals (including Jain meals) on our flights