Travstarz looking forward to a promising time ahead
Since they started full operations in April 2022, Travstarz Global Group has covered only one quarter so far, and it seems the going is good for them. Pankaj Nagpal, Managing Director, Travstarz Global Group, while responding to some of our queries, is happy to state that in a short time, they have successfully revived their agents’ network, and has started supporting them even more now owing to their past relationships.
Since April 2022, at Travstarz Global Group, there has been an uptick in the reservations, but due to visa delays, high ticket pricing issues, etc., the focus has been majorly on destinations like Thailand, Singapore, Dubai, Maldives, Turkey, etc. There are many queries for Europe, but conversions are a challenge given the visa challenges at present.
“We still have some challenges that will take more time to get sorted. The airfares are still very much on the higher side as compared to the pre-COVID levels, and the additional burden of the declining rupee against the USD has made outbound travel more expensive. Secondly, visa delays stretching for months has been a major issue since most of the embassies had reduced staff strength during covid times and the manpower is still not adequate to handle the sudden load of outbound travellers,” informs Pankaj.
When asked if they were able to streamline the workforce, Pankaj said, “As for our workforce, we had reduced our team size initially and as a revival policy, we have decided to work with a small yet effective team for now. We are focusing on our core strength of our DMCs in various locations, visas and ticketing to some extent and on getting new products and destinations to India and working with our partners and promoting them. We recently brought Vana Nava Water Jungle, Hua Hin, Thailand, Asia’s first water jungle to India.”
The July to September quarter has been a traditionally low season, and at Travstarz, they expect the same this year as well. Pankaj says, “Since we have a strong presence at places like Dubai, Singapore, Malaysia, Nepal, and Thailand, we do expect good volumes to come in for us. However, we expect a good time for travel from October onwards into the festival season provided the airfares stabilise by then and gets back closer to pre-COVID levels. Also, hoping that visa delays are sorted by then as the embassies and VFS are taking steps to get adequate manpower for the timely processing of visas. We expect 100 per cent of airline capacity to come in after September with Jet Airways returning and Air India and Vistara adding new routes.”