Establishing presence in Dubai, SA
With growing demand from the Middle East region, the Akquasun Group has just opened its office in Dubai licensed by the Dubai Tourism. It has also bought over two South African tour companies located in Cape Town owned by a single owner as well as Mumbai-
After starting a dedicated division for MICE called Akquasun Global B2B MICE Solutions in 2013, the Indiabased destination management company has now set up a Dubai office as a licensed tour operator under Akquasun Tourism LLC to serve the UAE outbound market. The new office was opened on October 15, 2014.
BA Rahim, its group director and CEO, said, “We want to thank our B2B partners who made this happen for us. We now have our own state-ofthe-art set-up with professionally-trained staff for the Indian market, a growing fleet of vehicles, visa support and above all, great support. We have started this to be able to serve our partners better. We have blocked hotel rooms for the upcoming ‘ Dubai Shopping Festival’ and our MICE and FIT teams are ready to serve them in the UAE.”
He revealed that this development came about after the company terminated the contract of Dubai-based ArabianLink Tours. The new inbound-outbound tourism office is located in Bur Dubai with 20 staff members. “Dubai is a growing market with very high potential. We were only waiting for our license to come through to start operations here. With this new office, we expect a 40-50 per cent increase in numbers from our current 800-1,500 passengers per month in the leisure and FIT segments. The Dubai office will handle business from India, China, Vietnam, Philippines and some parts of Europe,” he revealed.
The group is now getting ready to go online with its new portal (akquasunonline.com) going live from November 1. It will start by focussing on the Maldives, Mauritius and the Sri Lanka markets.
The Akquasun Group has also bought over two South African tour companies called Centurion Tours and Citi Hopper owned by Ikraam Bulbulia. The two companies operate as separate entities but work closely together by virtue of them having a single owner.
Bulbulia, who is now part of Akquasun Africa as its MD, said, “I joined Akquasun in February this year with a 25 per cent stake in the business. We have six travel desks inside the international airport and are the only DMC in South Africa with its own vehicles. We replace our fleet every two years.”
While Centurion Tours does transfers and package tours, Citi Hopper does transfers and has a fleet of seven vehi- cles. The two South African companies are now in the midst of interlinking their websites with Akquasun’s website.
Meanwhile, Akquasun Africa headed by Bulbulia has also taken over Mumbai-based ‘ World of Vacations’ for its South Africa packages and will now be called ‘Akquasun Africa World of Vacations’. “We are retaining the name and the identity since it is a well-known brand in the Indian market that sells South Africa here. Akquasun Africa will also be starting outbound from South Africa in the next two months to Dubai, Maldives, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Cambodia,” Rahim said.