Relax - New Jet Airways portal to promote stopovers

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New Jet Airways portal to promote stopovers

By Ven Sreenivasan, The Business Times | Thu, Sep 17 2009

JET Airways flights to India are back to normal, with the pilots’ strike now over.

New Jet Airways portal to promote stopovers

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Gerry Oh, the airline’s Singapore-based regional vice-president for Southeast Asia, said yesterday that schedules for daily flights between Singapore and the three Indian destinations of Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi were back to normal.

Flights were disrupted during the five-day pilots’ strike, forcing the airline to divert passengers to other airlines.

Mr Oh said Jet Airways was enjoying strong loads on the Singapore-India sectors, although yields remained under pressure.

The airline’s Singapore office yesterday rolled out a new Web-based stopover portal to attract more inbound passengers from India.

The new portal (www.showmesingapore.com/jetsstart) was developed by Singapore-based destination management and travel agency City DMC, and promotes Singapore to travellers abroad.

Through the portal, travellers in source markets like India can familiarise themselves with Singapore and its attractions, and book flights, hotels and tickets to attractions online.

Ang Eu Khoon, managing director of City DMC, said the portal was designed to encourage more stopover holidays in Singapore.

“Over 37 million passengers passed through Changi Airport in 2008, but just under 11 million passengers entered Singapore,” said Mr Ang, whose family owns Sans Tours, which owns a fleet of 660 buses, vans and cars for lease.

“This portal is aimed at attracting the low-hanging fruit of the millions of airline passengers who skip Singapore without stopping over. We want to entice them to visit Singapore with attractive online hotel and top-attraction offers.”

Mr Oh added that the portal would leverage on Jet Airways’ massive network in India and its strong online Web penetration presence. “The aim is to encourage more Indian travellers to visit Singapore or plan a stopover when flying beyond Singapore.”

Last year, visitor arrivals from India increased 24.4 per cent to over 778,000. But for the first seven months of this year, visitor arrivals from India fell 11 per cent year-on- year to just 426,000 due to the economic crisis.

This article was first published in The Business Times