SATTE INTERVIEW


MS.PALLAVI MEHRA


She is an integral part of SATTE as Group Director and Publisher, Travel Trends Today. Over a coffee in London, she spoke about the industry, it’s challenges and even a little skydiving


Photography | SATTE India Words | Richard Burton


P


allavi Mehra is a busy woman. As someone who has been at the heart of Indian tourism for more than two decades, she


was much in demand when the World Travel Market opened in London’s Docklands in November. All the same, I managed to steal her away for a 15-minute Q&A on the state of play in the industry:


What sort of challenges are affecting tourism in India? This year has been quite challenging. While here in the UK, you had the Thomas Cook collapse, we had a similar situation with Jet Airways, which had a global penetration, a good amount of international and domestic connections. Another giant was Cox and Kings, a company with a legacy of more than 200 years. Thomas Cook international had a lot of charters for Goa which is a very


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important destination for us. When they went bust the entire charter went. These things don’t just affect tourism locally but globally as well.


What in particular is being done to promote inbound tourism? We are still in a developing stage as far as our infrastructure is concerned but a lot of initiatives have been taken at central as well as regional government level. In the current scheme of affairs


promote South Asia as a region and it was completely focused on inbound tourism. It started in India and moved to Sri Lanka for a couple of editions but, over the years as we have seen tourism evolving, it has become a complete composite show no longer catering to one segment. Today, it caters to inbound, outbound and domestic. Our aim is to bring together the whole industry over the three days of SATTE 2020.


SATTE HAS BECOME A COMPOSITE SHOW WHICH NO LONGER CATERS TO ONE SEGMENT. TODAY IT IS INBOUND, OUTBOUND, DOMESTIC


there’s a lot of emphasis on tourism as the government sees it as a foreign exchange earning so there are a lot of efforts going into it.


How has SATTE matured over time? It began 27 years ago as a concept to


Are you achieving that? The 2019 edition had about 32,000 trade attendees and more than 500 international and domestic buyers. A large number came from India; about 90 Indian cities and 200 international buyers from 50 countries. We have a


SHOW DIRECTORY I SATTE 2019


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SATTE PREVIEW 2020


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