Gulf News: Gulf News

Travel firm sets its sights on top award

Doha-based Regency Tours and Travels is among the 10 nominations for World Travel Awards 2009 for the Middle East’s “Leading Travel Agency”, to be announced in Dubai on May 5.

The company’s CEO, Tareeq Abdullatif Taha, said yesterday the nomination had come in the face of tough competition. “The whole region is competing to get the awards and unlike what it used to be, there are 10 travel agencies from different Middle East countries shortlisted for the honour,” the official said.

In the last two years, Regency Tours and Travels won the awards for being the “Leading Travel Agency”.

The award will celebrate the travel and tourism industry’s best practices by recognising achievements from more than 100 travel and tourism brands from across the Middle East, including leading airlines, hotel operators, hotel developers, tourism boards, travel media, destination marketing campaigns, MICE businesses and other companies.

The Regency CEO said in the whole of the Middle East region his company alone operated round the clock, throughout the year, backed by a 24-hour call centre service.

“While most companies all over the world engaged in the industry are reducing their manpower, ours is one of the very few travel firms that recruited a number of personnel to its offices and also expanded the network,” he said.
“In March alone, we opened five new offices and added 47 more new staff,” he said. As of now, the group has 29 offices and more than 200 multi-lingual staff in its offices.

Taha expressed the hope that the company would add at least seven new offices to its network in the next few months.

Taha also said that the company would be recruiting more personnel in the coming months in a bid to strengthen the network.

The CEO said his company’s market share went up by 40% in the first four months of 2009, compared with the same period last year. “The ongoing global financial turmoil gave us more leverage as the overall prices became more affordable since most airline companies and hotels are offering special deals and affordable prices to customers,” he said.

Taha added that his company had invested in setting up its own training centre for its staff to give better quality services to customers.

The CEO claimed his was the only company that had its own publication and produce flyers, brochures, magazine and its own “Qatar Guide” to distribute to participants at international fairs.

Taha said Regency was the GSA of five airline companies, namely Virgin Atlantic, India’s Kingfisher, South Africa Airlines, Air Arabia and Bahrain Air.

The CEO said that the company’s new website would be launched shortly. Besides airline reservations, one could also book hotels across the world online, he said.