My Value Travel (MVT), a B2B travel company, recently organised its first MVT Mega Awards 2019 onboard Jalesh Cruises. The two night sailing witnessed close to 200 participants including 110 top performing travel agents from 40 cities in India. The event also had a delegation of 14 hotels, two activity company, and one theme park from Mauritius and seven hotels from Maldives.
Speaking about the event, Deepak Agarwal, Managing Director, My Value Travel said, “We were looking to do an out-of-box event worthwhile for our stakeholders. We have travel agents, hotels, and media here for the first MVT Mega Awards. We decided to host a networking event and awards on Jalesh Cruise as it would be an industry first event. Our partners from Mauritius and Maldives are extremely happy and positive about the event. We have selected 110 top performing agent partners from 40 cities in India. We have a total of 14 hotels from Mauritius and seven from Maldives and 2 activities and 1 theme park from Mauritius. This event has now set a benchmark in the industry. We will surely do a much larger and better event next year for all our partners.”
The group which pre-dominantly focused on Mauritius for around 20 years has witnessed significant success with 70 agents in 2009 to 7000 in 2019. The company has further added Maldives and Bali to its portfolio which is still at a nascent stage.
Explaining the rationale of organising the award, Agarwal said that a lot of people know our brand and not the team as we have been a faceless company all these while. “We have been in the market for around 20 years with majorly promoting Mauritius. With the cut throat competition in B2B market, there was never a budget for us in terms of marketing. We have grown from 70 agents in 2009 to 7248 agents in 2019 across India. This journey has happened without a single sales person anywhere in the country. In 2018, we decided to grow by adding Maldives and Bali. We will now look to go beyond these 7000 agents,” he explained.
The group is now looking to expand its team across India to further add more agents. Also, MVT is now looking to further add experiential destinations to its portfolio. “Our online package booking system is one-of-its-kind. We are not looking to be physically present with offices in any city in India. We will hire people in all major cities and will also look to add more destinations. We are now looking at experiential destinations. Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa will be our next three destinations. Our online system has the capability of doing 10 city customised package at one click. Our agents can book these through our dynamic website,” he informed.
The year 2019 has been a sluggish year for the tourism industry. The elections and the slowdown in the economy have impacted travel and tourism industry. However, MVT has witnessed steady growth without any major dip in the first half of the year.
“From the industry perspective, the year has been very bad due to the slowdown in the economy. For us, we currently have three destinations in our portfolio; Mauritius has been the mainstay for us in the last 20 years. We added Maldives in April 2018 and Bali in March 2019. For Mauritius, we have seen a steady growth in 2019 similar to previous year. For Maldives, the momentum has picked up and we are growing faster. Most of the properties see us as the number one partner in India already. For Bali, which has just started we are on a cruise mode now,” he said.
