Routes Asia, to be held in Mumbai from 17-19 March, 2013, is all set to bring together more than 650 delegates from airports, airlines, tourism authorities and other industry stakeholders from across Asia to discuss air service development. In keeping with Routes’ promise to address current issues and trends, Routes Asia 2013 will focus on the issues surrounding new route development within Asia.
Speaking about hosting a convention in India, Gerard Brown, Tourism Development Director, Routes, stated that, as one of the BRIC countries, there is clearly much interest in India as a market in general right now. “There is a feeling that, in aviation terms, India has still got an awful lot of potential for new air services. For this reason, we anticipate record numbers of airlines, airports and tourism authorities to attend the event from all over Asia and the Pacific,” he said. He further added that, having maintained excellent working relationships over the years with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, DGCA, Airports Authority of India, GMR, GVK and all of the Indian carriers, the event is grateful to have received the full support and participation at the highest levels from all of these parties for the forthcoming event.
The agenda and programme for each Routes event is set by the conditions of the market. Some of the topics of discussion include: ‘Developing Hubs in Asia and its challenges’; ‘Developing airport infrastructure in Asia – Challenges & Opportunities’; ‘Chasing the Tiger and the Dragon’; and ‘Where Next for the Asian Low Cost Carriers?’. While the first session, entitled ‘Developing Hubs in Asia and its challenges’ will discuss the challenges to develop international hubs in India and explore whether India could have multiple hubs that can compete with regional hubs such as Dubai, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur, the session on ‘Developing airport infrastructure in Asia – Challenges & Opportunities’ will ask what the main challenges that airports face are whilst also looking at what lessons can be learned from across the globe and which models work. The third session, ‘Chasing the Tiger and the Dragon’ addresses the fact that thriving economies and increasing disposable incomes mean that the outbound travel markets for China and India are amongst the fastest growing in the world, which destinations will capture these markets and how will they achieve this. The session on ‘Where next for Asian Low Cost Carriers?’ will question where next for the pan Asian LCCs?; who are the winners and losers in Japan, China and India? This session will also take a look at the future for long haul LCCs and ask how will the LCCs evolve and will there be a shift towards hybrid models?
Siddharth Kapur, CFO, Airport Sector, GMR Group, one of the speakers at Routes Asia 2013, stated that emerging regulatory framework, PPPs and challenges of the model will be his main focus while addressing the conference attendees. “This is an important topic to address in India because India has a rich experience to show on the PPP front on airports, and has significant challenges on future privatisations,” added Kapur.
According to Brown, the pre-arranged meetings between the carriers and the airports and tourism authorities are always the highlight of Routes events. “Nowhere else can airports and tourism authorities have so many one to one meetings with the very airline network planners who have the power to agree on new air services to their destinations. The highlight of every Routes event for me is after the event when I hear about the new air services which have been agreed as a result of the meetings at Routes. Each new air services agreed upon will create thousands of new jobs, bring new visitors to each destination and generate significant economic benefit for each destination concerned,” Brown opined.
“With lots of activity surrounding the rumours of takeovers of Indian carriers such as Spicejet and Jet Airways by Middle Eastern carriers, there continues to be much interest in the Indian aviation sector right now. Additionally, since we last held Routes Asia in India, there have been a number of new low cost carriers in Asia which continue to change the dynamics, not only for aviation within the region, but also for the tourism industry in Asia,” concluded Brown.
