The Delta Air Lines has launched a new non-stop service from Seattle to Shanghai today with an inaugural service ceremony.

The flight is the latest addition to Delta’s growing Asian gateway in Seattle, as the service, between Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Shanghai Pu Dong International Airport complements current non-stop service from Seattle to Beijing, Osaka, Tokyo-Narita and most recently, Tokyo-Haneda.

“Delta’s new Shanghai service is the latest step toward building Seattle into a world-class Asian gateway,” said Richard Anderson, Delta’s chief executive officer.

“Seattle’s strong business and cultural ties to Asia as well as geographic location make it a natural departing point for flights across the Pacific.”Like all of Delta’s trans-Pacific flights, the new Shanghai service features full flat-bed seats in BusinessElite as well as Economy Comfort seating and in-flight entertainment in every seat throughout the aircraft.

The flight will operate using a 208-seat Boeing 767-300ER aircraft with 36 full flat-bed seats in BusinessElite, 29 seats in Economy Comfort and 143 Economy class seats.

Shanghai service is Delta’s second route between Seattle and China, following Beijing service which began in 2010.

This summer the airline will operate more than 45 daily flights to 18 destinations worldwide from Seattle.Delta’s recent partnership with Virgin Atlantic also provides the opportunity to offer new service between Seattle and London-Heathrow, pending government approval.

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Boeing has announced today at the 2013 Paris Air Show that it has launched the 787-10 Dreamliner, the third member of the super-efficient 787 family.
Commitments for 102 airplanes from five customers across Europe, Asia and North America provide a strong foundation to support development and production of the newest Dreamliner.
Customer launch commitments for the 787-10 include Air Lease Corporation, with 30 airplanes; GE Capital Aviation Services, with ten; International Airlines Group / British Airways, with 12 subject to shareholder approval; Singapore Airlines, with 30 and United Airlines, with 20 airplanes.
The new 787-10 will fly up to 7,000 nautical miles (12,964 km) — covering more than 90 per cent of the world’s twin-aisle routes — with seating for 300-330 passengers, depending on an airline’s configuration choices.
The second member of the family, the 787-9, is in final assembly in Everett, Washington, and is set to make its first flight later this year.
“The 787-10 Dreamliner will be the most-efficient jetliner in history.
“The airplane’s operating economics are unmatched and it has all the incredible passenger-pleasing features that set the 787 family apart as truly special,” said Boeing Commercial Airplanes president Ray Conner.
“The 787-10 is 25 percent more efficient than airplanes of its size today and more than 10 percent better than anything being offered by the competition for the future.”
Design of the 787-10 has already started at Boeing, and international partners will be involved in detailed design in the months ahead.
Final assembly and flight test of the 787-10 are set to begin in 2017, with first delivery targeted for 2018.

“Our ongoing investment in the 787 family is well-founded,” said Conner.
“With the 787-10, we’ve designed an exceptional airplane supported by an efficient and integrated production system that can meet increasing demands and create new opportunities for us.
“Our team and our customers are excited about growing the product line and expanding our presence with this family of airplanes.”

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Very option available will be used to us to have this decision revisited and our funds kept where they belong, in tourism’ ranted a regular source when news broke late yesterday that the National Assembly’s Budget and Appropriation Committee had chopped a major percentage of funding off the budget of tourism in order to pay teachers a backlog of dues, which goes back to 1997.

Incensed stakeholders flooded this correspondent’s mailboxes with protests and lamentations, one of them claiming:’ Only yesterday did KTB show the data of arrivals till April this year and entries through JKIA reduced by 20 percent compared to last year. We told that fool of a minister last year that he better find the funds to embark on a serious marketing offensive ahead of the elections, but he would either not listen or simply did not understand what was going on. While he strutted about claiming 2012 would be better than 2011, the industry knew what was coming. KTB told him what was in the offing and instead of listening and acting he tried to sack the KTB CEO. KTB needs those fund to embark on a global campaign to revive our tourism fortunes. If we do not have the funds promised to us in the budget estimates submitted last week, the recovery of tourism will remain slow and sluggish. If government wants double digit economic growth, they have to put petrol in to the engines which can drive this growth, not take the engine out of the locomotive and sell it for spare parts, if you get my meaning. Those claims of the teachers go back to the Moi regime and 10 years of Kibaki’s government. Why do they want to strike now for 16 year long claims? Kenya cannot afford a teachers strike, that is true, but it can also not afford to starve tourism of funds. If they go ahead it might cripple KTB’s action plans and in a year there will be much gnashing of teeth when more bad results are revealed. Let those parliamentarians cut their own mega earnings and give to the teachers, that would be a start’.

Indeed, the year started with a further downturn in arrivals, continuing the trend of late 2012, when Kenya’s military engagement in Somalia to drive out Al Shabab militants and destroy the pirates safe havens on land resulted in a series of retaliations, mainly in areas bordering Somalia but also in Nairobi and Mombasa. Ahead of the general elections in March this year in Kenya did tour operators from abroad also scale back their presence, charter flights were thinned out and especially the coastal resorts took a hit in sharply lower occupancies across the board, with a few notable exceptions. The inaugural address of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy President William Ruto gave hope to the tourism industry that the funding allocated would permit to roll out a major recovery marketing campaign, extending from core markets in Europe to new and emerging markets in Eastern Europe, India, the Far East including China and North America. The lastest development at the National Assembly though has now dashed such hopes and dampened the mood, with anger already rising up, setting up the sector for a major confrontation with the new government. There were a few calming voices, suggesting that parliament needs to be lobbied and the budget committee be told with fact and figures how their cutting of the tourism budget could affect the national economy overall, should tourism underperform, but considering the imminent threat of strikes from teachers, MP’s may not be in the mood to listen to common sense. Hard times ahead it seems for Kenya’s tourism industry, unless the promised funds can be saved and secured in what might become a major showdown too between government and parliament over economic priorities.

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The Interactive Seat Assignment functionality – jointly unveiled by Travelport, the leading provider of critical transaction processing solutions and data for the global travel industry, and Oman Air, the flag carrier of the Sultanate of Oman – will provide agents with greater ease in booking Oman Air content and help improve customer service.

In practice, Interactive Seat Assignment allows agents to request seat maps and assign, change or cancel specific seats in a real-time environment, whilst maintaining full control with the ability to accept or decline seat assignments.

Oman Air CEO, Wayne Pearce, said: “We aim to ensure that Oman Air offers both customers and travel agents the greatest possible convenience and I am sure that the opportunity to select and assign seats using Travelport’s systems will be warmly welcomed. The system also offers the opportunity to reduce costs, enabling Oman Air to continue offering outstanding value throughout our network of more than 40 exciting destinations.”

“Seat maps and advance seat assignments are becoming basic expectations amongst travel agents providing a high level of service to travellers”, added Will Owen Hughes, Senior Director, Supplier Services, Middle East and Africa, Travelport. “Managing these services can consume valuable airline resources, if they are not automated. Travelport systems reduce and often eliminate these costs, enabling travel agents to improve their service to their passengers, as well as to the airline.”

Tourism and Conservation Department of the Rwanda Development Board will according to an insider’s story, this week launch the country’s first religious tourism product, focusing on the Kibeho area in Southern Rwanda.

On the 28th of November 1981 were the first apparitions reported from that little village, with teenagers talking of having seen the images of Mary, mother of Jesus, something which kept occurring time and again until 1989.

In particular the visions seen in August 1982 are on record for having given a preview of the gruesome events in 1994 and those affected at the time gave testimony of seeing rivers of blood and mutilated bodies, harbingers of the things to come. The Catholic Church, through Bishop Misago of Gikongoro, sanctioned public devotion in August 1988 and formally declared the authenticity of the apparitions in June 2001.

Inspite of the recognition by the Vatican though, few outside Rwanda, but the most devoted followers of Mary, knew about these events for a long time though slowly the word spread, making Kibeho the centre of a steadily growing number of visitors from near and far, coming there to pray and to remember. Work on the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows started according to details received in late 1992 and managed by the order of the Pallotines.

The Tourism and Conservation Department recognized the value of the site and its potential to significantly increase participants of such pilgrimages coming to Rwanda, and hand in hand with local partners in Kibeho provided logistical support to market tours to this village.

The formal launch of Rwanda’s first religious tourism route will provide travelers to the country with compact information about the events in the 1980’s and the process of formally recognizing the apparitions, and allow local tour and safari operators to include a visit to Kibeho in their itineraries, when taking tourists to see the sights across the Land of a Thousand Hills.

The declaration made by the bishop of Gikongoro reads in part like this and will undoubtedly feature in pamphlets, maps and on the promotional websites: ‘Kibeho become a place of pilgrimage and of encounter for all who seek Christ and who come there to pray, a fundamental centre of conversion, of reparation for the sins of the world and of reconciliation, a point of meeting for ‘all who were dispersed’, as for those who aspire to the values of compassion and fraternity without borders, a fundamental centre that recalls the Gospel of the Cross’.

A tourism stakeholder, for long involved in Rwanda’s tourism industry, added his own assessment to the launch this week: ‘Our future lies in diversifying our tourism products. We now have 10 gorilla groups available for tracking but this is a finite resource. Even at a cost of 750 US Dollars it sells like hotcakes. Near that park are the Musanze caves which RDB started to open up recently for visitors. But truth told, we need to offer a lot more beyond gorillas. We have Nyungwe and that park has seen growing acceptance. We wait for the other big forest, Gishwati, to open up for hikes because there is a lot of demand for such vacations. The Congo Nile Trail needs perhaps more marketing and logistics too with more tourist class boats for trips along the Lake Kivu shores. This market is for adventure travelers, for hikers and bikers. But even normal tourists now take the route by 4×4 to enjoy the magnificent views from the hills down to the lake. Then, Akagera is our savannah park and we have new birding trails across the country even outside parks. Religious tourism opens another niche and allows for greater variety of tour options. We have highlighted the rich cultural heritage of song, dance and arts and our museums are giving visitors the insight they seek. All this combined gives us that extra element of value for money when tourists come here’.

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The Finnair has begun flying to Hanoi and Xi’an, further sharpening the airline’s strategic focus on transfer traffic between Asia and Europe.

Currently the only European carrier offering direct connections between the two cities and Europe, Finnair also offers fast and efficient transfers to more than 60 European destinations via its Helsinki hub.Finnair will operate service to both cities three times a week throughout the summer schedule season, until October 26th for Xi’an and October 27th for Hanoi.

“This week marks an important milestone in Finnair’s 90 years of history, as we build on a legacy of building better connections between Europe and Asia and bring our total number of Asian destinations to 13,” explained chief executive Pekka Vauramo.“Strong economic growth in China and Vietnam, combined with a growing appetite for outbound travel from both destinations, are driving our strategic focus on Asian traffic.“There continue to be many exciting opportunities for growth in the East.”

Finnair has gradually built on its Asian strategy during the past two decades, taking advantage of the geographical position of its Helsinki hub on the shortest routes between the great cities of Asia and more than 60 European destinations.

In addition to Xi’an and Hanoi, Finnair operates to Bangkok, Beijing, Chongqing, Delhi, Hong Kong, Nagoya, Osaka, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo. The airline’s service and timetables are optimised for transfer traffic.

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Ethiopian Airlines, the fastest growing airline in Africa, has announced its chief executive, Tewolde Gebremariam, has been elected to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Board of Governors.IATA is a trade association for the world’s airlines.

Its 240 airline members comprise 84 percent of the world’s total air traffic and its Board of Governors consists of top executives from 31 airlines from around the world.Gebremariam will join presidents, chairmen and chief executives of some of the world’s largest airlines, further placing Ethiopian Airlines at the forefront of the airline industry.

“I am delighted to join my distinguished colleagues on the IATA Board of Directors,” said Gebremariam.“This appointment is recognition of not only Gebremariam, but also of Ethiopian Airlines.

“With more than 7,000 staff members, one of the industry’s most up-to-date fleets, and service to 72 international destinations, Ethiopian is quickly becoming Africa’s premier carrier.

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The FastJet’s management, while announcing that the airline has been granted international route rights as a designated carrier between Dar es Salaam to Johannesburg, Kigali and Lusaka, lamented that ‘We have spent so much time lobbying to make this happen and had so many false starts’ claiming it has held the airline back for the past 6 months since starting operations in Tanzania. While FastJet’s CEO Ed Winter was quoted to have spoken of a ‘real breakthrough’ a source close to Tanzania’s Civil Aviation Authority promptly responded, saying such comments were only bound to aggravate the regulators, who in his words ‘… do not feel appreciated by such statements after carefully studying the application and its benefits or disadvantages for Tanzania’s aviation industry and for the country. Regulators take whatever time it takes to do their job and if airlines feel they are wasting their time lobbying it does not show a good understanding of what such decisions entail’.

At the same time as the announcement for international traffic rights was made information was also made available that the startup of domestic flights in South Africa was to be delayed further, with no specific reasons given. Existing LCC’s in South Africa have reportedly been preparing for the market entry of FastJet as a new competitor, though none of them made any comments to the latest development. No new date was given for the commencement of domestic services in South Africa which had been postponed twice before, nor were any dates mentioned of the start of international flights from Dar es Salaam, other than that they would start before the end of the year.

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Uganda’s  Budget  who is who in the tourism and hospitality industry have left little doubt what they thought of the budget proposals made yesterday, when Finance Minister Maria Kiwanuka presented the 2013/14 budget estimates to parliament. Understandably concerned to remain anonymous, several regular sources let fly over what they unanimously termed ‘a lot of hogwash and a pile of broken promises‘.

Compared to last year was the budget allocation for the Uganda Tourism Board again reduced, exposing the lipservice government produces year in and year out towards the sector. ‘Let her not talk of those tourist roads because we have been hearing those promises for 15 years and nothing has changed. Let her produce those roads and then we shall see‘ ranted another while yet more agreed that ‘… even Rwanda spends 20 times as much for tourism marketing and I cannot even compare what Tanzania and Kenya pour into marketing their countries. Last year tourism produced over 800 million US Dollars in revenues and THAT is what we get in return? Shame on Finance to treat us like outcasts but taking the fruits of our labour with both hands‘.

The Daily Monitor published a relevant piece reproduced here below for the benefit of the readers, also expressing a few choice opinions of how tourism once again feels neglected to the point of utter despair.

Budget falls short of tourism industry’s expectations

Despite highlighting that some key tourism roads will be rehabilitated next financial year, the biggest wish of tourism entrepreneurs to increase its budget allocation did not come true in the Budget read last Thursday.

Industry players had hoped that government would increase funding to the sector, which is one of the country’s leading foreign exchange earners, to facilitate activities of marketing Uganda as a premium destination in key tourism source markets.

However, in a move that dismayed industry players, Finance Minister Maria Kiwanuka announced a cut in the sector’s budget from Shs10.9b in the 2012/13 financial year to Shs10.761b.

Apportionment to the Uganda Tourism Board – a body charged with marketing and branding Uganda as a preferred tourism destination – was slashed to Shs1.4b from Shs1.8b in the previous (2012/13) financial year.

Reacting to the budget cuts, industry players said not much can be achieved with such meager funding.

Mr Amos Wekesa, the proprietor of Great Lakes Safaris, a tour company told this newspaper the successes registered in the sector in the past years was by God’s grace because the government “doesn’t care about the sector.”

“The entire region is prioritising tourism and allocating more resources to boost their respective sectors but Uganda is instead reducing allocation to the sector yet it has more potential than any other country in the region,” Mr Wekesa said.

He said the funds allocated to UTB will only pay salaries but not promote Uganda as a premium market, adding that Uganda’s budget is consumptive – prioritising education and health which don’t generate revenue.

The sector fetched the country $805m (about Shs2 trillion) in 2011, according to available statistics.

UTB executive director Cuthbert Baguma said with a budget cut, a number of activities that had been lined up to be executed next year may be halted due to financial constraints.

Some of the activities that might be affected include the hotel classification and grading exercise, stimulating of domestic tourism, research and the sector’s ability to promote the country’s tourism potential in emerging source markets such as China, Japan and the Middle East to boost the sector’s competitiveness.

Failure to prioritise the tourism sector has also seen the country move a step back in the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index 2013 to 116th position out of 140 countries from the 115th in the 2011 ranking.

The country ranked 109th in the prioritisation of travel and tourism sub index and 121 under the business environment and infrastructure index.

According to Vision 2040, Uganda has potential to reap more than $12b from the tourism sector annually if promoted well to become among the leading top 10 tourism destinations in the world.

Ms Kiwanuka, however, said government commits to improve accessibility to tourist sites by rehabilitating tourism roads including Kidepo, Ishasha – Katunguru. She added that contractors for the Kisoro-Mgahinga, Kyenjojo-Hoima-Masindi and Kabwoya – Kyenjojo roads are being procured.

She also committed to support hotel, tour and guide businesses to provide world-class hospitality business.

The insufficient resources from government, however, are to be supplemented by the implementation of a tourism development levy that is expected to generate at least $9m (about Shs22b) annually, according to Tourism Minister Ms Maria Mutagamba.

GAME RANGERS

• Shs10.76b – Tourism sector allocation 2013/14 financial year, down from Shs10.9billion

• Shs1.4b (about $255.800) – allocation to Uganda Tourism Board to market Uganda (down from Shs1.8b (about $300,000)

• Kenya allocated $23m for marketing, Tanzania allocates $10m and Rwanda allocates $5m

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The Air Uganda, the Pearl of Africa’s quasi national airline, has just announced the launch date for their latest destination, Mogadishu in Somalia. Starting on 08th of July, U7 will fly initially three times a week nonstop between Entebbe and Mogadishu, offering government officials, army personnel and a growing number of business people from Uganda the fastest way yet to reach Somalia.

Uganda, alongside Burundi, was the first country to commit a major contingent of troops some years ago to the African Union led peace keeping mission, and with that mission now more or less accomplished, has the time come to launch commercial flights, available for everyone, compared to the purely military flights which had in the past served as a link between the two countries.

In a related development it was also learned that Air Uganda is keenly eying Southern African destinations, and while official confirmation is still awaited, Harare, and perhaps Lusaka have been mentioned to this correspondent by usually reliable sources. Air Uganda only a few weeks ago received a third CRJ 200 aircraft to replace their last MD 87, which has been redeployed into the fleet of another Celestair partner.

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