Business travel has come to the rescue of the hotel industry crawling its way out of economic slump. Not only have the top luxury hotels reported occupancy of 50-75% but they have also seen an improvement of 85% in their revenue position.

The National Aviation Company Ltd, or Nacil, which runs state-owned Air India, today agreed to form a committee to look into the productivity-linked incentive (PLI), or flying allowance, paid to executive pilots. The executive pilots will get full salary until the committee comes out with its report.

There is no reversal apparent in the big dip in numbers of air passengers travelling business class.

Singapore Tourism, which clocked a total of 7.78 lakh Indian visitor arrivals in calendar 2008, expects flat growth or single-digit degrowth in the number of Indian arrivals in 2009.The Singapore Tourism Board is hoping for a turnaround in the last half of the year and focusing primarily on the leisure segment to woo travelers.

The government has decided not to allow foreign airlines to invest in local helicopter service providers, who need only an extra permission to fly airlines in India.

Tourists will now be able to revisit the country’s colonial past from Kolkata to Varanasi through the 1,280 km cruise on the river Ganga with West Bengal Tourism launching the service from tomorrow.

The Nepal Government plans to promote Terai tourism by boosting visits by Indians to the southern plains, which shares common culture with the people of India. The plan comes ahead of the Nepal Tourism Year 2011 that aims to attract one million tourists, the Tourism Minister, Mr.Sharad Singh Bhadari, announced. We will focus on pilgrimage tourism by identifying five tourism areas in the southern Nepal, he said. In the east, there will be Birat Tourism Area, comprising Jhapa and Morang districts, and Simran Tourism Area, comprising Bara, Parsa, Rautahat, he said.

The Airports Authority of India has before it a proposal for levying user development fee (UDF) of Rs 900-1,000 on international passengers and Rs 200-250 on domestic travellers in 11 international airports.

Jet Airways, which recently suffered the worst pilot strike, has sought the government’s permission to sell shares to overseas investors to avoid loan defaults and violation of debt covenants, as it may not be able to raise entire funds through equity route from domestic investors.

Air India is to cut the productivity linked incentive (PLI) scheme of close to 7,000 executive level employees, including pilots and engineers, in an effort to reduce its ballooning wage costs.