The Hindu Business Line : Bird group to promote Berlin

Mr Hanns P. Nerger, President, CEO, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH, and Ms Radha Bhatia, Chairperson, Bird Group, at a press conference in Bangalore on Thursday. — G.R.N. Somashekar

Bangalore , May 12

THE Delhi-based Bird Group has struck a strategic alliance with the Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH, to promote the German city as a favourite destination to Indian tourists.

Under the contract, Berlin will be marketed both as a business and leisure destination across India through 40 locations of the Bird Group offices.

Bird Group, a much diversified enterprise in the travel and information technology area, was actively in involved in promoting diversified facilities such as call centre services, online transaction services, passenger handling, aviation security and marketing and support of software applications.

Announcing the tie-up at a joint press conference here on Thursday, Ms Radha Bhatia, Chairperson, Bird Group, and Mr Hanns Peter Nerger, President & CEO, Berlin Tourismus, said though Berlin was among the three most popular destinations in Europe, it attracted only 7,000 tourists from India annually.

With the city undergoing a massive change after it had become the capital following the unification of Germany, it offered tourists a variety of attractions equivalent to the other popular European cities such as London and Paris, said Mr Nerger adding that "we will be focusing more and more on leisure travel in the coming years. The high scalability and travel pattern of Indian travelling to Europe and particularly to Germany has prompted us to sell Berlin more aggressively to Indians, more so to the Southern Indian regions".

With the region emerging as a high spender on tourism, Berlin Tourismus was planning to customise various packages to make leisure tourism to the German city a favourite to Indian outbound tourists.

He also felt that with direct air connectivity to Germany from Bangalore and Chennai, tourism was bound to pick up further and thus his organisation was focusing on India as a new target.

Ms Bhatia said with both leisure and corporate travel in Indian poised for a 7 per cent to 10 per cent growth by 2007, Bird Group was hopeful of selling Berlin effectively.

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