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Our Bureau

Targets 7 million households by end of the year

Mumbai March 15 Voyage Television officially announced its presence in India at a press conference on Thursday. The lifestyle channel is India's first direct response channel selling travel holidays, is free-to-air, and wants to be in seven million households by the end of the year.

The channel is a joint venture between Television Voyages Ltd and a group of NRI investors. Television Voyages Ltd was founded in 2002 and operates the Voyages Channel in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well.

Mr Achal Mehra, who has been involved in the Indian launches of ESPN, CNBC, National Geographic and AXN, is the CEO of Voyages.

"We have spent one year on market testing to learn how the Indian viewer reacts to our programming," Mr Mehra said.

Voyages has roped in SOTC to be its fulfilment partner, making all travel arrangements for customers buying packages through Voyages and receiving a handling fee for each transaction.

In addition, 15 per cent of the programming will feature group packages that SOTC offers.

The remaining 85 per cent will be original programming generated by Voyages that targets independent travel, which does not include a package tour.

Family Getaways

Programming for the channel will be a mix of half-hour shows that feature destinations and shorter episodes attempting to sell particular holiday packages. The channel has developed shows around family and adventure travel, called Family Getaways and X25 respectively. Other shows include Hillscapes featuring hill stations, 72 hours featuring things to do for 72 hours at particular destinations and a Best of Series.

Viewers can call Voyages' call centre to book packages the identical holidays that they see on TV, with Voyages promising "what you see is what you get." The channel is also developing its Web site to allow for web bookings.

Popular Destinations

Initially the bulk of the channel's shows will feature Thailand, Goa, Kerala, the Far East and Europe. Mr Ashutosh Mehere, Business Head for VTC, a division of SOTC, said the channel has no choice but to target the most popular destinations at this stage. But the channel does plan to break out of the mass markets in the future

Currently 100 per cent of the channel's revenues come from transactions. Mr Mehra said the channel will begin ad sales in about a month and while ad revenue will outstrip transaction revenues to start with, Mr Mehra expects to reach a 50:50 balance three or four years down the line.

Voyages Television is available on DTH in addition to cable but only on DishTV. It will be available on Tata Sky in about a month's time.

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