Prasenjit Chakraborty - Mumbai Mumbai-based ARK Travel Group (ATG), one of the leading B2B cruise and luxury resort consolidators in India, has launched its new corporate brand identity. This change comes at a time when the company is evolving its service offerings and has set ambitious global expansion plans. Based on ATG’s five pillars – Compassion, Competence, Commitment, Cooperation and Celebration, the identity along with the design system was created to unfold and adapt itself as the brand continues to expand.
Speaking to TravelBiz Monitor, Kishan Biyani, Managing Director, ATG, said, “Nine years after cruising, I decided to take a product and it was Club Med. The product is all inclusive (food, stay, etc.) and we are quite successful. This boosted my confidence and thought I have to try something else as well, coincidently pandemic sets in and during this time we acquired Outbound Konnection, and from January this year we have a lot of representation business.”
Biyani anticipated that future lies in technology and keeping this in mind he had created a booking platform for cruising in 2019. “We wanted to further revamp this platform but unfortunately the pandemic came in. But we haven’t wasted time during the pandemic and constantly looked for new avenues,” he pointed out.
Now, Ark Travel Group has four verticals-Ark Cruises, Ark Rep, Ark Tech, Ark Journeys. When asked to comment which vertical will give maximum business in the next three months? Biyani replied, “The cruise segment has always given us maximum business and we don’t see any slack in that. As far as trend (cruise market) for the last three months is concerned, there is huge demand for Europe and American markets (people who have visas with them) and I can say it is at par with pre-pandemic demand. We also expect good business from South East Asia as well.”
Talking about a lesson he learnt from the pandemic, Biyani said that it is not appropriate to put all eggs in one basket.
Anju Tandon, CEO, Ark Journeys, said that the journey (from Ark Travel to Ark Travel Group) has been quite satisfying and she hopes that the travel fraternity would extend their support for other verticals the way they did for cruise business. “And I see this is happening. When we started selling Maldives, we received tremendous support from the travel fraternity,” she said.
