Conde Nast Traveller’s India team set out to give away their Readers Travel Awards 2011 at a grand function in New Delhi last evening, and there were some surprises and then some non-surprises which happened out there.Yours truly, being an avid supporter of all  things travel in India, did put in his vote too for the RTA 2011.

Here are some key highlights from the Award Results that came out last night:

- Airlines for Best Business Travel outside India: Singapore Airlines and Emirates

- Airlines for Best Leisure Travel outside India: Emirates and Singapore Airlines

Now this is not surprising at all, given that Emirates and Singapore Airlines both take traffic from India very seriously and use the hub-and-spoke model to fill seats on their long-haul flights. Being small city-state airlines, they have to depend on traffic from outside, and given that India’s own airlines are not being able to serve the demand fully, travelling via UAE or Singapore becomes an attractive option.

- Best Airline for Business/Leisure Travel in India: Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways

Now, here, glitz and brand has won over quality and service. I am branded a Jet Airways loyalist, though I have travelled Kingfisher also lately, and Indigo too. Okay, can’t recall if I travelled Spicejet or GoAir all of this past year, but I think Jet Airways has always had a far more consistent experience than Kingfisher. And a better route network, and which is why have I stuck with them for so long. But the glitz wins, and I sure hope it helps to be popular for them to get out of their current misery.

- Business Hotels in India: The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai and The Oberoi, Delhi

Bang on target! I love the Taj Mahal Palace Mumbai, and it is one of the iconic landmarks of Mumbai. In fact, I put it on my list of best Business hotels in Mumbai last month when I compiled one for CNNGo. The Oberoi Delhi is Aces too! Though of late, I like the Oberoi Gurgaon better

- New Hotels in India: Taj Falaknuma Palace, Hyderabad and Trident, Mumbai BKC

Again, wonderful properties, and the Trident BKC is on my list of best Business Hotels in Mumbai. Taj Falaknuma, I am waiting to try and review. I am still adding up the small change in my pocket to get the princely sum required to stay there!

- Hotel Loyalty programs: Taj Inner Circle and SPG

Wow! I have great respect for the Taj Inner Circle. In India, it sure makes sense to be a member. SPG being second to that, comes straight away from the fact that SPG is the loyalty program also adopted by the ITC/Sheraton alliance in India which is perhaps the second biggest luxury/business hotels spread in India. Of course, now that SPG is bringing its other brands to India, we’ll see that change (or not) over a period of time!

Here is the full list of winners on the Conde Nast Traveller website! Congratulations to all the winners, and great work, Conde Nast!

Related Posts:

• 10 Best Business Hotels in Mumbai
• Why I stepped on a Kingfisher plane yesterday!
• Flying Kingfisher: First impressions amongst the ongoing turmoil
• A Comprehensive update on the Kingfisher Route network
• The rumors are true: Jet Airways is the best airline in India

Unless you are allergic like me to paying super-duper high business class prices for economy seating to travel around India in the next 2-3 months, your options are fast getting limited to travel around in the festive season in India. Like I mentioned in this post a few days back, airlines have predictably decided to add to their revenues by jacking up ticket prices over the next few months.

I was not surprised but slightly disgusted at double fares in the same fare classes which got inflated over a week or so. October to December is peak travel time in India, what with all the festivals for everyone bunching up, along with a longish wedding season coming up too!

Here is how you can still get a comparatively (sic!) cheaper ticket if you know where you want to go and act fast:

1. Jet Airways sale: Jet Airways has put out some 100,000 seats on sale, which are available uptil October 9, 2011 for travel within India. While the number seems to be a gimmick and may or may not be true, the discount sure is. Tickets are available to book via jetairways.com only, and the discount is for round trip bookings in economy as well as business class.
2. Kingfisher sale: Maybe, just maybe, to counter Jet Airways, Kingfisher started its own sale, but it is not advertising the same very much. So, if you book a trip on the Kingfisher airlines website, flykingfisher.com, you will see the round trip discounts being offered. The good part is, this offer is also being sourced via some online portals. Like I recently booked a BOM-DEL-BOM ticket on Kingfisher using this offer, but booked it via cleartrip.com. So, you should scour there also. There are no time limitations here as of today!
3. Cleartrip.com: For me, Cleartrip.com is clearly working out better than some of the other online travel booking sites. I have found flights on times I wanted and prices I was willing to pay, while most of the other travel websites were showing higher fares on the same flights. And if you don’t get what you want the first time around, perhaps look again a few hours later and something would have come onstream.
4. Air India 15 day pass: Air India came up with a fly-unlimited offer recently and I did not discuss it here because I was under the impression that this offer was going offline by 15 Sep, 2011. However, I now notice that the ‘Silver Pass’ and the ‘Platinum Pass’ offer has been extended for travel till 15 January 2012. Priced at INR 35K for Economy (all inclusive) and INR 75K for Executive (all inclusive), this is one of the best offers out there if you have a lot of festive travel planned out in a fortnight. Take note, that this is valid for 15 consecutive days only. More details of the offer here.

Also, almost every online travel website such as Ezeego1.com, Makemytrip.com, Goibibo.com and the others are running some or the other promotional offers with some cashbacks, or free flight coupons on particular airlines coming through. So, make sure you check through the airlines website, or a couple of the travel websites at least before you go ahead and book your tickets.

If you know of any more such promos or want me to discuss any particular promo in detail, feel free to drop me a comment!

Indian aviation was the mainstay of the rich and the famous and the honchos till 5-7 years back when yield management was not around, and almost all tickets on a trunk route such as BOM-DEL would cost you upwards of INR 10K (US$ 200) for a 700 miles flight. And then came Air Deccan, the first low-cost carrier in India who launched in 2003 and everyone was forced to drop prices to get a share of the passengers who wanted to get on a plane thanks to Deccan’s INR 1 (2 Cents) and INR 500 (US$ 10) tickets.

Air Deccan’s success in gaining mindshare and marketshare led to the launch of other LCCs in India such as Spicejet, Indigo and GoAir. It also forced the hand of the big guns of Indian aviation such as Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines who operated in the full service space and charged a premium to fly their planes.

Air Deccan did not last a lifetime, as it burnt cash while expanding and opening new routes in India. It got eventually acquired by Kingfisher Airlines in 2007, and they operated these planes under the Kingfisher Red brand. Kingfisher Red was the low cost operation of Kingfisher, essentially an all-economy configuration, where you had an AVOD screen and a small snack/meal thrown in. Kingfisher took great pains to explain that it was not operating in the low-cost space but it wanted people to believe that it was a full service flight at a low cost. Agreed. But Kingfisher was the original believer of the concept of selling low-priced tickets, considering the bidding it made for Air Deccan at various points of time in 2005-2007.

Jet Airways launched Jet Airways Konnect in 2009 in the midst of the economic crisis globally, to operate planes with more economy seats and zero premium cabins in India. By dropping ticket prices they were able to fill up planes in the dark days and keep the lights on. With this experiement working out, they put more and more planes on the Konnect branding. Of late, they have put 8 Business class seats back on these planes and  serve hot meals to the pax in the front.

The interesting part is how these strategies are working out for the airlines. Some bean counters and number crunchers eventually drive the strategy forward after looking at the cold numbers in the  quarters behind them. In a shift of strategy, these two airlines have taken a 180-degree opposite stand on the future of their low-cost operations this quarter.

Jet Airways, in August 2011, decided to put more seats to work on its planes, and while announcing its results for the June quarter, also announced that it will move up about 85% of its capacity into the Konnect brand, from the present ~70%. The airline says that the low-cost operation has worked out well for it, and it will also look to put out Konnect planes on the short-haul international operations. Understandable, for instance, on the MAA-CMB route. I took a flight on this segment in April 2011, and I was not surprised to see only one passenger in the Premiere section. Jet’s planes to the Middle-east destinations, such as Muscat, are usually full of price-sensitive traffic, and it makes sense to knock off those Business class seats in the plane and fly more passengers instead.

On the other hand, OW member elect Kingfisher has gone the other way. While announcing results today, the airline made an announcement that it is discontinuing the Kingfisher Red services shortly. The guy who owns the airline feels that there are more than enough people in the country who would be willing to pay for a full service experience, and so they need to attack that market rather than be the price warrior. The arguement, is that yields in the full-service are better.

This is an interesting turn of events. The service quality of Kingfisher, which advertises to be a 5-star airline as per Skytrax, is dipping by the day. Jet Airways, on the other hand has a consistent experience for travellers. On the other hand, no AVOD on most Jet Airways planes.  

Who will get this round is what I am interested in for the time being. Because that will dictate which airline I fly domestically in the coming year. Bring on the strategy wars, baby! Yeah! Round 2, START!