Planet Group opens leisure division

Dubai: Planet Travel & Tours, the travel wing of the Dubai-based Planet Group, yesterday launched Planet Vacations - its leisure division to serve the growing inbound and outbound market.

"With Planet Vacations we put a new focus to our outbound business, as Planet Travel & Tours is already ensuring value and satisfaction to our local and inbound leisure and business guests.

"With this we shall now be focusing more on the bulk and group travel in the form of Outbound MICE, and student exchange programmes by the end of the current fiscal year," George Moussa, chairman of Planet Group told Gulf News.

Ebrahim Nalkhande, chief operating officer, Travel, added: "Planet Vacations is the sub-brand of the master plan that is Planet Travel & Tours. We felt that an entire sector of our travel business, that is the outbound business, was lacking focus and segregating. This will now allow us to concentrate better on it, and we have unveiled it with a niche destination like Uzbekistan with a brochure highlighting the history and culture of the country.

"The very first question most people will ask on this," Nalkhande continued, "is 'what's so different here from the million other available options?' Agreed there [are] various options a customer can choose from, but with Planet Vacations we are offering a very personalised service to our valued customers, away from the present day's robotic approach, and dot com culture."

"Our concentration would be on the FIT outbound business and more, but that would depend on how the economy shapes up in the next few months," he said