Mangaluru: Come September 2015 Mangalore, India will be connected instantly to USA, Canada and all European cities via Abu Dhabi along with other Far East countries. Jet Airways has rescheduled its flight to and fro to Abu Dhabi from Mangalore, India effective September 15, 2015 which will connect Etihad Airways, their interline partner on both ways to and fro to USA, Canada and all European countries. This will reduce drastically the travel time of Mangalorean’ s with better facilities at Abu Dhabi airport such as U.S. immigration facility at Abu Dhabi reducing the long queues at any US airports. Guest can walk with their bags on arrival at any gateway points in USA since they complete their immigration at Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi has modern airport and has already began the construction of Midfield terminal Building( http://www.adac.ae/english/mtp/ ) which is a next generation terminal with much more modern facilities for the passengers travelling via Abu Dhabi. As on April 30, 2015 the Midfield terminal building has completed 45% work and is expected to open for operations in July 2017 or bit earlier than July 2017. Hereto the shortest travel time to New York and Canada via Bangalore or Bombay is around 27-30 hours which will be reduced to 18-20 hours with Jet Airways rescheduling their flight timings to Abu Dhabi and return flight to Mangalore effective September 15, 2015. This will reduce the cost of transit hotels and taxi charges at Bangalore/Bombay and the hassles of Mangalorean’s waiting at Bangalore/Bombay airport for hours together to connect the international flights to USA, Canada and other European countries.
This will be a big boost to travel and tourism industry says William D’ Souza of Globe travels, Mangalore who has been in the travel industry for the last 30 years. He is the promoter of Mangalore to the world cruises and Mangalore is now getting around 15-20 cruises every year. Thanks to William D’Souza who saw the tourism of tomorrow and promoted Mangalore at the cruise fest at Miami, USA in 1982. He feels the new schedule of Jet Airways is a big boost to promote tourism to the world from Mangalore. Being one of the top performing Franchise of SOTC-Kuoni Holidays in India based at Mangalore, he has always been honored by SOTC for the last several years for promoting tourism to the world. He feels confident that the new schedule of Jet Airways will bring in more foreign businessmen to Mangalore to explore the possibility of business ventures in and around the district since we have required human resources and availability of land and other infrastructure. Mangalore is the only city having sea and air ports in Karnataka. Already BASF has made a dent with its performance in the world. Long waited ONGC terminal at Mangalore will be a further boost to the commerce and industry. There are more such Indian and international giants closely watching Mangalore as a potential place for their future ventures since Mangalore now has a new cargo terminal. Mangalorean hotels industry can now look at more business with the new schedule of Jet Airways.
Mangalore now should look at the world by upgrading its present airport, local roads and upgrading of tourism spots to attract the tourists from all parts of the world. William D’Souza was one of the founder member to modernize the Mangalore old airport along with T Subayya Shetty then President of Kanara Chamber, with a small new terminal to convert Mangalore as an international airport and now look forward to associate himself once again, in modernizing the Mangalore airport since he has visited all over the world and have seen most modern airports with best facilities.
Mangalore being known as the Rome of the East should think of tourism circuits built to bring in foreign exchange to the exchequer and to create employment in the field of tourism to fulfill the aspirations of youngsters who are presently educating in the travel and tourism programme of Mangalore University and other private colleges.