Hurray!Thomas Cook (India) Limited, and SOTC Travel, were honoured with the Best Outbound and Domestic Tour Operator of the Year Awards respectively at SATTE 2023. The SATTE Awards serve to showcase leaders in India’s travel and tourism sector who have contributed significantly towards revival and growth of tourism with the reopening of borders. The selection criteria covered a range of parameters, with the nominations being judged by an eminent jury and validations by Ernst & Young.
Thomas Cook was recognised as the ‘Best Outbound Tour 
Operator of the Year’ for its innovative product development that inspired customers to take a much needed holiday. The Company launched Easy Visa Holidays to short haul international destinations, as also exciting/experiential elements in its long-haul portfolio.
SOTC won the award for ‘Best Domestic Tour Operator of the Year’ for catalyzing on the strong travel sentiment emerging from India’s metros, mini-metros, and tier 2 – 3 cities. With the pandemic putting the spotlight on domestic tourism, the Company strategically developed a wide range of products including the India Extravaganza holidays that played a vital role in maximizing its domestic business potential.
Rajeev Kale, President & Country Head – Holidays, MICE, Visa, Thomas Cook (India) Limited said, “We are truly honoured to be selected as the Outbound Tour Operator of the Year by SATTE 2023. This award reiterates our leadership position in the outbound sector, and recognises our sustained efforts towards revival and growth post the challenges of the pandemic.
With the reopening of borders, and restart of commercial aviation, our multipronged strategy across product development, health and safety initiatives, technology and Marcomm has served us well in inspiring customers to go on their much awaited holiday. Our re-imagined strategy throughout pandemic was customer centric with high focus on health and safety.
This award is a special honour, and our gratitude extends to our customers for investing their trust in us, inspiring us to provide even better service. We dedicate this accolade to our customers!”
Daniel D’souza President & Country Head – Holidays, SOTC Travel said, “We are honoured to accept the Domestic Tour Operator of the Year Award at SATTE, and we dedicate this win to our domestic holidays team for their sustained efforts. The restrictions across international destinations and absence of commercial aviation gave rise to significant demand for domestic holidays and our strategic product development inspired customers to explore our beautiful country in-depth. We rapidly scaled up our domestic business as an Indian homegrown brand with a customer centric approach. Our wide range of products and offers ensured best deals for our customers, and we continue to create more such exciting offers/value propositions.
We were quick to seize the opportunity and leverage technology to deliver seamless, contactless and secure solutions to our customers while also reassuring them of their safety during their travel.
I would like to thank SATTE for recognizing our team’s sincere efforts to create exceptional holiday experiences for our customers with this prestigious award.”
A special shout-out to Prathama Tripathi, Assistant Manager-Corporate Communication-Thomas Cook, and Payal Gupta, Manager-Marketing SOTC, for their seamless coordination with multiple teams in putting together the data and content while filing the nominations. Such behind-the-scenes efforts play a big part in our success too!