Birmingham to tap India market

Birmingham plans to tap the growing Indian outbound market, specially after the addition of Air India services into the city.

With 13,500 Indians visiting Birmingham each year, the West Midlands remain the most popular region outside of the South East for Indian tourists. The newly launched Air India service will help the city to boost its share of the lucrative South Asian visitor market, fuelled by India’s growing middle class who will take an estimated half a million tourist trips to Britain each year by 2020.

Neil Rami, chief executive of Marketing Birmingham, which operates leisure tourism programme Visit Birmingham said, “Securing a direct flight route to the Indian capital is a major step for Birmingham, and the result of much hard work by citywide partners to promote the area’s potential for the airline. News for Air India’s investment comes at a time when Birmingham’s international standing is at an all time high. We must now continue to develop our global profile – promoting the city overseas is vital to securing more international routes and building the city’s reputation as a European hub for tourism.”

Adding further, Paul Kehoe, CEO of Birmingham Airport said, “Birmingham is the first city outside of London to operate a dedicated scheduled Boeing 787 Dreamliner service. This statement of confidence from Air India sends a clear signal that Birmingham is a great destination for not only business, but also leisure, visitors.”

Citing similar opinion, Shivali Suri, country manager for Visit Britain in India said, “The acquisition of the new Air India route means the city is primed to capitalise on this growing market for the Midlands, and indeed the UK.”

Air India operates four time weekly service on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, arriving from Amritsar and Delhi into Birmingham at 1800 hours and departing to Delhi and Amritsar from Birmingham at 2130 hours.