Air India is preparing to fully restore its Middle East flight network from the upcoming winter schedule, signalling renewed confidence in one of the world’s busiest aviation corridors following months of disruption caused by geopolitical tensions.

The announcement comes after airlines across the region were forced to suspend, reroute or reduce services due to military conflict and temporary airspace closures that affected operations throughout the Gulf. As conditions continue to stabilise, Air India says most of the affected flights are already back on sale, with the airline expecting to maintain its planned schedule if the improving security situation continues.

Speaking to NDTV, Air India Chief Commercial and Transformation Officer and Air India Express Chairman Nipun Aggarwal said the airline’s greatest challenge during the crisis was not a decline in passenger demand but the inability to operate safely through restricted airspace.

“The demand here is very strong because of the large Indian diaspora. As long as airports are open, airspace is available, and we can operate safely, we will continue deploying capacity. Our biggest constraint has been the ability to fly, not passenger demand,” Aggarwal said.

The comments underscore the resilience of Middle East travel demand, particularly among business travellers, migrant workers and families whose journeys depend on reliable air connectivity between India and the Gulf.

For the wider aviation industry, the restoration of services represents another encouraging sign that international travel is gradually returning to normal following weeks of uncertainty. During the height of the tensions, several global airlines adjusted schedules, avoided conflict zones and implemented longer flight routings to prioritise passenger safety.

Air India says it continues to monitor the evolving geopolitical environment in close coordination with airports and local authorities before making operational decisions.

“This is a very dynamic situation. We continuously assess the risks and adapt accordingly. As long as we can operate safely, we will continue to deploy capacity,” Aggarwal noted.

Although flight operations are recovering, airlines continue to face economic challenges arising from the conflict. Rising aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices remain a concern, increasing operating costs across the industry.

Aggarwal acknowledged that airlines have limited control over such external factors.

“ATF prices are a market reality driven by geopolitical factors that are beyond our control. We can redeploy the network, manage capacity and do our best operationally, but beyond a point there is only so much one can do,” he said.

Beyond restoring its network, Air India is also pressing ahead with one of the aviation industry’s largest fleet expansion programmes. The airline group expects to receive between 60 and 70 new aircraft every year over the next seven to eight years as deliveries from its order of nearly 600 aircraft accelerate.

Over the next 12 to 18 months alone, the airline anticipates adding approximately 10 to 15 wide-body aircraft alongside 40 to 50 narrow-body jets, strengthening both domestic and international operations.

Fleet modernisation is also progressing rapidly. Air India’s narrow-body aircraft have already received upgraded cabins, while retrofitting of the airline’s long-haul Boeing 787 Dreamliners and Boeing 777 fleet is underway. The improvements are expected to significantly enhance passenger comfort and onboard experience over the coming year.

The United Arab Emirates remains the airline group’s single most important international market. According to Aggarwal, almost two-thirds of Air India Group’s revenue comes from international operations, with the Middle East accounting for nearly half of that business. The UAE alone contributes roughly a quarter of the airline group’s total operations, highlighting its strategic importance.

Air India Express is also continuing its rapid expansion. Having grown from just 25 aircraft four years ago to a fleet of more than 100 today, the low-cost carrier plans to double its fleet over the next five years while extending services beyond its traditional South India-Gulf network to include northern, central, western and eastern Indian cities.

For travellers and the broader aviation sector, Air India’s latest announcement reflects growing optimism that one of the world’s most strategically important air corridors is steadily recovering. While airlines remain cautious and continue to monitor regional security developments, the return of full Middle East operations offers renewed confidence for passengers, travel agents and businesses that rely heavily on uninterrupted connectivity between Asia and the Gulf.

Source:ndtv.com

Kenya’s travel agency industry is becoming easier to connect to airlines while becoming harder to finance. Those two shifts are unfolding on almost entirely separate tracks, and together they may reshape one of Africa’s largest agency markets.

Kenya’s travel agency sector processed approximately 567 million dollars in Billing and Settlement Plan sales in 2025, roughly 74 billion Kenyan shillings, inside a wider tourism economy that earned about half a trillion shillings and welcomed 7.9 million travellers, 2.7 million of them international. That is not a peripheral market. It is one of the more consequential agency-mediated air travel economies on the continent, and in 2026 it is being pulled in two directions: toward faster, wider digital distribution, and toward a payments regime that threatens the cash flow model much of the industry actually runs on.

Licensing Got Stricter Before Distribution Got Easier

Kenya’s Tourism Regulatory Authority has tightened agency licensing meaningfully in the past two years, introducing physical verification of agency offices and staff professional credentials as part of accreditation. Industry operators describe this as a deliberate raising of the bar, intended to push out unlicensed or under-resourced operators and strengthen the credibility of the agents who remain. A smaller, more rigorously vetted pool of agencies is plausibly easier for airlines and technology providers to integrate and support at scale, though nobody in the industry has stated that as an explicit goal. What is clear is the trade-off: compliance costs are rising for agencies at precisely the moment many of them also face new investment demands from NDC integration and digital retailing. That formalisation push has been happening in parallel with, and largely separate from, the distribution technology changes airlines and GDS providers have been rolling out to the same agency base. The two processes are not coordinated by the same body, and there is no public evidence that licensing reform and NDC rollout have been sequenced with each other at all. Agencies are absorbing both simultaneously.

Kenya Airways Moved Early, and Moved Through Multiple Channels

Kenya Airways has one of the more deliberate NDC strategies on the continent, and its approach has been layered rather than singular. It launched NDC with Verteil Technologies as its first aggregator, giving agents browser-based and API access to aggregated content alongside Verteil’s other airline partners. It later became the first Sub-Saharan African airline to distribute NDC content through the Amadeus Travel Platform, going live in phases starting with sellers in Kenya, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, on the strength of its Altéa NDC implementation. In July 2022 it introduced a GDS surcharge of five dollars per segment for domestic bookings and eight dollars for international bookings made outside its NDC-enabled channels, a structural push that mirrors the surcharge strategy Lufthansa Group pioneered in Europe.

The most recent expansion, in March 2026, is the one worth paying closest attention to. Kenya Airways and Amadeus opened NDC access to non-IATA accredited agencies, a group that had previously been shut out of NDC content entirely in most markets. Eligible agencies need only a Travel Industry Designator Service number and an appropriate security agreement configured in Amadeus, a materially lower bar than full IATA accreditation. This matters because a meaningful share of Kenya’s travel businesses operate without IATA accreditation, relying instead on host agency arrangements or alternative identifiers to issue bookings. Widening NDC access to that tier is a genuine expansion of who gets to participate in modern airline retailing, not just a technical footnote.

Kenya Airways has, in short, built reach across three channels doing three different jobs: Verteil for aggregator-based agent access, Amadeus for GDS-native distribution at scale, and now a non-IATA pathway that extends participation beyond the traditionally accredited agency tier. The result is a layered distribution ecosystem in which large corporate agencies, traditional IATA-accredited agencies, and smaller non-IATA sellers can each reach the same NDC content through different commercial pathways suited to their scale. No other Sub-Saharan carrier has assembled quite that combination.

The Payments Fight Is Bigger Than Kenya, and Kenya Is Exposed More Than Most

While distribution access has been widening, a separate and more consequential fight has been unfolding over how agents actually get paid. In November 2025, IATA’s Passenger Agency Conference, an airline-only governing body, approved a decision to standardise Billing and Settlement Plan remittance deadlines globally, moving markets toward a uniform weekly cycle with funds due five to seven working days after the reporting date. The decision removes individual markets’ ability to negotiate their own remittance schedules through their local Agency Programme Joint Councils. IATA’s own account of the change notes that of 134 BSP markets already operating on a weekly schedule, 108 had aligned with the new standard by November 2025, leaving 26 markets, Kenya among them, with until June 2026 to comply.

The pushback has been global rather than Kenya-specific. The World Travel Agents Associations Alliance publicly objected in January 2026, with executive director Otto de Vries arguing the decision disregards long-established local airline-agent relationships and ignores the operational realities of business models built around high-volume corporate and tour operator accounts. KATA has raised its own version of that concern domestically, noting that no final changes had been confirmed at the time but that the prospect alone had already unsettled the local trade. The Association’s specific argument is about exposure: Kenyan agencies do a disproportionate share of business with corporate and government clients, who settle their accounts slowly, sometimes well beyond thirty days. A shortened, standardised remittance cycle would require agents to pay airlines before their own clients have paid them, converting a timing gap that agencies currently absorb into a structural cash flow liability.

This is the part of Kenya’s distribution story that gets the least attention outside the local trade press, and it is arguably the more important one. NDC adoption expands what agents can sell. The BSP remittance change affects whether agents can afford to keep selling it under the terms airlines are setting.

Nobody in the public record has yet described how individual Kenyan agencies plan to bridge that timing gap if the standardised cycle takes effect as scheduled. But the shape of the problem is a familiar one to any lender: a business asked to pay a supplier before its own customer has paid it is a working-capital gap, and working-capital gaps are typically where overdraft facilities, invoice financing, or fintech-provided bridge products get built. Kenya’s mobile money and digital lending infrastructure is more developed than in most African markets, which makes it a plausible candidate for that kind of product to emerge. One local player, Triply, is already building embedded payments and invoicing tooling alongside its distribution stack, which suggests at least one well-capitalised operator sees the same gap. Whether that specific product addresses the BSP remittance timing problem, or whether the bridge ends up coming from banks or the payments providers already circling African travel distribution, remains an open question rather than a documented trend.

An Indigenous Player Filled a Gap the Global Vendors Left Open

Kenya’s NDC story is not only about how the flag carrier and the GDS majors have positioned themselves. Triply, a Nairobi-founded startup backed by Y Combinator, has assembled a multi-source distribution layer for African travel agents that goes beyond aggregating any single airline’s NDC content. Founded in 2021 as Tripitaca and rebranded in 2024, it has built flight partnerships spanning GO7 for real-time inventory, Hahnair for access to more than 350 partner airlines outside traditional GDS reach, Amadeus for broad global content, and Verteil for NDC-sourced fares, alongside a direct partnership with Angola’s national carrier, TAAG. Triply holds its own IATA license, which removes the accreditation barrier for Kenyan agents who cannot obtain it independently, and layers payments, invoicing, and other financial tooling on top of the distribution stack rather than treating settlement as someone else’s problem. It is already inside Kenya’s trade ecosystem as a sponsor of KATA’s own Kenya Travel Industry Payments Summit.

Triply’s origin story is notably different from the GDS-led or vendor-led NDC rollouts common elsewhere on the continent. It is a Nairobi-based, venture-backed operator building a combined distribution and financial layer rather than waiting for a global vendor to extend into the market on the vendor’s own timeline. What it is attempting is closer to what the BSP remittance fight below suggests Kenyan agents actually need: a layer that combines distribution access with the financial infrastructure to operate under it. Whether that combination proves durable at scale is unproven, but its existence signals that at least one well-capitalised local player has identified the same gap between distribution modernisation and payments capacity that this piece has been describing, and is building directly into it rather than waiting for banks or global vendors to do so.

The Safari Segment Has Not Caught Up

Kenya’s highest-value tourism product remains its least digitised. Safari operators, even as the mainstream agency market absorbs licensing reform and NDC access, continue to run substantial portions of their booking process through email and phone confirmation rather than integrated systems. The contrast with the airline side of the market is stark: aviation distribution is moving toward API-based retailing and dynamic, personalised offers, while much of the country’s safari inventory still runs on manual confirmation. Kenya’s travel ecosystem is modernising unevenly, with aviation moving considerably faster than ground tourism, and that gap sits awkwardly against the trajectory of the wider safari tourism market, which industry estimates put at growing from roughly 20.5 billion dollars in 2025 to close to 39.2 billion dollars by 2035 continent-wide, with online travel agencies projected to account for more than 40 percent of indirect bookings within that market by the mid-2030s. Kenya’s safari operators are not disconnected from the digital transformation happening elsewhere in the agency sector. They are simply on a slower and less coordinated version of it, dependent on manual processes that create real friction, particularly for the international OTA and metasearch channels increasingly responsible for discovery.

What This Adds Up To

Kenya’s travel agency sector is not behind. Kenya Airways is running one of the more deliberate multi-channel NDC strategies on the continent. A domestically founded, venture-backed player, Triply, has built real distribution and financial infrastructure into this market well before most global vendors treated it as a priority. Regulators have tightened licensing in ways that should professionalise the sector over time. None of that changes the fact that the industry’s core financial mechanism, the BSP remittance cycle that determines when agents actually get paid, is being rewritten by a body Kenyan agents do not sit on, in a way that may not fit how Kenyan agencies actually collect from their biggest clients. Distribution access is widening. Financial risk is being redistributed downward in the same window. Kenya’s travel agents are being asked to modernise and absorb new exposure within the same eighteen months, and there is no evidence anyone designing either process was thinking about the other.

The next competitive divide in Kenya’s travel distribution market may not run between agencies that have adopted NDC and those that have not. It may instead run between agencies with enough financial capacity to operate under faster settlement cycles and those forced to limit growth because they cannot finance the working-capital gap. Technology is modernising the market. Payments may end up determining who survives it.

Source: traveldistributionnews.com

For decades, success in the travel industry was measured by market share, route networks, customer relationships and operational excellence. Today, those fundamentals remain important, but they are no longer enough.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping customer behaviour. Digital platforms are redefining distribution. Corporate travel expectations continue to evolve, while economic uncertainty demands leaders capable of making faster and smarter strategic decisions.

The next competitive advantage in aviation and tourism may not be a new aircraft, a larger sales team or another destination. It may simply be better leadership.

That reality is driving a growing shift across global industries, where executive education is increasingly viewed as a strategic investment rather than a professional development exercise. It is against this backdrop that the Kenya Association of Travel Agents (KATA), in partnership with Management Centre Europe (MCE), will host a three-day Executive Leadership Training Programme in Nairobi from July 29 to 31.

Rather than targeting junior staff, the programme has been designed specifically for chief executives, airline executives, travel agency owners, general managers, country managers, commercial directors, department heads and senior decision-makers responsible for steering organisations through an increasingly complex business environment.

The timing is significant.

East Africa’s aviation and tourism sectors are expanding rapidly. Airlines are adding frequencies and opening new routes. Governments are investing heavily in tourism infrastructure. The Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) segment is gaining momentum, while digital commerce continues to transform how travellers discover, compare and purchase travel.

These opportunities are creating new demands on leadership.

Executives are increasingly expected to manage organisational change, build resilient teams, embrace emerging technologies, interpret business data, strengthen customer experience and maintain commercial performance simultaneously.

The programme has therefore been structured around three interconnected pillars.

The opening day focuses on leadership itself, covering leadership mindsets, emotional intelligence, communication, interpersonal influence, managing expectations, leading organisational change and effective time and stress management.

The second day shifts attention to commercial leadership, examining sales and marketing fundamentals, customer experience, negotiation, strategic thinking and business insights—all through the lens of the travel industry.

The final day looks beyond today’s operations to tomorrow’s business landscape, exploring digital transformation, Artificial Intelligence, innovation, data analytics, digital customer journeys and emerging technologies that are already reshaping global tourism.

Unlike traditional seminars that concentrate on theory, the sessions incorporate practical exercises, role-playing, strategy workshops and industry-specific case discussions designed to help participants translate concepts into measurable business outcomes.

The programme will be facilitated by Johan Beeckmans, Senior Associate at Management Centre Europe, whose career spans more than 25 years in executive leadership development across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America.

His experience extends well beyond the classroom.

Beeckmans has advised chief executives and corporate boards, led leadership development programmes for multinational organisations, managed major organisational transformation initiatives and taught executive MBA programmes in Europe. His corporate experience includes senior leadership roles at global organisations such as Novelis and The Nielsen Company, where he worked directly with executive teams on talent strategy, organisational restructuring and sustainable business growth.

His client portfolio also includes sectors with operational complexity comparable to aviation, including aerospace, military, telecommunications, oil and gas, mining and international organisations.

That cross-sector experience is particularly relevant for aviation and travel executives navigating an industry where technological disruption, customer expectations and competitive dynamics continue to evolve simultaneously.

For airline leaders, the programme offers an opportunity to strengthen strategic leadership alongside operational excellence. For travel agency owners, it provides insights into building resilient businesses capable of competing in an increasingly digital marketplace. For senior managers, it focuses on leading teams through change while creating sustainable competitive advantage.

Perhaps most importantly, the programme recognises that digital transformation is no longer solely an IT function.

Artificial Intelligence, data-driven decision making, digital customer engagement and innovation have become boardroom issues requiring executive leadership rather than technical oversight.

As travel businesses continue investing in new technologies, leadership capability will increasingly determine whether those investments generate meaningful competitive returns.

The venue itself reflects the executive nature of the programme. Participants will convene at Emara Ole Sereni in Nairobi for three full days of intensive learning, strategic discussion and peer engagement with fellow leaders from across the travel and aviation ecosystem.

For an industry built on connecting people across borders, the next competitive edge may ultimately come from strengthening the people leading those organisations.

As aviation and tourism enter their next phase of growth, the question facing many organisations is no longer whether they need to transform—but whether their leadership is prepared to lead that transformation.

For generations, Mombasa has been synonymous with white sandy beaches, Swahili culture and coastal leisure. But a quiet transformation is taking place—one that is positioning Kenya’s second-largest city as an emerging hub for business events alongside its traditional holiday appeal.

The Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) segment is increasingly becoming a key driver of tourism at the Coast, helping hotels, airlines, transport providers and local businesses attract visitors throughout the year rather than relying solely on peak holiday seasons.

Unlike leisure tourism, which is often concentrated around school holidays and festive periods, business events generate consistent visitor traffic. Conference delegates typically book hotels, dine in restaurants, use local transport, visit attractions and often extend their stays to experience the destination, creating wider economic benefits across the tourism value chain.

Mombasa’s growing appeal as a business events destination has been supported by improved infrastructure, including the expansion of Moi International Airport, better road connectivity and the Standard Gauge Railway, making it easier for both domestic and international delegates to access the city. At the same time, investments in conference facilities and hospitality services have strengthened the city’s ability to host large regional and international meetings.

The shift is already becoming visible through a growing calendar of conferences, trade exhibitions and industry forums choosing Mombasa as their preferred venue. In June, for example, the Kenya Association of Travel Agents (KATA) held its 2026 Annual General Meeting and Convention in the city, attracting hundreds of delegates and more than 30 exhibitors. The event demonstrated how conferences generate business opportunities not only for hotels but also for airlines, tour operators, technology providers, destination marketers, transport companies and numerous local suppliers.

Exhibitions have become an equally important component of the business events ecosystem. They provide companies with opportunities to showcase products, launch new services, meet potential clients and strengthen partnerships while creating additional visitor spending beyond the conference venue.

The rise of “bleisure” travel—where business travellers combine work with leisure—is further enhancing Mombasa’s competitiveness. Delegates attending meetings are increasingly extending their visits to explore attractions such as Fort Jesus, Old Town, Haller Park, the city’s beaches and marine parks, spreading tourism spending across the wider local economy.

For the hospitality sector, this diversification offers greater stability. Rather than depending almost entirely on seasonal holidaymakers, hotels can maintain healthier occupancy levels throughout the year by serving conferences, exhibitions and corporate meetings. This supports employment, encourages continued investment and strengthens the resilience of the tourism industry.

The benefits extend well beyond accommodation providers. Event organisers, caterers, transport companies, audiovisual firms, tour guides, artisans and small businesses all participate in the supply chain that supports business events, ensuring that the economic impact is distributed across multiple sectors.

As Kenya seeks to position itself as a leading tourism and business destination in Africa, Mombasa’s evolving role in the MICE industry presents a significant opportunity. By combining world-class leisure attractions with modern conference facilities and improving connectivity, the coastal city is demonstrating that its future tourism growth will be driven not only by holidaymakers, but also by the business travellers, exhibitions and international conferences that increasingly see Mombasa as the ideal place to meet.

The Kenya Association of Travel Agents (KATA) has launched its first-ever Industry Networking Cocktail, introducing a new platform aimed at strengthening relationships and creating business opportunities across Kenya’s travel and tourism industry.

Held in partnership with Africa Travel Network and Tune Protect Group, the inaugural event brought together travel agents, airlines, tour operators, hospitality providers, insurers and other industry stakeholders for an evening focused on collaboration beyond the boardroom.

While meetings, conferences and exhibitions have traditionally served as the industry’s primary meeting points, the networking cocktail was designed to foster informal conversations that often lead to lasting business partnerships and new opportunities.

Addressing attendees, KATA Chairman Dr. Joseph Kithitu challenged industry players to embrace a mindset of collective growth, noting that a stronger travel industry benefits every stakeholder.

“Let’s make this industry bigger and better for all of us. Healthy competition isn’t about fighting your peers. It’s about becoming bigger, stronger, and better yourself.”

His remarks underscored KATA’s vision of building an industry where collaboration and professional excellence drive sustainable growth.

The event also highlighted the impact of KATA membership on business development through a testimonial from KATA member Moses Ouma, Director of VistaVoyage Travel Group Limited, who shared how the association had helped transform his company.

“KATA helped me break into corporate and international travel. We’ve gone global. That’s why I encourage others to join. We have the systems, the people, and the support.”

His experience illustrated the growing value of professional networks in helping travel agencies expand into new markets and strengthen their competitiveness.

Throughout the evening, attendees exchanged ideas, explored potential partnerships and forged new professional relationships in a relaxed setting. Accompanied by music, cocktails and informal discussions, the gathering demonstrated that meaningful business connections often begin with simple conversations before evolving into commercial partnerships.

The inaugural networking cocktail marks another step in KATA’s efforts to provide value beyond advocacy and professional development. By creating spaces where members and industry partners can connect outside formal business meetings, the association is fostering a more collaborative travel ecosystem capable of responding to emerging opportunities in Kenya’s tourism sector.

As the travel industry continues to evolve, initiatives such as the KATA Industry Networking Cocktail reflect the growing recognition that strong relationships remain one of the sector’s most valuable assets—laying the foundation for future partnerships, business growth and a more connected travel community.