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British travel agencies eye Kerala call centre
Indo-Asian News Service

Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 24 (IANS) More travel agencies in Britain are looking at Kerala as a destination for back office operations after the success of Link Air India Private Ltd, say company officials. 

Operating out of the Technopark campus here, Link Air India Private Ltd is a fully owned subsidiary of Surrey-based Link Air Travels. It is the only travel agency call centre in Kerala, which began operations in 2004.

Link Air Travels is frequented by south Indians and Sri Lankans based in Britain.

"I have inquiries from at least a dozen small and medium travel agencies in the UK if our company here can provide them call centre support. We have decided that we will take up this work as and when we expand our operations here, which would happen soon," G. Premnath, managing director of Link Air, told IANS. 

"Since opening our call centre operations here, we have done extremely well because the cost of operations here is just under 25 percent compared to operating in the UK.

"Our staff strength here now is 32 and they operate in two shifts to cater to the needs of people in the UK."

All the calls that arrive at the Technopark campus originate in Britain, asking for information on air ticket availability and the prices for flying out of Britain, especially to south India and Sri Lanka.

Right now they handle calls that come into their London office at the state of the art call centre here.

All those in Britain who speak Malayalam, Tamil, Sinhala or Gujarati can get replies in their mother tongue from here. 

"We have now appointed Gujarati-speaking people here and soon we are going to increase the workforce conversant in Tamil and Sinhala. Initially, we were planning to open similar call centres in Chennai and Sri Lanka, but now we have decided to expand here itself," said Premnath.

Along with strengthening its travel agency call centre operations, the company will take up the accounting work of offices and e-learning lessons for students in Britain.