TMS. You have recently been appointed as Co-Chair – International Affairs (Europe & CIS) at PHDCCI – what will be your key priorities?
Vikas Khanduri. My foremost priority is to strengthen bilateral trade and tourism corridors between India and Europe & CIS nations, with a special focus on facilitating ease of doing business for Indian stakeholders. I aim to create structured platforms for B2B engagement, knowledge exchange, and policy advocacy, and apart from Trade the MICE and tourism sectors. Additionally, I believe in promoting India as a strong outbound and inbound partner, while ensuring that our members are well-equipped to leverage emerging global opportunities. Through PHDCCI, there is always possibilities of getting the best for the industry & for the travel trade.
TMS. What key milestones have shaped your leadership journey in building Holiday Merchants and Viva Voyages?
Vikas Khanduri. The journey has been shaped by a clear focus on building efficiency, scale, and relevance for the travel trade. Holiday Merchants has evolved as a strong consolidator for Europe and Central Asia, where our key strength lies in offering instant responses and competitive wholesaler tariffs, enabling agents to close business faster. A significant milestone has been strengthening our MICE vertical, where consolidation allows us to deliver cost-effective solutions without compromising on service quality. This has made us a reliable partner for large group movements. With Viva Voyages, the focus shifted towards travel marketing and destination representation, ensuring that DMC partners receive dedicated attention, structured promotion, and deeper market penetration. Here, we go beyond transactions by providing focused inputs and market intelligence, which are often overlooked but critical for business growth.
Together, both entities complement each other, one driving distribution and scale, the other driving focused representation and value creation.
TMS. How has your experience in destination representation evolved over the years?
Vikas Khanduri. Destination representation today has moved far beyond traditional marketing. It is now about creating market relevance, driving conversions, and building sustained demand. Over the years,
we have evolved into strategic partners for destinations, offering not just visibility but also distribution, trade engagement, and revenue generation models. The focus has shifted from awareness to measurable business outcomes through training seminars, webinars & one on one meetings with our DMC partners.
TMS. Your recent partnership with ONEDAR DMC marks a significant step in promoting Saudi Arabia in India, what opportunities do you see?
Vikas Khanduri. Saudi Arabia represents one of the most exciting emerging destinations for the Indian market. Through our partnership with ONEDAR DMC, we see strong potential in leisure, MICE, and experiential travel segments. With evolving infrastructure, simplified visa processes, and unique cultural offerings, Saudi Arabia is well-positioned to attract Indian travellers. Our focus will be on building awareness, strengthening trade connectivity, and creating scalable business opportunities.
TMS. What is your vision for Viva Voyages and Holiday Merchants over the next 5 years?
Vikas Khanduri. Both Viva Voyages and Holiday Merchants are being developed on distinct yet complementary trajectories, each with a clearly defined role in the global travel ecosystem. For Holiday Merchants, the vision is to evolve into a truly global consolidator brand, built on strong contracting with over 100 exclusively contracted DMCs from worldwide and supported by an extensive PSA network across India and international markets. A key focus area will also be the development of a DSA (Direct Selling Agent) model, enabling thousands of freelancers to become travel agents without any upfront investment – thereby expanding distribution at scale.
On the other hand, Viva Voyages is being positioned as India’s leading travel marketing and representation company, driven by technology. The objective is to empower DMCs with structured distribution capabilities, allowing them to seamlessly reach travel agents across global markets.
Across both entities, MICE continues to be a strong focus area, where we aim to simplify complexities for the travel trade-through better negotiations, efficient pricing, streamlined remittances, and assured service quality-ultimately saving time, effort, and cost for our partners.
