mumbai tulips are in full bloom in hollands keukenhof gardens a 45minute drive from amsterdams schiphol airport where a jet airways flight used to land daily at 815am with tourists from mumbai and the rest of indiaa large number of these tourists were on group tours organized by indian travel companies while middle eastern airlines are the most popular for group tours to europe jet was preferred for uk and south east asia from where groups transit to australia on foreign carriers which is why when jet suspended its international operations a few weeks ago travel companies that book air tickets en masse went into a tizzy and jumped in first to book their clients on alternate flightsabout 60 lakh indians travel in group tourschaperoned tourists with packed itineraries who find safety in numbers and comfort in having indian food abroadorganized by about a hundred indian travel companies annually most of these tours are in summer with europe being the top favourite followed by southeast asia and then the uswe have twothree group tours leaving for europe from mumbai daily in summer thankfully our jet exposure is limited to only 1000 of the 12000 europebound tourists said veena patil managing director veena world whose first tulip garden special tour with 40 tourists departs on april 22the tours were on jet flights to amsterdam but weve managed to rebook them it wasnt easy tulips are immensely popular among indians thanks to that song from the 1980s film silsila she said unlike indians who travel by themselves the majority of those who travel in group tours book early about 50006000 of our clients book their summer group tours before december we begin blocking airline seats in august on emirates etihad qatar airways omanair turkish airlines and jet airways jet was considered for the indian food and the comfort level of our clients with the indian crew it was most preferred for london flights there was no way of predicting jet closure back then she added though we have been getting seats on alternate flights it has not been easy ultimately we have to take tourists on a welldeserved holiday she said another destination hit due to jet closure is kathmandu but because of our business we could get help from royal nepal airlines she saidpatil said that they handle about 5000060000 group tour clients a year indiver rastogi of thomas cook india said while we had proactively commenced a shift to alternate carriers we do still have customers booked on jet airwayshe added that jets network offered significant customer benefits for direct nonstop flights to short hauls like abu dhabidubai and singapore as well as through a hub and spoke model to mid hauls in asia like bali japankorea and long hauls like australianew zealand and europeusa we witnessed a 25 growth in travellers from metros and emerging regional markets traditionally served by jet airways said he addeddaniel dsouza of sotc travel said were looking at ways to minimize the impact of