agent life
Offering ‘the India that Indians know’
By Laura Del Rosso
Sonny Chatrath has
travel in his blood.
The Indian-born
travel agency owner
comes from a travel
industry family: An
uncle is a director
of Jet Airways in India. Another
uncle is with Picasso Travel in
Los Angeles. A cousin works at
Sita World Travel, a leading India
tour operator.
again to India. [Clients] had to travel there
for business,” he said. Chatrath’s clients
also travel to India for yearly family visits,
usually in groups of eight or 10.
To take advantage of his links to India
and the Indian community, three years
ago Chatrath moved his
agency to the central New
Jersey city of Edison. Since
1990, Edison’s Indian population has almost tripled,
from 6,000 to 17,000. And the city’s average household income is $86,205.
But Chatrath was not the only agent to
see the potential. There are several ethnic
agencies in a 2-square-mile area of Edison
known as Little India. Chatrath instead
chose an office building a few miles away
with Indian-owned technology and phar-
maceutical companies as neighbors.
Chatrath and his sister have divided
their duties: Kaur takes care of the back office and accounting, and Chatrath handles
advertising, marketing and negotiations.
The agency has consolidator contracts
with Jet Airways, Air India,
Eva and Singapore Airlines.
The agency, with $2.2 million in annual sales and four
full-time staff, advertises on
Zee TV, a Dish Network channel targeting
ethnic Indians. About 90% of Air-Savings’
clientele is from the Indian community;
25% of that is business travel.
“Corporate travel to India is a totally
different ballgame than selling corporate
travel elsewhere,” Chatrath said. “The average hotel room is $300 a night, and cor-
PROFILE
No surprise, then, that when in his 20s,
Chatrath entered the travel industry.
He had worked for 11 years for Up and
Away Travel in New York, a large ticket
consolidator. At a time when veteran agents
were bemoaning the direction of a profession that was becoming more difficult,
Chatrath opened his own agency. It was
June 2001.
He partnered with his sister, Deepa
Kaur, to launch the new agency, Air-Savings, in New York. Kaur was a veteran of
several agencies, but the siblings’ timing
couldn’t have been worse. “In September,
everything crashed,” he recalled.
But Air-Savings’ ace in the hole was, and
is, its specialty: travel to India. With business and leisure travel there growing, Air-Savings, now Carlson Wagonlit Travel/Air-Savings, did not have as tough a time as
other agencies.
“We didn’t suffer much because, by
the end of October, people were traveling
Sonny Chatrath, owner of Carlson Wagonlit
Travel/Air-Savings, specializes in trips to India.
porate travelers stay a week, so there’s a
decent commission. Business-class airline
tickets are about $5,000, and we get overrides, so it’s lucrative.”
But he said he also hoped to make a
name as a specialist in travel to India outside the ethnic market. To do so, he said he
might change the agency’s name or introduce another company name to reflect the
expanded role. He has already signed on as
a Carlson Wagonlit associate, in 2007, to
appeal to a broader base “with a name to
give us more credibility,” he said.
“In the beginning, our mission was to
establish a brand. We advertised in the
New York Times and Time Out New York.
But it’s a tough industry, and, because we
were looked at as an ethnic agency, most
people thought we were a bucket shop.
That isn’t a pleasant term.”
However, as he moves beyond that, Chatrath sees a growing market for tourism
with a spiritual side, with people showing
interest in traveling to India for yoga and
meditation. He’s using family connections
and knowledge of the country in developing packages.
“My family is in Agra [the site of the Taj
Mahal], and I want people to know the India that Indians know. For example, if a
client wants to have a dress or suit made
in India, I can have him picked up at the
airport and then taken to the tailor that
my family has used for years.
“We can explain about the hotel rating
system in India and how it’s very important to choose a hotel above three stars
because anything below is probably not
appropriate for most Americans.”
Taking advantage of the interest in Bollywood movies, he’s considering putting
together a package in which clients watch
a Bollywood extravaganza being filmed
and perhaps take part. “I think there are
people who would jump at the chance to
see the actors up close,” he said.
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