MAM
Emirates inks global online partnership with Intercontinental Hotel Group
MUMBAI: Emirates Airlines is sure flying high! After inking a global deal with car rental company Hertz, it has now partnered with the Intercontinental Hotels Group to offer customers the best available hotel rates online.
Emirates customers can go online at www.emirates.com and book their hotel stay at any of the Intercontinental Hotels Group properties, via a seamless link to the group’s online reservations system.
Emirates executive vice president commercial operations worldwide Ghaith Al Ghaith said, “This agreement with the Intercontinental Hotel Group will provide enormous value to our online customers, especially during the summer season in the northern hemisphere, when they can take advantage of the guaranteed best hotel rates, plus receive bonus Skywards Miles when booking online.”
From now until 30 September 2005, members of Skywards, the frequent flyer programme of Emirates and Sri Lankan Airlines, who are also members of Priority Club Rewards (the loyalty programme of Intercontinental Hotels Group) will receive 500 bonus Skywards miles when they book a hotel stay online, in addition to receiving 500 Skywards miles when they produce their Skywards card at any Intercontinental property.
Intercontinental Hotels Group, Middle East and Africa chief operating officer Chris Moloney said, “The most exciting aspect of this partnership is the immediate visibility of tangible rewards. Now is the time to take advantage of this special offer and this new agreement proves more beneficial to all our valued Skywards and Priority Club members.”
AD Agencies
Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
