Asterr Holidays – Travel the World

Asterr Holidays – Travel the World

 It has been since 7 years, Asterr Holidays – Travel the World, have been An One Stop Travel organisation that enables you to create unique experiences for corporate and private travellers all over the Globe, with the objective to fill a perceived need for the in-depth provision of world-wide Travel related services. With its experience in the business travel field, it has recognized a severe need for creation of a separate niche department to cater to the holiday of individuals and their corporate requirements.

Our services include World Wide packages, hotel bookings of entire tourist places as well as Business centres . We also arrange you with Group Tours for all places around the world with a wide range of package as well as tailor-made International & Domestic holidays to Free Individual Travel (FIT) in all budgets with excellent services to a demanding clientele. (Few examples of tourist places below)

Ladhak – India              Sydney Opera House     Banff National Park,          Lake Plitvice, Croatia

Canada

We are a B2B / B2C company UK, European countries, America’s, Canada, Australia, New Zealand promoting Accommodations, Transfers & other Ground Handling Products to our Travel Trade.

Asterr Holidays – Travel the World organisation links to follow

Company URL: www.asterholidys.asia

Instagram: @asterrholidays

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minal-jhumkhawala-2449ba66/

Twitter: @AsterrHolidays

My Story as an Employee and what Motivated me to start my own Business.

 Myself Ms. Minal Jhumkhawala the Founder / Manging Director of Asterr Holidays – Travel the World a 8 year old company based in Mumbai – India, started my Tourism career at the age of 21 a Graduate in Commerce and Economics, MBA Graduate with a Diploma’s in Travel and Tourism.  

Here is my Story.

Geographical topic always interested me during school days, always excited to learn about new places new cities, different food people eat around the world, this all I dreamt of at the start of my career when I use to go places around with my Family for a vacation, wondering how people Travel from one place to another. After my Graduation I got a job in a Travel company (my first job) where I learned how to arrange

      Ms. Minal Jhumkhawala

                                                                                                                                                                                 Founder / Director

flight tickets for the travellers, how to connect with this world full of Tourists places and different activities to see, experience.

I almost spent my 11 years working with other organisations for 10 – 11 hours fixed job where the pressure was to constantly produce, promote which took a toll on my wellbeing, Family, Friends, personal space and almost everything.

Being a Travel consultant one’s role is to be available all the time for helping your customers to  enrich their lives with beautiful memories and experiences and in return you receive lot of work pressure, all worries for unpleasant pay-outs even after putting an extra effort.

A Micromanagement style, was not my style whereby a manager closely observes, controls, and/or reminds the work of their subordinates or employees. Micromanagement is generally considered to have a negative connotation, mainly because it shows a lack of freedom and trust in the workplace. I believe every individual should be treated equally, given chance to show their talents, sadly where organisation do not consider an opinion on any matter.

Initially it was just a thought why not I do all the work by myself and take all the credits instead. (After all its all-NOBLE work what I do…. hahaha).

Today many employees face this problem at workplace, I always find them complaining, grumbling about work environment, very bossy and unpleasant personality of the superiors and on and on (how boring no fun here).  

All these challenges motivated me to take an extreme step to start up my own, work for / on myself for mental peace and to enjoy what you work for and dreamt of. And make more money to see the world and to fulfil my dream with a less stress hustle.

Challenges I faced in my Entrepreneur Journey

                      I come from a non-business background family. As everyone is aware that starting up own business in any field funding is needed, really? I do not believe in that all I did was used my studies knowledge, experience, research about the product / services I wanted to sell in the Market and then just BOOOM!!! See so simple…….no I was wrong funding, man power etc all these business-related resources are essential to start your own business, but I had nun, and I did not want to put any pressure on my family for the same…. Also didn’t want to do a job and go through all difficulties / dramas, micromanagement challenges throughout my career life, somewhere it had to stop. So, I started off with ZERO funding. ZERO man power, no loan. There were lot of people I came across who did not support this decision.

Initially it was very challenging to face the Travel Market where you need to stand parallel to all the BRAND NAMES, inspite of being a well-known individual in the market because of the past job / experience. But ofcourse customers will blindly follow a Brand Name. The biggest challenge here is audience trust, yeah that’s true as new brand in the market, working from home, no office space, who will trust the services from such company. Still, I stood tall and was able to manage to do a little with lot of challenges. It took me 3 years to make my Brand name in this competitive market and to gain customers’ confidence in me to buy my Services. And now I have my own team who works with me.

Tourism market is the most competitive market where customers will buy services where they find the least expensive and expect the bests service.

It is a very challenging job where you have to keep evolving your knowledge, keep yourself updated with the new travel trends, keep yourself updated with the latest travel news….and it’s a constant process, have to come up with new products very often, to attract the audience.

Will talk about the situation during COVID times, as everyone is aware Tourism Industry was the first one to suffer and last one to recover during this pandemic.

OMG !! what will happen to my business now how am I going to survive, no one was allowed to Travel anywhere, didn’t knew for how long this will go on! I was completely shattered many start-up companies were shut down due to no business. All my hard work for these many years in vain, but anyway one fine day it will be on the track.

I Struggled with consistency, comparison, imposter syndrome, as a result I almost gave up, thinking I was wasting time, energy and resources on something that wasn’t going to work. But then something changed and I realised I wasn’t alone. Many other organisations faced similar challenges and were trying to overcome them. I started to connect with my resources, started from ZERO once again, went through all the challenges to bring up the Brand Name in the market again and regularising my audience.

Opportunities in Market for Travel & Tourism as a Career

Tourism is a very vast and fast-growing industry, there are different verticals such as hotel operation, hospitality, hotel management, airline management (ticketing to steward), administration travel agencies, destination management company, government tourism departments, tour operations, immigration and customs services, airlines, hotels, Photography, Guiding, Lodging, Vehicle business, Vlogger, translating services, travel content, organizing events, influencers and the list continues, courses are available for almost all the verticals. It also has incredible capacity to create direct and indirect entrepreneurial opportunity for emerging economies and developing countries. It creates jobs, strengthens the local economy, contributes to local infrastructure development and can help to conserve the natural environment and cultural assets and traditions, and to reduce poverty and inequality.

Advice about Business

Entrepreneurship can be viewed as recognizing change, pursuing opportunity, taking on risk and responsibility, innovating, making better use of resources, creating new value that is meaningful to customers, and doing it all over again and again.

“The best businesses come from people’s bad personal experiences. If you just keep your eyes open, you’re going to find something that frustrates you, and then you think, ‘well I could maybe do it better than it’s being done,’ and there you have a business.”

All entrepreneurs have had their own unique journey in building a successful business. They’re all different. Some come from backgrounds of wealth and influential connections—while others have built empires starting truly from nothing. There are many who wish to start their own , show their talents and capability but are unable to do so , could be many reasons behind that. Start now for an idea to be big, it has to be useful – being useful doesn’t need funding, it may not give you immediate result lot of consistency and patience is required. Setting short goals and milestone is a major component of building long term success, with this strategy, how I went from learning to what a business is, you will not be able to achieve anything if do not come out of your comfort zone. You need to really love your work to start your business, because not everybody is going to love it.

Don’t give up, don’t take anything personally, and don’t take no for an answer; you never know what you’re going to learn along the way.”.

I wish you all good luck in your future endeavors, I am certain you’ll achieve everything you work towards. Best wishes and good luck!  May you continue to be strong and successful.

Anastasia Filipenko

Anastasia Filipenko is a health and wellness psychologist, dermatolist and a freelance writer. She frequently covers beauty and skincare, food trends and nutrition, health and fitness and relationships. When she's not trying out new skincare products, you'll find her taking a cycling class, doing yoga, reading in the park, or trying a new recipe.

Latest from Business News