Kanoo — The name that spells travel
During my tenure as the editor in chief of Malayalam News and Urdu News, I used to visit Bahrain frequently because I liked it and had an office and a well-known correspondent there. Ashok Kumar is still actively involved and his name appears regularly in Malayalam News. He is a Keralite Indian. Since he is well connected in Bahrain it was my good luck to utilize his contacts to meet Bahrain’s newsmakers. Thus scores of interviews were conducted with them and published in the newspaper.
With Kumar I attended a dinner party held in Kanoo’s guest house in the city which was attended by Sheikh Mubarak Ali Kanoo. The family has been well established in the country since the past century and holds pride of place in its business hierarchy. Kanoo is one of the most prominent families on the island.
Soon after arrival I went over to Mubarak’s chair and paid my respects to him telling him about myself and the newspapers and publishing house that I represented. As usual with Arabs and orientals I was welcomed warmly and we started to talk about various matters including our sister Arabic publication Asharq Al-Awsat which used to be sold in Bahrain the same day as in Dammam. He liked to read it in addition to Bahrain’s excellent Arabic and English dailies which I read regularly when visiting the country.
The meeting provided me a golden opportunity to ask him about the company that has become a synonym for travel and is certainly one of the best known companies in that field.
I told him that I see the building that houses his company in Jeddah almost daily since it is located in my business locality just under the most famous bridge in the town, the so-called Muraba, or H Bridge as it is called by the expatriate communities. Kanoo Travel has now branches in many countries; has two hundred offices, 1,000 employees mainly in the Middle East and a few in Britain. Since it was his brainchild he was committed to making it a success and is reported to have at times gone out of the little office of three employees to ask for business or sell tickets.
Surprisingly, Kanoo became a member of the much coveted International Air Transport Association — IATA — which endows its members with added prestige in the travel business.
A major development marked the addition of American Express to its business. Since it is described as the largest travel management company in the world on account of its many activities it clearly boosted Kanoo in the field of travel enterprise.
In 1990 Kanoo worked with Rosenbluth, the third largest in the world and Kanoo signed a master franchise agreement with American Express that covers North Africa, Middle East and the GCC. According to the company’s biodata, the company has extended its business in the United Kingdom making use of the latest technological expertise and travel support systems.
According to its Deputy Executive General Manager Tim Casey the owners are very much involved in the industry by maintaining keen interest in the business. “Directors are very accessible and want to meet the customers to know their problems to come up with solutions quickly.”
Now in his late eighties Sheikh Mubarak remains involved with the business and ready to solve problems with speed and decisiveness as I came to know during visits to Bahrain.
Having been in Bahrain from the start when the British were holding sway like in other countries in the Gulf, the Kanoo family was involved right from 1937 when it provided refueling facilities in Bahrain for Imperial Airways flying to India and Australia.
The airline was the precursor of first BOAC then British Airways which is still UK’s Airline.
From then on it was smooth sailing for the Kanoos and all their businesses, as one can see in the country where its name is closely tied to travel, touched new heights.
When I was invited by the Aga Khan Foundation to attend their annual prize giving ceremony in Istanbul I asked the top Press Manager Mohammed Keshavjee about the huge amount of work involved in invitations, air tickets, hotel rooms, car transport and other details and whether he had the human resources to address them. He said that the whole thing was handed over to American Express. That was it and the job was done.
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Rebranding the Kanoo shops
Kanoo Travel has begun rebranding shops operated under the American Express Travel name, using its Nottingham branch as the first to display the new look.
Kanoo bought Amex’s leisure and non-proprietary foreign exchange businesses in 2007, but has until now retained the Amex branding.
The new fascia, which will be applied to 14 agencies and seven stand-alone bureaus, includes Kanoo’s four season’s logo. Shops will remain members of the Amex Global Network partnership.
Nottingham was chosen as the first to be refurbished after winning the company’s UK branch of the year award in 2011.
Kanoo has also renewed the lease on the Victoria Street shop.
Branch Manager Tracey Stevenson said the rebranding better reflected the agency’s positioning in the market. “We still do very much a mixture of everything, but we are getting more leisure business — it’s about 50/50,” she said.
• www.kanootravel.com
