We could not have had the 66th Convention of TAAI (Travel Agents Association of India) at a better time. This is the time when we have opened our skies for scheduled international flight operations from March 27th and Visa processing has been resumed for most of the countries, said Rupinder Brar, ADG, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India while addressing the industry stakeholders at the outset of the launch of TAAI’s 66th Convention Logo and Theme.
At the outset, she extended her best wishes to the upcoming convention of TAAI which is taking place in Sri Lanka from April 19-22, 2022 and admired all the efforts made by the association during the pandemic era. “I wish to congratulate TAAI, under the dynamic leadership of the president Jyoti Mayal who have been interacting with us for two and half a year and doing amazing works with us in the MoT.”
“If now we look back at the last two years the way all of you have held in the circumstances and after the initial kind of a shocked set back which was obviously hitting everyone; the kind of ideas started coming to us and what we could do in this period of adversity to actually think differently, and how to reboot, re-engineer, reprocess, I think it’s been a wonderful journey and I must congratulate TAAI for having been a very vibrant part of our thinking process as to what should India be doing.”
Sharing her views on the importance of the Convention in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Brar said, “While we work together with our neighbouring countries and Sri Lanka of course being a very beautiful emerald for giving the tourist that holistic experience, it’s (66th TAAI Convention) a fantastic opportunity for us to come together and create itineraries that are far more diverse and far more comprehensive as far as the tourist is concerned.”
She shared that the data released by Tripadsvisor indicates that within the Regional Travel of South Asia, South East Asia and the neighbouring countries there is a lot of interest. It also suggests that in the time to come India is poised to be a hugely favoured destination.
“And over the period of the time when we are able to get back with far more interest from the tourist from long haul destinations of the US, UK, Europe and Japan there is a huge potential between Sri Lanka and India to work together to create meaningful itineraries for a tourist coming from afar.”
Brar further informed that a particular interest to the entire region and Indian Ministry of Tourism working very closely is Buddhist Heritage. “We understand that our friends from Sri Lanka are also giving a huge amount of priority to the segment. We look forward to work together to bring in a lot of tourist from the rest of South East Asia, South Asia and the Far East, in terms of leveraging on our common culture, common heritage for a comprehensive take away from tourism.”
“We look forward to work with Sri Lanka Tourism Board in creating lot of campaigns together. Not only should be intent we left at discussion level but it needs to manifest in terms of creating some joint content, promotions and itineraries together,” she concludes.
