A known industry face, Indian Legend Holidays Ravinder Kumar, will do his first stint in IATO Executive Committee if elected. He is seeking nomination for the post of EC- Active Member.
Kumar seeks IATO to be bigger, transparent, inclusive, proactive instead of reactive, a global identity and with a strong, credible and fearless voice that he says can be a reality by bringing in ‘Team for Change’ under the astute leadership of Lally Mathews.
“There is a Ray of hope with all new candidates. They want IATO to be bigger, transparent and inclusive.We need to work really hard to bring everyone back to normal in inbound and tourism sector.There are many things which will need to be addressed. If we get elected, the entire functioning will be transparent, electronic media shall be used for day to day activities, with proper updating on website and all social media channels, including an official group on WhatsApp,” Kumar says.
“The most important issue is that we get our business from overseas countries but unfortunately, IATO is not member with any major travel association anywhere in the world. How many people know IATO worldwide?We shall make IATO a global identity than just a Delhi based small group,” he insists. Furthermore he also questioned the absence of State Tourism Boards from IATO membership arguing that IATO cannot help members without local support.
“How many Indian State Tourism Boards are affiliated to IATO? Even our own State Tourism bodies have not been given honorary membership. Can we grow India as a destination without local support?” he questioned, adding that these are broader issues and there is no mention by the ruling party.
According to Kumar, in the last 39 years, IATO has only mustered some1620 odd members and to accommodate more members there isneed to amend the constitution which is almost 40 years old. “IATO has got around 5.5croresin FD which should be used for the fraternity.At least waive off two years subscription. Even if we waive off the subscription, there shall still be more than 3 crores left in the kitty,” Kumar said while commenting on waiving of annual IATO membership subscription fee.
“The inner strength of ‘Team for Change’ is fearlessness. Our voice is not heard by the officials, maybe we could not put it across in the right manner. SEIS is a policy of the Government, started by the then Finance Minister, Arun Jaitly. What we are asking is to implement the same so we all can survive for couple of more years. We are not against the Central Government, but asking them to implement timely. We will not shy away from taking this responsibility effectively for the survival of the inbound industry. This is just the one issue but for any other agenda, we promise that we shall make IATO proactive and not reactive,” he promised while concluding.”
Kumar has been an IATO member for 10 years. Prior to starting his own company in 2008, he worked with the likes of Kuoni, SITA and TCI and a decade spent with India’s leading hotel chain Taj Hotels.
