Pandemic has decimated the inbound tourism in its entirety. There is growing demand for‘strategic achievable action plan’that can not only help fight the pandemic’s effect on the sector so far, but can also catalyse strong inbound tourism recovery, followed by robust future growth.
“We need to start all over again and with measures and initiatives that can give us actual result unlike half-hearted efforts before. We can go the same old ways that has so far given us little result for a country as endowed as ours, or we do things that is actually required to give the country results inFTAs and revenuethat the country rightfully deserves,” says SarabJit Singh, Founder and former Vice-chairman of FAITH.
Covid-19 notwithstanding, the fact of the matter is that there are very few companies selling India internationally. There is something terribly-terribly wrong with the way we are reaching out to promote India. We need look at these. We need to press the proverbial ‘Reset’ button.
Singh insists that the need of the hour is for the government and the industry to sit down together and discuss the issues threadbare. “Government and industry need to join heads and discuss in detail what all we, public or private sector, were doing, be it our marketing promotions, budget, eVisa, FTAs and receipts etc. and getting in return. India’s FTA of 11 million doesn’t do any justice when destinations far less endowed are getting three or four times more,” the former FAITH Vice-chairman stressed.
“Covid-19 notwithstanding, the fact of the matter is that there are very few companies selling India internationally. Our business development activities takes us to every source markets and many major and minor travel expos and we barely see Indian brochures, programmes and itineraries with most of the leading operators in these source markets, or for that matter any market. There is something terribly-terribly wrong with the way we are reaching out to promote India. We need look at these. We need to press the proverbial ‘Reset’ button,” said Singh while responding to the country’s chances of achieving the new inbound tourism targets set by the Ministry of Tourism.
“You keep on doing whatever you are doing like digital promotions, advertisements in the magazines and newspapers, TV commercials etc, but until and unless there are those foreign tour operators not selling the destination on the ground, things will not happen. Also, we are not hot like Thailand, Turkey or Singapore that tourists will book on their own and come,” he said while further adding “Any further delay will be the death of the industry, and we can pretty much forget about achieving or targeting the 33 million ITAs and US $ 56 billion in tourism revenue by 2024 as set forth in the new draft National Tourism Policy.”
“The pandemic has at least given us reason to relook at our destination marketing strategies and plans. And there is very high level of willingness with our political and bureaucratic leadership and industry stakeholders at the moment. Both the MoT and inbound trade needs to reach out to each other. MoT can gather invaluable insights from tour operators’ destination marketing experience overseas and feedbacks. We need to sit down and ponder over the way forward,” Singh conclude.
