At a time when the whole travel and tourism industry is fighting for its survival, there is also a growing disappointment among the industry stakeholders that the government has barely come to their rescue so far. Although the country has entered in to the ‘Unlock 4.0’ but non-availability of any concrete plan is sending out a message of ‘little seriousness’ to re-establish the inbound tourism.
Meanwhile the draft National Tourism Policy 2020 (NTP) circulated among the industry stakeholders is attracting different opinions and feedbacks especially towards achieving the ambitious target of 33 million International Tourist Arrivals (ITA) in the next five years as proposed in the NTP. There is a strong feeling among the tour operators that in the wake of COVID-19 when there is zero inbound business, achieving such a mammoth target may take much more time than expected. A lot depends on the policies and the kind of support extended to the industry by the Union Ministry of Tourism.
“With the recent experience when we all are struggling for survival, there is hardly any hope from the government to help the industry, but we still keep our fingers crossed. Many of the tour operators have closed down their business and the staff has been laid off. No efforts are being made either by the government or by the stakeholders for promotion of inbound tourism,” says Rajiv Mehra, Vice President of Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO).
The year 2020 is almost gone and there are no plans, ideas or any marketing strategy; even the stakeholders and the government are clueless about the next step. “Presently, inbound tourism to India is zero; there are no visas and international flights. We do not know when we are going back to business; even our Ministry of Tourism has no answer. There is huge negative publicity overseas about our country as thousands of new COVID-19 cases are being reported every day,” added Mehra.
While sharing his views, Amaresh Tiwari, Vice Chairman, India Convention Promotion Bureau (ICPB) says that it looks very impressive and pleasant to the ears that the government is targeting a huge number of ITAs. But the question remains, how? He feels that there is no seriousness in this thought process and neither private sector was involved in this deliberations of wishful thinking.
“In order to get 33 million international tourists arrivals (in five years) we need to grow at 27 per cent (CAGR), whereas our current growth rate is 6.9%. In order to grow almost 5 times of current growth rate, highest level of leadership need to take the command directly,” explains Tiwari.
Top Recommendations
a. Re-establishing the confidence among travellers that India is safe.
b. Increase the budget for marketing, promotions and MDA schemes.
c. Re-establish India Tourism Offices in major source markets.
d. Make ITM bigger with 2000 hosted buyers.
e. Create India Tourism Board with industry body.
f. Creation of India MICE Board with ICPB.
g. Creation of India MICE Fund and India MICE Advantage Programme under ICPB.
“With the recent experience when we all are struggling for survival amid the spread out of COVID-19, our first target would be re-establishing tourism and achieving 10 -11 million Inbound tourists. Thereafter, we shall start talking about 33 million tourists,” says Mehra. “Though there is uncertainty about the beginning of touristic activities as usual, however if once we are back into the business, we have to first convince our regular FTOs to start promoting India,” he added.
“For this we will have to create confidence among the travellers that India is a safe destination and we may have to do aggressive marketing and promotions through sales trips, overseas travel marts and road shows. All these activities can only be done once we are out of this pandemic situation,’ Mehra opines.
While highlighting several important issues, Tiwari further says, “With current scenario and growing economic role of India, most of our airports, routes are over utilised and working with full capacity. There is no clear cut vision, strategy and policy that how this additional load factor of 23 million tourists will be handled.”
In order to bounce back sooner than later and achieving this ambitious target especially post COVID-19 the government of India needs to increase tourism budget. “Need of the hour is that the Ministry of Tourism should allocate more funds to spend only on marketing and promotions, participation in overseas marts, MDA scheme, road shows and encourage the industry with required support, then only we can think of increasing the number of international tourist arrivals,” concludes Mehra.
