New IATO Executive Committee Elected

Subhash Goyal Takes Over As President

Anindita Chattopadhyay - New Delhi

After a gap of two months to be precise, the new Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) executive committee is in place with industry veteran Subhash Goyal at its helm. The earlier executive committee was dissolved on October 30, 2003, citing irregularities in the organisation's functioning. The new committee has Major Murlidhar and Vijay Thakur (secretary of the dissolved body) as senior vice-president and vice-president respectively. Lally Mathews has been elected as the new secretary, Ravi Kalra is joint secretary and Arun Anand is the treasurer.

Significantly, this is not the first time that Goyal has been asked to hold the reins of IATO in the wake of a debacle. In 1995, at the Khajuraho convention when the executive committee was dissolved due to acrimony between two rival factions, Goyal was approached by members and elected president unopposed. In fact, he went on to serve three consecutive terms from 1995-2000 and was instrumental in changing the constitution so that no office bearer would serve more than two terms.

Ask Goyal whether such debacles will weaken IATO and eschewing controversy he replies, "IATO is already a strong organisation representing the voice of the tourism industry. Every organisation has its ups and downs and IATO is no different. I have accepted this position as a challenge and am confident to steer IATO ahead with support from all members."

Most importantly, IATO has realised for certain, the flaw of doing away with the service of a professional director, which actually led to the fiasco. "We will again hire a professional for the post of director, who will manage the administration and day-to-day operations," added Goyal.

Goyal believes active involvement of allied members in the functioning of the organisation will not only make the organisation stronger but also create a better understanding between different stakeholders within the industry. "My objective is to ask members what they want and accordingly form action committees, which will have representations from both active and allied members. For the first time, we are forming a Grievance Committee to resolve bilateral problems like non payment, delayed payment, bouncing of cheques etc," he informed. In fact, the elected members of the executive committee include allied members Sunil C Gupta of Travel Bureau, Agra, N S Rathore of Garha Tours and Travels and Soman S Pathy of the Gujarat Tourism Board.

So what will top his agenda? "We will try to extend more discounts to IATO privilege card holders, push for visa-on-arrival at least for selected countries, removal of service tax, uniformity of taxes in different states and make the IATO website more interactive to facilitate and encourage B2B transactions on the web. Further, we will try to acquire land to construct our own building and lobby to bring tourism and civil aviation under one ministry."