Convention Mix

IATO’s 20th annual session that was held in Agra was a place where serious exchange of ideas and networking took place, despite the absence of the tourism and aviation ministers Rabindra Seth analyses the action at IATO

If Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav keeps his promise to clean up Agra within twelve months he could make IATO’s 20th annual session held in the City of the Taj from August 5-8, 2004 a landmark event. Responding to the association president, Subhash Goyal’s complaint that it took an hour to negotiate the dirty and congested road through the city to the great monument, the chief minister said the state government had big plans to beautify not only the environs of the Taj and other monuments but also the access to them. He also shared the good news that spade work in restoring Taj by night five days a month - two nights before full moon and two after it - had been completed in association with ASI and the Supreme Court’s permission would soon be sought. Permission, he said, will also be asked for holding concerts in the Mehtab Bagh across the river from the Taj. More importantly, he said, a new tourism policy will soon be unveiled which will facilitate UP getting its due place on the tourist map. Earlier, his tourism minister, Kankab Hameed and tourism secretary, Aloke Sinha, spoke of plans to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Taj without, however, explaining why no preparatory work had been undertaken so far. They also announced that it was planned to develop Meerut as a hub of a circuit to commemorate India’s first war of independence which the British had described as the 1857 Mutiny.

Sadly, the new union minister of tourism, Renuka Chowdhury and the aviation minister, Praful Patel, did not make it to the convention which would have been an excellent opportunity to have an interface with more than 700 members of the tour operators’ fraternity and leaders of other segments of the tourism industry. Their absence was somewhat made up by the enthusiastic participation of ministers from Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and commissioners and secretaries from several other states. A senior functionary of the World Tourism Organisation, (WTO), Harsh Varma (chief, technical cooperation) made a presentation on the phenomenal success of Malaysia and Thailand with their Malaysia Truly Asia and Amazing Thailand campaigns. Between 1995 and 2002, he said, tourist arrivals in Malaysia had jumped from 7.46 million to 13.29 million and, in Thailand from 6.95 million to 10.87 million. Speaking about India, Varma said while the Incredible India campaign had created awareness abroad and mobilised the travel trade, it was too early to assess its impact. The increased arrivals, he said, had resulted from the pent-up demand and the country’s economic growth.

An interesting sidelight of the Agra convention was the coincidental presence in the city of Pakistan’s secretary tourism and culture, Jaleel Abbas, who was in India for talks on cultural exchanges as confidence building measures. He said that tourism had been discussed in his talks in New Delhi and one proposal under consideration was to revive the earlier protocol of the ’80s under which groups could be issued visas on both sides. He said he would like Indian and Pakistani tour operators to sell joint packages for India and Pakistan to overseas visitors. It was no surprise that he received a standing ovation.

Uma Pillai, the new secretary at the department of tourism, who has just taken over from Rathi Vinay Jha, suggested to the tour operators that one way to meet room shortages could be dispersal of groups to less crowded destinations. Various segments of the industry, she said, should cooperate to synergise the tourism boom. Among other highlights was Rajasthan minister Usha Punia’s announcement that the state’s tourism budget has been doubled to Rs 26 crore. And, Kerala’s minister, P Sankaran invited IATO to hold its next session in his state in Cochin which is now getting ready to host the Kerala Travel Mart III at the end of September, an initiative which had helped the state achieve exponential increase in arrivals, both domestic and international. The Andhra secretary, S P Singh said that work has begun on Hyderabad’s state-of-the-art international airport which should be ready for commissioning in the middle of 2007. Referring to the convention theme “sustaining the boom”, Kuoni chief Ranjit Malkani said tour operators should seek to create a boom in their own outfits and aim at converting turnover into profit in five years by opening new markets and offering new products.