India On An Incredible Run

Providing a bird's eye view of the Indian tourism market A K Misra, administrative Head, Ministry of Tourism (MoT) elaborates on its plans to ensure a bright future for the Indian trade.

The Ministry of Tourism (MoT) is the nodal agency for the development and promotion of tourism in India. It formulates national policies and programmes and is headed by the Minister of Tourism, Independent Charge, Renuka Chowdhury.

The office of the Director General of tourism now merged with the office of Secretary Tourism provides executive directions for the implementation of various policies and programmes. The directorate general of tourism has a network of 20 offices within the country and 13 offices abroad. The overseas offices are primarily responsible for tourism promotion and marketing in their respective areas and the field offices in India are responsible for providing information services to tourists while monitoring the progress of field projects.

According to Misra, "As far as our strategy is concerned, innovation and marketing is the name of the game. In terms of destination development, earlier we released funds to state governments and ask them for their project reports on the basis of sanctioned amount. Now, we will be implementing a module, which entails setting up of a multi-disciplinary team that will prepare the concept data on which the detailing will be done later.

The ministry is also taking concrete steps to resolve accommodation issues. According to Misra, the shortage of rooms is felt acutely in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. In this regard a decision has been taken and about 90 plots have been identified for the hotel industry in addition to 40 plots that have been shortlisted for small budget hotels and guest house. Misra informs, "For the first time we are registering all the guest house in the country and providing them an approval as well. We have also gone a step further to encourage the home stay facilities by classifying and registering them as well. In this regard draft guidelines have been formulated and we have now sent it to all the state governments for their comments following which guidelines will be put in place." The minister has already announced the classification norms for the time-share industry.

Besides this, a recommendation has been made to the ministry of urban development to permit hotels to be constructed within four kms of the airport, as there are some restrictions prohibiting such developments.

Commenting on future plans, Misra says, "We would like to tackle high-end patents from USA and UK, as we believe that medical tourism holds immense opportunity, as it offers phenomenal growth prospects. A medical tourist visa is already under way, which is an excellent initiative to boost this kind of tourism in the country."

Cashing in on India’s vast cultural heritage, another thrust area for the government is rural tourism, which has yet to be completely explored. In keeping with this line of thought, the ministry has identified 57 villages in various parts of the country to which it will provide assistance of Rs 25 lakh each for upgradation of infrastructure.

An added Rs 25 lakh for this programme is coming from UNDP for the capacity building programme, which is a software programme. Besides helping the villagers earn and understand the plus points of tourism, UNDP has selected 35 villages out of the 57 selected by the Ministry of Tourism. "We are currently co-ordinating with the Panchayti Raj ministry to support us in this endeavour and we are also considering involving the media to aid with promotion and awareness of these programmes," says Misra

The ministry of tourism is also working on a new theme for its Incredible India campaign. "The theme for the next phase of the campaign will be markedly different so that the campaign does not become stale," he states confidently.

Buddhist tourism, cruises, rural tourism, adventure and spiritual tourism are few areas where the ministry is planning to focus on in the near future. However taxation, poor infrastructure development, etc makes offering a world class experience to tourists, challenging but definitely not impossible.

India is poised to emerge as the second fastest growing tourism economy in the world over 2005-14, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). Foreign tourist arrivals in India during 2004 went up by an average of 25 per cent over corresponding figures of 2003 and foreign exchange earnings were up by nearly 40 per cent. India made it to the number five spot on the top 10 list of destinations for 2004 by Chicago based iExplore.com, a dramatic vault from the 36th slot it occupied in 2003.

The Finance Ministry in the union budget 2005-06 raised the fund allocation for tourism to Rs 786 crore, from the Rs 500 crore in 2004-05.

Tourism infrastructure, which was on top priority in the tourism agenda, has seen an allocation of Rs 415.75 crore been proposed for the year 2005-06. The MoT also got an increase of Rs 29 crore in the fund allocation for various schemes for the Northeast region with a total of Rs 79 crore. The Union budget 2004-05 had allocated these states Rs 50 crore. "In order to retain the growth rate we need many interesting tourism products. What we have right now is an asset and we need to manage this asset and learn how to better the experience. So far, we have had this Destination Development Scheme (DDS) and circuit development scheme at an outlay of Rs five and eight crore respectively. But, realising that this amount is not sufficient to create an experience for the tourists, we are now formulating a new scheme. Under the scheme 10 to 15 destinations will be identified and would be taken for Bid Ticket Assistance programme. So it could see an added Rs 25 crore per destination and possibly Rs 50 crore per circuits," says Misra.

With the new scheme on the anvil and the ministry taking up two cities namely Agra and Benaras on a pilot basis, it has engaged HUDA to prepare an over all concept paper. He concludes, "With the government setting up a plethora of novel initiatives to cement the future of this segment, Indian tourism will be looking up for a long time to come."