Masks, sanitisers, social distancing, greater safety and hygiene, not to forget, the vaccinations, are the new normal. As destinations across the world open to travel and tourism and start afresh their destination marketing and recoup the lost business, how should India Tourism, inbound or domestic, chart its course is going to be interesting.
The recently concluded SATTE organised an engaging session of the topic ‘India Tourism: The Road Ahead’ to develop some ideas on the need of the hour, tourism revival and road it needs to walk to regain its share of travel and tourism and further build from there. The session was moderated by Aashish Gupta, CEO of FAITH. Speakers in the panel included Rupinder Brar, ADG, Ministry of Tourism (MoT), Government of India; Rajiv Mehra, President of Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO); Sudhir Patil, Founder & Director, Veena World; Robert Oblogogiani, Executive Vice President of AviaReps and Karnesh Sharma, Director – Tourism & Culture Affairs, Punjab Heritage & Tourism Promotion.
Initiating the session on ‘India Tourism: Road ahead, Gupta remarked that India’s tourism industry has had the toughest survival in the past two years. “If any industry has been hugely impacted, it has been travel & tourism industry. If in any industry, employment has immensely impacted it has been travel and tourism industry. If any industry’s revenues were impacted badly, it has been travel and tourism industry, but now is time for all of us to bounce back,” said Gupta.
“I think this is time to relook at where we are and how we can move forward from here,” said Gupta. He noted that tourism contributes a significant share to India’s GDP. Tourism is the only industry which creates employment across the country. Tourism is the only sector which generates foreign exchange. Tourism is the only sector which creates infrastructure. It is only sector that creates international goodwill.
Inbound Scenario
So, the question is how we as a country are placed to address the issues of tourism in post-Covid era. And are we in a condition today to not only capture what we had but also build on what we had in the pre-covid era. Let’s start with two key verticals that India Tourism has: inbound vertical and domestic vertical. In the year 2019, Indian received 11million inbound tourists. It also includes people visiting friends and families here. If we look at on the percentage basis, India has 1% share in international tourist market in pre-Covid period.
How soon and how ready is India to regain its 1 % share of international tourist market? Gupta asked this question to Rupinder Brar, ADG, the Ministry of Tourism, who was present as a panellist. Answering Gupta’s question, Brar said, “If we look at where we are right now, surrounded by thousands of people, that sends a strong message to the world that we are ready, we are ready to welcome tourists.” She added that Visa has been fully opened in middle of March. Regular International flights have already started. We worked closely with the industry to ensure that the whole industry is fully vaccinated on priority basis. That sends a sound message that whoever is attending a tourist at airport or elsewhere is fully vaccinated.
She mentioned that the MoT has closely been working with the industry for preparing many more itineraries to widen India’s offerings to the world. “This is where I see a lot of changes happening. People are moving away from standard things that were previously offered; especially in the post-Covid times, we need to take tourists to open places, green places, wellness places, etc. In terms of these attractions, India has lots to offer to tourists. Brar referred to India’s achievement in improving connectivity in recent years. She said that this would come very handy now when the world is bouncing back, and tourism is reopening. “For those who may not be aware, India has 140 airports, 20 of them have capacity for international take-off and landing. The country has second largest network of roads after the US. 36 km roads are constructed every single day,” said Brar. “From industry perspective, I see lots of innovations, lots of user technologies coming in, all by our private sector, which will take India a long way,” she said. Brar admitted that in the last two years it has been extremely tough journey in for everyone involved in travel and tourism industry.
Speaking on the occasion, Rajeev Mehra, President, IATO said, the MoT, the Government of India and IATO have been working very closely with each other for the last two years, on various issues. Starting from the Covid period to now, the MoT has been very helpful.
“As far as inbound tourism is concerned, we are all set for that. I expect October onwards 30 to 40 % business of what we had in the pre-Covid times coming to India. At the same we have lots of problems in hand. One of the problems is that cost of tour packages for India post Covid-19 has grown up by 25 to 30 per cent because of increase in fuel prices, transport cost and hotel rates have gone up. Domestic flights in India are costly,” said Mehra.
He added, “What we expect from the government of India is that it should bring Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) under GST so that cost of ATF comes down. We have been requesting the Tourism Minister and the PM that promotion of India in overseas market has to start now.” According to Mehra, “We are not promoting our country the way our neighbours are promoting themselves in overseas markets. We are not participating in overseas roadshows, except for ATM Dubai which took place recently. It is very important that the Ministry of Tourism, the Government of India along with private operators should promote the country overseas and let the world know that we are still there, and we mean business.”
Mehra feels that roadshows need to be done urgently. They should have been done already, but it is better late than never. “We must start now. We request the government to start these things immediately.” According to Mehra, there is need to promote tourism in right spirit so that dream of the honourable Prime minister is fulfilled.
Gupta commented that it is really a worrying time. Prices are very high. And India is becoming an expensive destination. Another worry is the inflation which is driving up the cost. He also echoed Mehra on pushing for visibility in the international source markets as any more delay can cost India in terms of slow and prolonged recovery of its market share.
Domestic Tourism
As a sub-continental country, India’s diversity in terms of destinations, people, language, culture and food, landscape and topography are second to none. And the fact that it’s a huge country, both in terms of size and population, makes domestic tourism a potential engine of growth and development in the country. While the topic, domestic tourism, came up for discussion on the occasion, Gupta pointed that pre-Covid the number of domestic tourist visits in Indian is around 2.3 billion which is almost one-and-half visits per person making India the second highest market for domestic visits. But when compared with the US and China, the number of visits per person was almost six for US citizens and almost four for the Chinese domestic visits. While number of domestic tourists in India is high, the value and average expenditure by tourist is low, he pointed.
Speaking about domestic tourism, Sudhir Patil, Founder & Director, Veena World, said, “Everyone is saying that domestic tourism is very high, it is booming but there are issues as well.” At the outset, Patil said that our Prime Minister is the Ambassador of our domestic tourism. Wherever he goes to, there is immediate increase in demand from there.”
Coming to issues that India’s domestic tourism is facing, Patil said that low service standard is a concern in domestic tourism. Because of this, according to Patil, for an Indian tourist, visiting a domestic destination has high opportunity cost and that is killing domestic tourism. It is important to improve service standards for domestic tourism, Patil said. He added that while promoting domestic tourism, it is important that India should also avoid doing over marketing of its certain destinations because such places will not be able to sustain the overload of too much tourism and everyone in the industry will collapse. Currently, it is important to focus on tourism that is sustainable.
“Onus should be on all travel service providers that they do not take undue advantage of situation. They should give value for money to their customers,” said Patil. He further said, “Many incoming flights are empty. I am outbound operator. I want more inventories in airlines but that is not possible due to lack of inbound traffic. For more inventories there is need of synergy between outbound and inbound tourism.”
While admitting that the trade and industry need to be pro-active, aggressive and show innovation, he also drew attention that the Center and State need to do better hand holding for the promotion of destinations in the domestic tourism market space. He said that India Tourism needs to work with the State Tourism bodies in a proper synchronised way for promotion which is unique and region specific.
Commenting on the right synergy between the Centre and State Governments, Karnesh Sharma, Director – Tourism & Culture Affairs, Punjab Heritage & Tourism Promotion, pointed that two entities, Centre and State, greatly complement each other’s efforts in the development of tourism through infrastructure creation and marketing and promotion of the destination through various events and mediums. Sharma also pointed that there are many destinations in the states that are often off the tourism radar but have high tourism potential and can be developed through Centre and States funding and help diversify a state’s tourism offerings. To drive home his point, he mentioned that there are many high potential destinations in Punjab, both known and lesser known that can be developed through Centre’s help. “There are so many places in Punjab where one can visit but we have to develop and promote them. Adjoining Gurdaspur, there is a place called Kalanur where Akbar’s coronation was done. Similarly, there are sites in Kapurthala, Rupnagar district and others. There are so many places to develop, promote and visit but we have to make our presence felt,” he added.
Sharma also informed about the new initiatives of the State Governments towards developing Punjab’s tourism profile, especially for the domestic market that he pointed that has become key driver of tourism as well as economy in the post-Covid normal. He also assured of all the help and support from his department for any industry efforts towards promoting tourism in Punjab.
Take Home
Malaysia announced the opening of its border on April 1st earlier this year after imposing a little over two years of strict restrictions on international travel. In just about a fortnight, the Malaysia Tourism was in India conducting a six-city road show to build confidence amongst the trade and travellers, sending a message on safety and its Covid preparedness, to re-engage with the trade on new product updates and education, and importantly, to also tell that it understand that the pandemic was devastating for the trade and industry and hence is willing to hand hold the trade with joints collaborative marketing initiatives and incentives.
On the other hand, some of the leading players in the Malaysian tourism industry, like for example the integrated Resort destination Desaru Coast, have also put on the table some attractive ‘incentives’ scheme to make it even more attractive for the Indian outbound tourism trade, especially the likes of MICE operators and wedding planners, to promote Malaysia in the Indian market. There is a lot we can learn here.
Similarly, given India’s strategic and inherent advantages, domestic tourism is tremendous opportunity. However, there are issues that needs to be addressed and challenges that need to be ironed out in order to exploit the potential opportunities that the sector offers in India. The sector, say industry experts, continues to grapple with poor service standards, safety and hygiene issues, low level investment in marketing and promotion and lack of funding for many promising and potential sites.
Commenting on the industry best practices, Robert Oblogogiani, Executive Vice President of AviaReps, a leading international General Sales Agent (GSA) of Airlines and a tourism marketing and representation company, said, “We as a destination need to understand how to sell, position and present our destination in nowadays reality, in the new normal. I hear very often that we are going back to normal. It is not going back to normal. This is going to be the reality. We need to understand that we have found a new world.”
Furthermore, he added that given its diversity, India is a unique country and so it cannot just copy a promotional strategy from anyone, but it can learn and imbibe good practices in destination marketing and promotion. He suggested that the country should work on short-, medium- and long-term clear objectives and persist with well-crafted strategies for the source market developments. “India should be brave enough to take some very-very fresh approach, very brave approach, change the strategy, bringing in some extraordinary professionals in order to lay out right modals, in the right place and at the right time to position and sell India,” he added.
