By Arun Kumar Shrivastav
Indian tourism market is slowly but surely taking the centre stage. With Ganga Vilas, India is setting the stage for high-budget tourism products. That could bring a paradigm shift in the way the Indian tourism market is looked at.
A four-day meeting of the G20 Tourism Working Group was held from February 7-10 at Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. A side event on the opening day discussed best practices, success stories, prospects, and problems through panel discussions and presentations. The theme was — Rural Tourism for Community Empowerment and Poverty Alleviation. On the final day, a similar discussion was held on the topic — Promotion of Archaeological Tourism: Discovering Shared Cultural Heritage. India is playing a key role in driving the agenda at these meetings as G20 president.
Tourism infrastructure, promotions, green tourism, destination management, digitization, and tourism MSMEs were the themes that dominated the four-day event. The delegates stayed at the Dhordo Tent City and attended yoga sessions at sunrise, with the stunning White Rann stretching out magnificently. During India’s yearlong G20 presidency, the Tourism Working Group will have three more meetings, with the final one being ministerial level to be held in Goa.
With temperatures rising, most of Asia is looking forward to travelling to their favourite destinations and those destinations are gearing up to receive tourists. India holds a key place in the international tourism business both with its attractive destinations and Indian tourists willing to go out and see the world. Rural folks in many parts of India expect tourists and innovations beyond homestays are being explored both by tourism startups and state governments.
Take, for example, Himachal Pradesh whose Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu met Union Tourism Minister G Krishnan Reddy and sought the centre’s help in setting up a tent city in the foothills of Dhauladhars in Kangra district. The HP government is planning to develop the Kangra district as the tourism capital of the state. “Adequate land and road connectivity will be ensured for the project, which will have more than 200 encampments with all luxury and comfort,” Sukhu said after the meeting. The state government is acquiring land for the expansion of Kangra airport and heliports would be built to improve air connectivity with an eye on higher-end domestic and international tourism. A convention center with the help of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) will be set up at Dharmshala.
After launching the Ganga Vilas cruise vessel which will take tourists on a 60-day river tourism trip, covering a big part of the Ganga and Brahmaputra rivers at a whopping cost of Rs 20 lakh for each tourist, the Uttar Pradesh government thinks the state can emerge as a key river tourism destination. It’s pitching this prospect at the ongoing Global Investors Summit (GIS).
“India has set notable targets for river cruise tourism. We aim to ensure that the cruise tourism traffic with night stays goes up from 5,000 in 2022 to 1,20,000 in 2047. Also, the number of permanent, floating, and landing terminals (cargo and passengers) shall go up from the present 94 to 400 in 2047 while local cruise tourism traffic (without night stay) shall go up from the existing 15 lakh to 75 lakh,” G Ashok Kumar, Director General of the Namami Gange program said while discussing the scope of UP river tourism at GIS. He added that the government is planning to spend Rs30,000crore on vessel construction and infrastructure development through 2047. Nearly Rs 19,000 crore would be spent on cruise-related activities.
Well, India not only figures on the tourism map for its potential as a key destination. It also figures in the tourism development strategies of several governments that try to attract Indian tourists. For example, South African Tourism expects India to become the sixth-biggest source of the market with the number of Indian tourists to the country rising to 70,000 in 2023-24. As business and leisure tourism takes more Indians to foreign shores, tourism of boards of Australia, South Africa, and Thailand, in particular, are looking to have a bigger share of India’s outbound tourism industry.
“Any countries seeking growth in tourism are not growing in and with India, their lifespan will be short-lived. India is the market to reckon with, it has the budget to travel and Indians have the will to travel. Even our forward bookings for June are strong, which signals the demand among Indian travellers. It is a core market,” said South Africa Tourism’s (SAT) Hub Head, Middle East, Indian and South East Asia, Neliswa Nkani. (IPA Service)
