The Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism & Hospitality (FAITH), the policy federation of all the national associations representing the complete tourism, travel and hospitality industry of India (ADTOI, ATOAI, FHRAI, HAI, IATO, ICPB, IHHA, ITTA, TAAI, TAFI) has announced India Tourism Vision Day on 8th October. The Board & the Presidents of the 10 FAITH Associations held a National press conference to address the Theme 2020-For Indian Tourism to thrive tomorrow, it has to survive and revive today.
In his address, Nakul Anand, Chairman, FAITH said,” In the post-COVID normal as our country moves towards the stated goal of becoming a 5 trillion dollar economy, our vision is to have a tourism economic footprint of $ 500 bn.
Survival, Revival & Thrival: the three-phased recovery of Indian Tourism. From now, till the time the vaccine is deployed we need to sustain tourism and the service talent that forms the core of this industry. We believe this will be best served by a tourism COVID 19 Fund set up by the Ministry of Tourism where interest-free funds are given to support the employees and the operating costs of tourism companies. This should be done through a direct benefit transfer against their pan cards and GST identities. The tourism industry has been identified as one of the 26 most stressed industries by the RBI expert committee, eligible for restructuring.
He added that Indian tourism needs to be structured through a constitutionally empowered legislative body – A national tourism council to enable fast track center state-level tourism decision making and work on a One India One Tourism approach leveraging and utilizing full synergies of India’s tourism potential across all our states. This will raise the decibels for going Vocal with Local.
Captain Swadesh Kumar, the President –
Adventure Tour Operators Association of India said In the $ 750 bn + world adventure tourism industry which is poised to touch $ 1.5 trillion in the post covid world, India currently has a negligible share. We look forward to working closely with the central & each of state governments to move towards a vision to get at a respectable market share of 5-10% in the medium to the long run in the world adventure tourism market which is commensurate with our natural assets.
We want to become one of the top ten nations in adventure tourism ranking in the post COVID world and must accordingly have to enable policy mechanisms such as search and rescue, satellite phone connectivity, x visa, global insurance recognition, and more.
PP Khanna, the president of the Association of Domestic Tour Operators Association of India said, “To boost fast track revival for the domestic tourism market there needs to make an income tax as an exemption on traveling within India. Indian citizens can get income tax credits for up to ₹ 1.5 lakhs when spending with Gst registered domestic tour operators, travel agents, hoteliers, and transporters. Not only will this organize the domestic tourism industry which is highly unorganized, but this will also revive domestic demand systematically, a practice that is being followed in many countries such as Singapore, Thailand, Japan, etc.
Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, the Vice President of the Federation of Hotels & Restaurants Industry of India India has an estimated more than 70,000 hotels and over 5 lakhs restaurants. Our vision is to make India the concept of hospitality and cuisine capital of the world. To make India the global hospitality and cuisine tourism capital and create an ecosystem for entrepreneurship and business models we need an enabling environment from state governments and the central government.
E- Single window clearance at a national level must be enabled for hotels and restaurants through the hospitality Development Promotion Board and all existing licenses, permits, permissions must be thoroughly examined for redundancies and standardized at a national level. This will bring down the cost of pre-openings and also annual costs of compliance and make us more globally competitive.
MP Bezbaruah, Secretary-General, Hotels Association of India – said, “If India targets 1 million classified quality hotel infrastructure, that would imply a mammoth capital expenditure of ₹ 25 lakh crores, If we assume a conservative weighted average estimate of ₹ 25 lakhs per room. Land banks are the most critical resource for hospitality projects. They are also the biggest CAPEX drivers. Very high-quality land assets are available with public sector units and government which can be used to enhance hospitality growth. However, to do that, our hospitality PPP models need to be standardized across the country which creates a lease structure that enables government shares to be linked to business growth and not as a fixed payout which will drive immense hospitality capital into India”.
Amaresh Tiwari, Vice Chairman of India Convention Promotion Bureau said, “The global mice industry is estimated to be upwards of $ 800 bn and India’s share is estimated to be around 1 %. This sector has a direct correlation with the GDP. Thus In line with our GDP share of the world, our first goalpost covid, in 5 years would be to double our mice share to 2.5% of the world and then doubling it over the medium term.
We need to recognize MICE tourism as a distinct business segment and we need to create a sub-brand to the main brand Incredible India. To target global congress, conventions, and conferences, and social events we need to create global mice bidding fund with a corpus of ₹ 500 crores to enable our entrepreneurs to undertake techno-economic bids for events that have a bid cycle of 2 years plus. Indian MICE has the unique benefit of being bundled with the natural and cultural assets of India.
Sharat Chandra, Treasurer of Indian Tourist Transportation Association said Tourist transportation is the backbone of domestic tourism. Globally in all countries stable and uniform policies for tourist transportation have stimulated growth. As part of the revival, survival measures have to be taken. Lack of cash inflow is the most pressing issue during the COVID and thus it is most critical that refund of unutilized GST credit lying with the government to the operators must happen which will get liquidity into the system. It is important to have an exemption from payment of insurance premium for the tourist transport vehicles for the financial year till complete stability happens. Complete waiver from payment of interstate taxes on tourist transport vehicles for a period of one year till a complete resumption takes place.
Gajsingh Jodhpur, President of Indian Heritage Hotels Associations said India was ranked globally as being the 9th best in terms of its cultural assets by the tourism global competitiveness of the World Economic Forum. We are one of the most unique countries in the world which have a heritage which goes back over 5000 years and is estimated that just about 1% of India’s heritage has been monetized for hospitality and a large part of it may be falling apart for lack of funds or policy focus. Our palaces & forts, monuments & museums, food, arts & crafts & historical sites, a lot of them have the potential to become world-class tourism assets. We need to create a special focus on Indian heritage through a heritage sub-brand which is linked to the main brand of Incredible India.
Pronab Sarkar, President of Indian Association of Tour Operators said In the pre- covid period India had a global share of 1.2% international travel. This is not commensurate with the size and scope of India. In the post – covid period our vision is to double India’s share of inbound tourism to 2.5% in 5 years post-normal and then double it again to 5% in the next five years post that. This will rightfully put Indian tourism in the global league where it belongs. We are confident that Indian tourism is the next global champion sector for India and the road to that vision begins by surviving and reviving today.
A favourable GST regime for travel agents is extremely critical as part of our vision for the future said Jyoti Mayal, President, Travel Agents Association of India and Vice Chairman, FAITH. She said that the Indian tourism industry is and will undergo a massive radical change post Covid19. “In the post covid era, we see Indian travel & tourism becoming one of the biggest travel opportunities globally over the medium to long term. Whether it is outbound, domestic, or inbound travel or in segments of business travel, leisure travel, weddings travel, conference travel, or special activities such as medical or rural tourism travel, we look forward to creating multiple opportunities for our travel agents fraternity. We have been in close discussions with the tourism ministry for the same and look forward to exciting new segments emerging for our travel agent’s community.”
Speaking on the multiple challenges that the sector is currently facing, she said, “There is immense disruption happening from online technologies and travel is the first one to be hit by it and continues to be increasingly impacted. We have to face the challenge and work with it and as such we are constantly planning to enable our travel agents’ communities to partner and create combinations of online and offline models.”
Seeking out solutions, Jyoti Mayal said, “We are increasingly partnering with multiple country tourism boards to collaborate with the Indian travel agent’s fraternity and expand country opportunities for them. All of these require a significant component of re-skilling and upskilling of the travel agent’s fraternity and our prime focus is to enable them to create more opportunities in the post covid world.”
Highlighting upon the financial measures, Mayal said, “A key requirement is to make Indian travel agents globally competitive. The recently introduced TCS makes Indian travel agents uncompetitive by 5 – 10 percent via their global counterparts. This comes on top of the GST which makes our travel agents even more uncompetitive. We are in close discussions with the ministries and hope that it will be rolled back”.
A favorable GST regime for travel agents is extremely critical as part of our vision for the future and we are in constant dialogue with aviation and finance ministries to address that. We hope to see a competitive GST regime for our travel agents being rolled out soon.
We look forward to organizing the travel agent’s industry and protecting our fraternity from fly by night operations. This is critical to rebuilding trust and we are continually pursuing it. Both at the central government level and at the state governments level this is critical.”
Concluding her address, Mayal called for a healthy association between the travel agents and the aviation sector. She also called out the need for a body to protect the financial health of the travel agents. She added “Aviation and travel agents have a symbiotic partnership. But that partnership needs to be kept healthy.
While aviation has IATA to protect their financial interests, travel agents need to also be protected One of the key questions that we will also be addressed soon is how to create a structured mechanism to future secure travel agents’ payments. It is also imperative to expand the number of bilateral air bubbles and allow tourism and business traffic while ensuring RT PCR tests and we are in constant discussions with the aviation ministry for the same.
For all of this to succeed such partnerships are critical between the travel agent’s industry, across the tourism industry value chain, and with various ministries and we keenly look forward to that. This is the time we have to survive and revive and continue to build trust and confidence to deal with the challenges today in the post covid era.”
Pradip Lulla, the President of Travel Agents Fraternity of India said Times are changing, business models are changing and they are changing fast. With technology earlier and now because of the pandemic, the travel agents fraternity are under immense pressure. India is going to be one of the biggest source markets for outbound travel. We see this as the largest opportunity for our travel agents fraternity. In 2019, 27 million Indians traveled outwards. This has doubled over the past 10 years and Post Covid, we see this doubling again into almost 50 Million travelers in less than 10 years and our goal is to enable our travel agents fraternity to provide Indian consumers the best on the class tourism experiences.
Our travel agent fraternity is a critical link between tourists and our principals – destinations, airlines, hotels, restaurants, payment mechanisms. Our constant vision will strengthen this ecosystem to ensure multiple experiences are available to Indian tourists brought to them by our travel agents fraternity.
