Gearing up for G20 opportunities

With a Global M!CE Conference scheduled during India’s G20 Presidency next year, the idea is to use the opportunity to position India’s tourism offerings, and M!CE is one segment where India needs to do a lot, opines Rakesh Verma, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Tourism.

The National Conference of State Tourism Ministers used to be an annual event. However, after 2019, because of the pandemic, this was disrupted. “The National Conference of State Tourism Ministers held recently in Dharamshala was the first physical meeting after the pandemic and the key agenda was to look at the future of tourism, what policies need to be pursued and how do we create a shared vision for 2047 for tourism sector,” shares Rakesh Verma, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Tourism.

“The three days of deliberations, which were across various themes, will help us understand what the challenges are, how states have taken initiatives and met those challenges, and how do we build a national level policy framework, which can help tourism sector to grow and develop,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of the conference.

Strong tourism policy

He said that the summary of the conference will be incorporated into the National Tourism Policy. “Each session was structured around a particular theme, which is relevant for tourism. Thus, whatever points and recommendations come as part of these sessions, will be used to draw policies, initiatives and ensure if there are any corrections required in the existing scheme. These deliberations will be useful, and they will be fully utilised for us to chalk out the plans, and to build new schemes,” he informed.

Nidhi 2.0

Sharing the update on Nidhi scheme, he said, “We now have Nidhi 2.0, where we have expanded our platform beyond hotels and we will include tour operators, other tourism service providers, various quality certifications, feedback from the users about their experiences with tourism service providers and general feedback. The platform is now maturing. We have now tested it with almost all state governments and about 20 state governments have now been brought on that platform.”

“It will act as a prototype for our national digital tourism mission, which is going to be a much bigger vision, to create this kind of digital ecosystem for tourism sectors in the country. It is now evolving and helping us conceptualise the much bigger national digital tourism mission,” he added.

Global M!CE Conference

“There is a lot of potential, but we have not got our market share. This global conference that we are planning with particular focus on G20 countries, will be putting the best foot forward by telling what all is always available in the country in terms of M!CE infrastructure, M!CE specialties, and M!CE ecosystem. A lot of new things are happening and the Ministry has recently unveiled a strategy for M!CE tourism and a National M!CE Board has been set up. It is an inter-ministerial board to help us coordinate policies, take decisions and help us support the M!CE. It was a very important conference and we look forward to it to position India as a serious M!CE destination,” he said

Incentivising M!CE

When asked if India would follow suit with countries offering M!CE incentives, Verma said, “As part of our overseas marketing promotion scheme that we are restructuring, we will have support for M!CE specifically to attract that business to India.”

Also, he added that the idea is not only to look at business events but also look at social events. “It goes without saying that when you are building destinations for M!CE, we are also including social events and keeping that in mind. We will help in positioning our destinations for wedding and social events,” he said.

Overseas promotions

He shared that they are now setting up the National Tourism Promotion Board. “It will execute these promotional schemes. Soon, that scheme in its new form will be put in place, which will help us in re-energising and relaunching our overseas promotional campaign. As part of our strategy, we are targeting different markets for different products in the context of India’s overseas and inbound traffic,” he said.