Government can pull us through

Never before has the tourism segment had such a catastrophic experience as the COVID-19 pandemic. Hotels are almost defunct, tour operators have gone into oblivion and 90 per cent of travel agency staff is jobless. Anand Singh, Director, Earthen Experiences, believes it’s time that hospitality and tourism need hand holding from the government.

The finance and tourism ministries need to do fire-fighting. A stimulus package is just around the corner and the government is mulling the right time to come out with it. Travel agents are banking largely upon “government stimulus packages and interventions” to improve their productivity. For the next two years, the government should think of reducing GST from 5 to 1.8 per cent on a tour operator’s full set-offs invoice. Further, for hotels, it should ponder on a GST of 10 per cent with full set-offs, in line with global trends. Schemes like LTA and income tax exemption on travel within India for expenses up to Rs1.5 lakh per year will boost domestic travel. Paying GST Credit and SEIS refund will bring liquidity in the business. Holiday on property tax, electricity and water can ease out operation costs of hotels and help them sail through troubled waters.

Awareness and confidence building

The Indian government is waiting for the opening of borders to resume its roadshows at source markets as well as participation in overseas travel marts. In partnership with Indian travel agents, our overseas embassies and tourism offices should start planning familiarisation trips. Incredible India should host international tickets and visas, and Indian agents should host them while they travel in India. This is the best exercise to re-build destination confidence. We should encourage travellers to upload their travel photos and videos. The government should first work towards restoring confidence of the travellers of UK, USA, Italy and France. These countries will be vaccinated early and be ready to travel. For the outside world, a feedback from these nationalities is more acceptable. An App to feature real-time updates on safety and hygiene measures, disaster management, proximity of medical facilities and country preparedness on crowd management will be beneficial. The roll-out of the vaccination programmes across countries has brought much-needed optimism. Inoculating a majority of the population, especially tourism employees, should be a key focus area. India, with its indigenous vaccine, can also coin vaccine tourism. Ministries of health and tourism should come out with health certification and accreditation programme to rebuild trust in Destination India. The government must also work on further simplifying the visa on arrival.

High value, less volume

The government has to focus on a ‘One India’ policy. States need to synchronise their border policies towards seamless inter-state travel. Key cities should be planned as safe tourism hubs with traffic management, hygiene, notified hospitals for foreigners, tourist police, separate in & out gates at ASI monuments, etc. The government and municipal corporations should work towards providing an international standard infrastructure. The government should also come up with a ‘One India’ transport permit and taxation. For domestic tourists, the monuments fee should be around 50 per cent of a foreigner’s ticket price or apply peak hour surcharge or hourly monument fee.

The government should also come up with slogans of ‘Better trips of India’ highlighting India’s unique products. Incredible India has many such products to run a year-long campaign. Lake Palace, Golden Temple, Living Root Bridge, the Apatani tribe, Yoga, Ayurveda, naturopathy, luxury trains, cruises, rural tourism – the list is never-ending.

The tourism sector may end up evolving in a more sustainable way post-pandemic. The government should create a new website for rural tourism. The involvement of local communities is going to be immensely critical in this journey. The ‘better trips’ should be focused on less-crowded places offering health staycations and green vacations. Traffic can be diverted to us if we share our tourism space with that of Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The government should allow unlimited exit & entry to them if the tour starts from India.