Handholding travel agents

During IATO’s virtual members’ meet, Meenakshi Sharma, Director General (DG), Ministry of Tourism (MOT), reassured travel agents that the ministry will support them, and announced two major relief measures for the travel trade community.

Manas Dwivedi

As the keynote speaker of the meeting, Meenakshi Sharma, regarded amongst the trade as the go-to person in the ministry for any kind of support from the government or for resolving the issues of tour operators, didn’t disappoint IATO members. In fact, she also assured each and every stakeholder of the industry support from the ministry. In her words, “tour operators should rediscover themselves.”

Addressing the virtual gathering, she also shared her view on the current situation of the industry, steps that tour operators and the travel agent community could take to better their situation and steps that the Ministry is taking to provide relief to all stakeholders. She said, “The reality is that nobody can predict how the COVID-19 situation will behave, what will be the peak for the cases, when the rate of infection will slow down or when a vaccine will be invented. It will all take time; we all have to be ready to face any situation that comes our way and at the same time, remain ready to adapt. In my opinion, the earliest that tourism will take to come back will be two months after the rate of infection stabilises in the country and we can control the amount of daily cases coming in.”

MOT’s initiatives

Announcing some key measures to be taken by the Ministry in due course of time, the Director General said that one major scheme provided by the Ministry will be modified, and certain norms for the approval of tour operators by MOT will also be relaxed. She said that MOT is already “working on relaxing certain guidelines.”

The Ministry is deliberating on increasing the limit and amount of assistance in the Marketing Development Assistance (MDA) scheme, which helps tour operators to promote tourism. MOT provides financial assistance to tourism service providers approved by it for participation in travel marts, annual conventions of various travel trade associations or any other national-level travel/ tour association approved, sponsored or recognised by MOT. The plan is to liberalise the MDA scheme for both domestic and international travel and ease the norms. Changes will soon be announced officially after approval from competent authorities. “I think, with changing times, schemes should also change for the benefit of all stakeholders,” Sharma commented.

Another big relief measure that the DG announced concerned the approval/ authorisation of tour operators by Ministry of Tourism. Some tour operators during the meeting asked the DG to allow travel companies to shift their office premises to their respective homes and be done with the necessary requirement of having in possession an ‘office space’. To this, Sharma said, “Take my assurance, we will immediately relax the norms for approval of tour operators so that there is no need of compulsory acquisition of ‘office space’ by tour operators during a crisis situation. We will review the proposal and decide the new norms soon.”

She also talked about utilising the Champion Sector Scheme for the travel trade. Further, she affirmed that no new scheme will be announced by the Ministry this year due to the limitation of resources and prevailing conditions in the market.

Inbound is not being ignored

Boosting the morale of inbound travel agents during the meeting, Sharma said although the Ministry is currently looking to promote domestic tourism seeing the present situation, it does not mean that inbound tourism is being sidelined. “For the time being, we will give priority to domestic tourism, but inbound tourism has always been our prime focus. We are in constant touch with the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Home Affairs for resumption of visa services. We will always consider the interests of all our stakeholders whenever inbound tourism restarts,” she said. In her concluding remark, she also suggested that IATO look at increasing its membership from its existing base of around 1600 members.

International promotions

Ministry officials recently held a meeting with key industry stakeholders and associations to discuss overseas promotions and future strategies. “International promotions will now be very different from the earlier campaigns. A different message about India should go out in the market where wellness and yoga tourism will also play a key role. MOT will also work on developing small promotional video clips and social media campaigns to attract tourists to India. We have received various suggestions on how to proceed and which countries to target first.”

– Meenakshi Sharma