Select buyers at ITM

India Tourism Mart (ITM) 2021 is all set to be held from February 18-20 as a virtual event, with as many as 500 buyers.

Nisha Verma

India Tourism Mart (ITM) 2021, which was earlier touted to be held as a hybrid event, will be held virtually this year from February 18-20. Sharing details is Subhash Goyal, Hony. Secretary, FAITH, who says, “ITM 2021 is being held virtually. On one side of the event we will have buyer-seller meets, while on the other side we will have parallel sessions on adventure tourism, medicinal tourism and M!CE. We will get the world’s best experts on the subjects to speak.”

Buyers and exhibitors

Goyal is expecting around 500 international buyers and 200 exhibitors at ITM 2021. The organisers are also offering incentives like Amazon vouchers to those buyers who do all the meetings They will automatically be invited to the main
event that will take place in September 2021, Goyal informs. Until last year, there was a strong selection process to shortlist buyers for ITM, however, for the virtual show, the criteria will be a bit lenient. “Since the show is virtual, we can invite more buyers than before. We already have a databank from the last three events, which has over a few thousand names. First, we will be inviting all those and the selection process will be virtual. The criteria to select buyers would be by asking questions so that only those who are doing outbound from their countries come, and not people who are doing inbound. We would be able to better monitor this electronically than we were able to do for a physical event,” he claims.

Theme

Talking about the theme of ITM 2021, Goyal shares that the focus will be ‘India is ready for business.’ However, they haven’t come up with a proper slogan in writing for the same, yet. “We have asked some experts and some of our members to give suggestions, and will be finalising a theme soon,” Goyal says, adding that there will also be a session on domestic tourism. “Year 2021 has been declared as the year of domestic tourism with the ‘Dekho Apna Desh’ theme by Ministry of Tourism. We will be focusing on that as well,” he says.

Attendance

The organisers are expecting the event to be graced by senior government officials, including the Prime Minister. “It’s going to be a grand success and we are hoping that the PM inaugurates the event. We will be sending invitations to all the concerned ministers, including Minister of Civil Aviation, Minister of Commerce and Industry, and even some important secretaries and international speakers who could enlighten us,” he shares. They are also hopeful that not only the executive committees of all associations, but even all memberships- active or allied and tourism students will be able to learn a lot through the knowledge conclave.

Goyal adds that this is the perfect time to do the ITM. “In 2020, we could not have the ITM because of COVID-19, but we are happy that the timing this year is perfect as on the one hand, the vaccine has been launched in India, and by the time ITM begins, vaccination would have started not only in India but all over the world. Even IATA has brought out its health passport, which will be similar to the Yellow Fever card, and people will be travelling with these cards. We now request the government to start the e-visa as well as international scheduled flights to coincide with ITM,” Goyal concludes.