Tuesday, October 2: A Parliamentary panel has emphasised that Indian missions abroad must ensure promotion and marketing of tourist destinations and products in light of a study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) that suggested India’s tourism wouldn’t reach pre-pandemic levels until 2026.
In a recent study, the Standing Panel on Transport, Tourism, and Culture made this recommendation after noting that although there were 10.93 million foreign visitor arrivals (FTAs) in India in the year before the epidemic, the current FTA statistics are still significantly below those of the year before.
The committee suggested that since responsibility for overseas tourism promotion now solely rests with the Indian missions, the tourism officers may be given sole charge as far as is necessary for the transitional change from the overseas tourist offices to the missions in many countries. The committee was informed by Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) representatives that the tourism officers posted on Indian missions abroad have tourism promotion as an additional charge.
In October 2021, MEA designated the tourism officers.
The panel, however, was told that since that time, the tourism officials had only met once with Indian stakeholders—a year ago.
The stakeholders also told the committee that India was no longer included in the brochures of the international travel brokers after the closing of the overseas tourist offices, thereby affecting the possibilities for Indian tourism. The overseas tourist offices had a lot of money available for this purpose, and the committee was also informed during its interaction with the MEA that this was the case. The ministry of tourism is still working with the MEA to determine how to give them access to a separate tourism budget so they can support agents with brochures and other promotional activities.
The committee was shocked that both issues—the funding for advertising and the campaign timeline for the missions—had not yet been addressed because just eight of the remaining foreign tourism offices were open as of March 2023.
It went on to say that there was enough time for the two ministries to set up the necessary transitional procedures. In response to a follow-up inquiry, the panel was told that the MEA and the tourist ministry are in talks to jointly handle any issues resulting from the closing of Indian tourist offices abroad.
The committee suggested that the tourist ministry resolve the issues quickly so that the MEA would have the resources and the programme to go on with the activities related to tourist marketing.
The panel also said that India’s exclusion from travel guides is a significant problem, without which it would be difficult to sustain awareness of Indian tourist destinations.
