Participants:

• Vinod Zutshi, Former Secretary, Ministry of Tourism
• Subhash Goyal, President, Confederation of Tourism Professionals of India
• Aashish Gupta, Consulting CEO, Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism & Hospitality

Anchor: Teena Jha

Context:

• Union Tourism and Culture Minister, G Kishan Reddy, addressing the National Conference of State Tourism Ministers announced that the Union government would bring in the new National Tourism Policy before the Budget Session of Parliament. 

Background:

Tourism and hospitality sector:

• This sector is one of the largest service industries in India.
• As per official data cited, the tourism sector generated Rs 16.91 lakh crore or 9.2% of India’s GDP in 2018 and has supported around 42.67 million jobs or 8.1% of the total employment in the country. 

Key features of the draft policy:

• The draft policy envisages five missions to address the critical aspects of this sector.
  • Mission on green tourism
  • Mission on use of digital technology in the sector and digital tourism
  • Mission for skill development of the stakeholders
  • Mission on destination management 
  • Mission to support the related MSME industries
• The draft policy envisages the formation of the National Tourism Authority and National Tourism Board with the National Tourism Authority acting as the executive wing to implement the policy.
• To improve coordination between the various stakeholders, the policy envisages institutional linkages. 
• The policy emphasizes core infrastructure development to support the tourism sector.
  • The policy aims to increase the number of airports to 220 by 2025.
• Apart from pushing state expenditure into the sector, the policy aims to promote investment in the sector through liberalizing FDI. Also, efforts would be undertaken to get infrastructure status for the hotels and industry status for the tourism sector to help ease the flow of investment. Also, efforts would be undertaken to promote PPP in the tourism and hospitality sector through the viability gap funding route.

Significance of the new policy:

• The existing tourism policy is from 2002 and there have been a lot of changes since then in this sector. The new policy will align the policy with the current conditions.
• The National Tourism Policy would bring about some much-needed reforms in the tourism and hospitality sector. This will help India in achieving its goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy and a developed nation. 

Recommendations:

• The policy implementation should involve coordination between the Tourism Ministry and other related ministries (Home Ministry, Commerce Ministry, Road and Rail Ministry, Civil Aviation Ministry, External Affairs Ministry) for it to be effective. Apart from this, coordination between state and union governments as well as between private companies and the governments should be strengthened.
• Need to ensure innovative, inclusive and sustainable tourism. This needs to be emphasized in policy formulation and implementation.
• Need for a supportive policy and aggressive marketing strategy to attract more and more international tourists to India.
  • Only 2% of the global tourist footfall happens in India. This is less given India’s vast potential in the tourism sector.
• Need to ensure last mile connectivity to all destinations across the country to ensure ease of travel in India. This will require sufficient quantity and quality of physical infrastructure in terms of roadways, railways, airways and waterways.