MILLENNIAL SMILES: A.B. Vajpayee and Ananth Kumar at the inauguration of Explore India Millennium Year aimed at boosting tourismGoing by its size, 3,288 Singapores fit into India. Yet three times as many foreign tourists flock to the tiny island state every year as to India. Closer home, India matches China on antiquity, size or scenic beauty. But the Middle Kingdom attracts 10 times more tourists than India.However, though India is a backbencher it earned Rs 11,744 crore in foreign exchange from the 2.37 million tourists landing in the country in the 1998 calendar year. That makes tourism the second largest export earner with garments around Rs 14,000 crore."Of all export-earning industries," says Union Minister for Civil Aviation and Tourism Ananth Kumar, "tourism is the most capital-efficient. We are redirecting allocations to make it the highest dollar-earning industry."Last week, to kickstart a new tourism promotion drive, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee launched the Explore India Millennium Year (EIMY) from April 1. The focus of EIMY is twofold: to gear into action a government-private sector initiative for attracting foreign tourists, and to further promote domestic tourism as a staggering 167 million domestic tourists travel within the country.Vajpayee said he'd like to see more and more pilgrims from the south enjoy the pristine purity of Hardwar. That makes economic sense too. When pilgrims from Kerala move to Hardwar or Bengali sightseers rush to Kashmir, it is a lot of money that is transmitted across the economy, thus stoking up the dying embers of demand.The EIMY package puts the focus on two states in each of its 12 months. For the focus states every month, there are financial incentives to be offered. Like a 40 per cent tariff discount, which the country's 100-odd heritage hotels have agreed to. The luxury hotels too are offering discounts above the package rates.The Ministry of Tourism (MoT) is coordinating with the state governments to upgrade tourist infrastructure and facilitation services. At Parivahan Bhavan, seat of the MoT, bureaucrats are holding meetings with hoteliers, tour operators and airline executives as a daily ritual. Ashok Pradhan, director-general in the MoT, says the present arrival rate of tourists, with each of them spending $1,200 (Rs 51,000) on an average, "makes a good figure, which we want to turn better".The Centre hopes to increase tourist arrivals by at least 8 per cent this year.The Government wants the low growth of 0.7 per cent in tourist arrivals in 1998-99 to improve to at least 8 per cent in this fiscal, as projected in the Ninth Plan. "To achieve that, there must be extra-ordinary activity," Kumar says with his characteristic flourish. However, the problem at the core of low tourism growth is the paucity of funds..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}A task force on infrastructure for tourism, headed by Ravi Bhoothalingam, president of the Oberoi Group of hotels, recently submitted its report which shows India among the lowest spenders on tourism promotion.The $15.4 million (Rs 65.4 crore) spent by the Central government in 1995 being a fifth of Australia, a third of Singapore and half of South Korea. The state governments were traditionally tight-fisted on not only promotion but tourism as a whole, their aggregate of allocations till 1998-99 being within Rs 100 crore.The Welcome is Poor ...India allows foreign airlines to land on reciprocal basis, hence seats on India-bound flights are limited. Three months' advance planning.Whereas: Indonesia recently lifted landing restrictions for foreign airlines in Bali, resulting in more tourists.An American or European tourist travelling to India must obtain visa from the Indian embassy or consulate. Timeconsuming.Whereas: The same tourist needs no visa to visit Japan, Singapore or Hong Kong. Result: large inflow Indian tourism's one weak link is getting easy transfer to destinations like Goa, Jaipur, Khajuraho or Agra.Indian tourism's one weak link is getting easy transfer to destinations like Goa, Jaipur, Khajuraho or Agra.Click here to EnlargeWhereas: The Transfer Facilitation Desks at airports in London, Paris and Zurich handle millions of tourists for smooth onward journey. It is only this year that the mega-state of Uttar Pradesh has raised its tourism budget by 33 per cent, from Rs 75 crore to Rs 100 crore, and Kerala, the hot Indian destination for its ayurvedic healings, has earmarked an impressive Rs 35 crore.But neither of the two eastern states of Orissa and West Bengal will spend more than Rs 3 crore on tourism this year.The task force points out that tourism is growing twice as fast as the rest of the world economy and, in South Asia, tourism and hospitality are projected to contribute 11.8 per cent of GDP and 10.5 per cent of total employment by 2010.To invite capital for the required momentum of growth, says the task force, tourism should be declared an infrastructure industry."If tourism were an infrastructure industry it would have access to the India Resurgent Bonds fund. As of now, access to such funds is outside the purview of the tourism industry." There is, for that matter, a crying need for high capital investment in the five airports at Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta and Bangalore which have recently been corporatised. None of these is of globally competitive quality.However, many of tourism's problems can be fixed without spending too much. Bhoothalingam identifies the major stumbling blocks that can be removed without straining the public exchequer as follows:Visas: the present system requires a tourist from, say, Detroit, to obtain an Indian visa from the Indian consular offices in New York or the embassy in Washington DC. That involves both time and cost.On the contrary, it is so much easier for him to travel to Colombo, the capital of terrorism-plagued Sri Lanka, where the visa page can be stamped at the airport. "The main source markets for visitors to India are the US, the EU and Japan. No visas should be required for visitors to India from these markets."Air travel: if a foreign tourist does not book his seat now for his flight to Delhi in, say, October, he'll most probably never make it. This is due to the principle of reciprocity which doesn't allow a foreign airliner to land in India more frequently than Air-India landings in its country. It has put a severe restriction on India-bound airline seats. "We must espouse an open-skies strategy," the report says.The surly faces across our travel counters do not inspire the tourists to explore India.Immigration: the jet-lagged foreign visitor is greeted way past midnight by the "first face" of India, who is generally a short-tempered bully from the police force of Delhi or Mumbai. "Immigration officials should be specially trained to be courteous," says Bhoothalingam.The task force points its finger at many such lacunae that can be filled without spending much, like increasing the number of licenced moneychangers so that competition removes the black market in dollar trading, and modernising, if not civilising, the airport-to-city taxi operators. In the 1950s Pandit Nehru coined the phrase: "welcome a visitor and send back a friend". But the reality is grim.The visitor's ordeal begins with finding a trolley, getting a handy telephone in the baggage area, or finding the connecting domestic flight. The surly faces across the Indian travel counters do not inspire the tourist to explore India. In this millennium, or the next.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Apr 12, 1999--- ENDS ---
