Archive January 2018

Indian tourism industry focus to Promote rail tourism in the country.  As the Rail department asked its zonal its zonal arms and public sector undertakings to outsource their ticketing and catering works to IRCTC and concentrate on branding.

“In a letter on January 3, Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani has asked all zonal railways to promote the brand of rail tourism on select routes.
Lohani has also asked rail PSUs such as Indian Railway Finance Corporation and Ircon International, and zonal railways to give the catering contracts for all events, seminars and programmes held outside rail premises to IRCTC, the railways' catering and tourism arm.”

He has asked them to identify tourist and luxury trains and brand them both on the interior and exterior. He addressed one of the major objectives of the travel community which said that the running schedules of such trains were not made clear. In order to cut down on delays, the board has now entrusted the Director, Coaching as the nodal officer for luxury trains.
The executive can now be directly approached for approval on any scheduling issues, instead of the zonal railways.

Sources say that the board now take initiative to promote rail tourism seriously with state tourism departments.

India to promote tourism growth over 10% growth in six months ending september 2017.
Increased budgetary support for tourism sector and will boost the domestic tourism in india. Where the rising incomes are changing the consumption pattern of millions of Indians.

India is planning to cut taxes on travel and tourism in next month’s federal budget and give more incentives to the $210 billion sector, government sources said,
“hoping to boost economic growth and create more jobs”.

This would definitely boost the domestic tourism and will make India the world's second most populous nation.

 “We’ll announce measures in the budget to promote investment in the tourism sector,” a top finance ministry official told Reuters, adding that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley favours lowering a 28% tax on hotel tariffs, and offering incentives to attract private investments.

CHEAPER FLIGHTS India needs about 200,000 new hotel rooms, Tourism Minister K.J. Alphons told parliament this week.
“We have reached a plateau point and need more resources to create new infrastructure and develop tourist packages,” Alphons later told Reuters, adding there was huge potential in developing areas that were not the usual tourist destinations.Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said “developing tourism, particularly in India’s remote north-eastern states, is one of his top priorities”

ONLINE PLAYERS Tour operator said that the online players will get the double digit hikes. A huge no of foreign visitors visited india last year. The domestic travellers also boot the online player growth.
“The government must lower the tax burden, ease rules and build infrastructure if it wants to ensure 15-20% annual growth in tourism in coming years,” said Sarkar of IATO.

source: livemint

France, the country emerged as the world leader in promoting sustainable tourism. Report state that the country leads as the world leader in promoting sustainable tourism and preserving their social, cultural and natural capital of the country.

As per The Economist's Sustainable Tourism Index, the first place is occupied by Europe, with France, Germany and the UK taking up the top three spots.

"Of the ten countries included in the index, only France and Germany have taken concerted and sustained action at the national level to develop policy, set targets and monitor results," researchers write.

France preserved it's sustainable tourism and sets specific targets and guidelines for carrying capacity and tourist attraction worldwide. Studies say, Tourism contributes about 5% of the worldwide greenhouse gas emission and is expected to grow more in the coming years. The overflow of tourist leads to the physical degradation of several natural and historical assets.

As per the ranking report, here we have mentioned the top 10 countries on the basis of Sustainable Tourism Index.
1. France
2. Germany
3. UK
4. US
5. Japan
6. India
7. Brazil
8. China
9. Indonesia
10. Egypt

Source: news18

Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath government has undertaken the development of 10 new airports in Uttar Pradesh (UP) to boost religious business tourism in India by increasing the connectivity between the religion, region and business to boost the economy of the country.

The Union Civil Aviation Ministry, develop Agra Kanpur airport after bidding under the regional connectivity scheme in the first phase. In second phase the government also decided to built 10 more new airports - Allahabad, Aligarh, Bareilly,Azamgarh,Chitrakoot, Hindon (Ghaziabad), Jhansi, Moradabad, Muirpur (Sonbhadra), and Shravasti are under the project. As these are the prominent cultural and religious tourism places in Uttar Pradesh. Kanpur (Leather) , Aligarh (Lock Making Units)and Moradabad (Brassware) are the place have industry that will help in the business growth.

Yogi government had urged the Center to expedite the proposal in order to boost the religious business tourism in India.