Archive 2018

To give it a further boost, West Bengal tourism department has taken an elaborate promotional plan for the northern corner of the state as a part of its international travel mart 'Destination East'.

"Among all sectors of trade and commerce, tourism business has been one of the deepest sufferers of the situation. Now it is the time to turn around," said tourism minister of the state Gautam Deb.

"Under Destination East travel mart, a special promotional initiative has been chalked out to showcase Darjeeling hills and adjoining foothills to the international travel trade representatives," He added.

"Their first-hand experience will be the confidence builder for travels from their respective locations to Darjeeling as well as the entire eastern Himalayan region," said veteran travel consultant Raj Basu.

Destination east is a joint endeavor of state tourism and Confederation of Indian industries to showcase and promote new and non-conventional to international buyers. Beginning in 2010 with 30 representatives from south Asian countries only, the travel mart will have 102 visitors from 30 countries in 2018.

Source: economictimes

India and Egypt have a tremendous potential to raise tourism through shared experiences, according to travel experts.

The Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture (MACIC) of the Indian Embassy has organized a seminar on 'Sustainable Tourism: New Avenues for Development' with the participation of eminent Indian and Egyptian speakers.

The discussion held last week Thursday focused on sharing experiences from developments in the space of tourism in countries like India and Egypt. Which have the incredible scope and potential to benefit from the tourism sector.In the seminar, the speakers focused on the promoting tourism as both the country has rich civilization.

Elhamy el-Zayat, ex-chairman of the Egyptian Tourism Federation said that social media is an important tool to promote tourism in both countries.

"I always say that we have tools that we didn’t have in the past, which social media. We can always say stories that are interesting for everybody,"

The Speakers also mentioned that one of the finest ways to promote Indian tourism in Egypt is showing more Bollywood movies as they are already gaining more fans in Egypt. Some Indian movies have already been screened on the big screen in the recent period.

Source:moneycontrol

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