Write a speech on topic the new tourist is the eager indian
Answers
“Indian tourism will soar by 15 to 20%” says Rajji Rai, President of the 2448 member Travel Agents Association of India. TAAI's interests lie in handling both visitors crossing international borders as well the growing ranks of Indians travelling around India. This distinction between foreign and domestic tourists is important.
Judging by published statistics, our efforts to attract foreign tourists has been consistently unsuccessful. Both Malaysia and China entered the international tourism market decades after we did. In 2009, Malaysia was ranked ninth with 23.6 million foreign arrivals. In the same year, China was 4th with 50.9 million visitors. India did not appear in the first 10 because we managed to attract just 5.1 million tourists. This in spite of having a Ministry which spends a small fortune maintaining Tourist Offices abroad, launching expensive campaigns in hard-currency nations, and sending its minions to attend travel marts and conduct road shows in glamorous destinations!
FUTURE, TENSE?All of which begs the question “What makes the Tourism Industry take a rosy view of the future?” It does so because it has realised that it has been courting the wrong tourist. No longer must it run after the brash, demanding, camera-bedecked foreigner trickling in from recession-hit economies.
The New Tourist is the well-heeled, tolerant, eager Indian: keen to discover India, impatient to go abroad.
Mining this market are former Travel Corporation of India employees now in Trail Blazer Tours. According to its brisk and affable CEO, Homa Mistry, in the three brief years of their existence, they have doubled their business every year particularly to the new markets of China, Russia and South America. Indian travellers are also signing up for cruises to exotic destinations in sybaritic comfort.
Karnataka, too, was quick to assess that the rapidly changing demographics of India had blurred the line between the assumed needs of foreign tourists and those of our domestic ones. The state's glamorousGolden Chariot Tourist train, designed for foreigners, now also does a shorter Jewel of the South tour for upper-middle-class Indian tourists. Said Vinay Luthra, the MD of the Tourism Development Corporation, “Money does not seem to be a constraint with domestic tourists interested in the Golden Chariot”
The state's very successful, and luxury, Jungle Lodges and Resorts has, however, created a no-frills clone in their Jungle Camps and Trails for a younger clientele, tapping the growing ranks of junior executives still low on the corporate totem pole. Karnataka has, thus, broadened the base of its domestic tourism market and set another bench-mark.
So, too, has Kerala. Kerala's God's Own Country campaign was clearly designed for the foreign market. But now, Dr. Venu, Kerala's Secretary, Tourism and Culture, has deliberately shifted his focus. In '06-07 Kerala targeted 60 international to 40 domestic, and allocated their tourism resources accordingly. Now that has been reversed. By organising Partnership Meets between Kerala's tourism stake-holders and tourism professionals in non-metro cities all around India, Kerala has managed, very successfully, to bypass the slump felt by states dependent on international visitors. “We provide a strictly Business to Business platform in the cities we visit. It's been very successful: our tourism figures have grown while those of states dependant on the fickle, demanding, overseas market have remained static,” Venu said.
That was the firm opinion of everyone we spoke to at the end of 2010. Travel Agents, tour operators, even cautious state government officials, were dismissive of the efforts of the Central Government in the promotion of tourism. According to them, “In the bad old days, The Ministry of Tourism and Air India had a stranglehold on the industry. Now the private sector has taken over with its hard-edged policy of Be Relevant or Be History. Air India is gasping, The Ministry of Tourism is slowly, realising that it does not have the creativity to measure up in a fiercely competitive market. It is, therefore, best for it to be supportive of the achievers in the industry.”
This is, logically, a good strategy. In 2009, when we received 5.11 million foreign tourists, 11.07 million Indians went to tourist destinations outside India. If our Union Ministry of Tourism concentrates on improving facilities for the domestic traveller, the outflow of tourists and rupees will diminish. Enhanced infrastructure such as roads, airports, hygiene, will also attract more international visitors.
Clearly Tourism, like Charity, begins at home.