India’s tourism industry will require significant investment: Kishan Reddy

Is the government giving priority to the development of tourism?

Tourism has been a neglected sector over the years due to various reasons. The country has a lot of opportunities when it comes to promotion and branding of destinations, public-private partnerships, policy and publicity. But it hasn’t gone well enough. In a big country like India, the central government alone cannot handle everything. But very little amount has been set aside for tourism improvement in various states. For example, if we look at the northeastern states, very little was provided and a major part of that amount would be spent on salaries.

What is the government doing to improve the situation?

For this, the Ministry of Tourism has brought its first Global Tourism Investors Summit, which will be held soon. The summit has been organized to attract private investment in the tourism sector, keeping in mind that India can compete for foreign tourists or even domestic tourists who can confidently visit our tourist destinations. Can do, there must be a certain amount. There was infrastructure activity. We also want different states to compete with each other to attract more investment in their states.

Will these states benefit from this?

This will help many state governments to come out with better policies and incentives to attract these private investments. Except for the Tourism Development Corporation of India and the Archaeological Survey of India monuments, which sponsor the Swadesh Darshan scheme, all properties are directly owned by the various states, and therefore it is up to these states to plan their budgets and policies well around tourism. responsibility to create. At such a time, we have to involve the state governments in developing good policies. Now we also have 100% FDI policy for investment in certain categories.

But why go below the PPP model?

I have said earlier also that neither the State Governments nor the Center can spend enough on tourism. Even if we spend lakhs of crores, it will not be enough for the development of tourism as there are thousands of destinations. If we look at the second quarter of the financial year 22-23, there has been a tremendous increase in inbound tourism. To further develop the sector, to attract sizable investments, the private sector has to be involved. We want to create an investment climate. We are looking forward to the participation of foreign investors in this summit. Other bodies like hospitality associations or the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will also help reach out to their international counterparts to bring in investors.

In this year’s budget, the budget for overseas promotion activities like Incredible India has been cut by more than half. 167 crores to 525 crores two years ago. But at the same time, you have a target of bringing in 25 million tourists by 2030. How will this vision be achieved?

Yes, that is because of covid. In the past two years, no country has been campaigning overseas. In fact, even till today the central and state governments have been issuing guidelines for Covid. Now we have plans to develop these promotions. After the approval of the cabinet, we will resume these activities also. If we had spent on foreign publicity in the last two years, it would have gone waste as tourists were not willing to travel.

Will you run new campaigns digitally or on television in identified overseas destinations as you did before 2015?

We will do all this. This is the first time we have involved various embassies and tourism offices from the top 20 countries that send tourists to India to help develop our overseas promotional programme. He has just started work. For this we are also in touch with the tourism officials in these embassies to identify local media and social media influencers etc., so that they can be marketed to the Indian diaspora to promote tourism in India.

But recently the government closed seven tourist offices in the world. What was the reason for closing these offices in big cities like London, Tokyo, Beijing, Dubai, Singapore, New York etc.?

Yes, instead of having a small tourism office with one official in these countries, we have put the whole embassy into one job. It will be more beneficial for us. The idea was to have a holistic approach on the part of the government to develop tourism which includes using officials from the Ministry of External Affairs, UNESCO etc. For example, even during the G20, when the ministry is not directly involved. Planning multiple meetings is beneficial. 250 meetings are going to be held. Each of these meetings will be handed over to the Ministry of Tourism as soon as it is held.

How much will be spent on G20 from 2,400 crore allocated to the Ministry of Tourism this year?

We will spend as much as is necessary and there will be no dearth of anything from our side.