‘Spends on Incredible India need to go up’
London-headquartered World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) takes up issues facing the travel and tourism sector to governments across the globe. In the past four years, the Council representatives have met 84 presidents/prime ministers. Its president and
WTTC has been interacting with a lot of governments in Asia. Why this increase in interest?
Yes. We have been to Japan, Thailand, China, Egypt, India and Singapore in the past two months. This is because things are happening mainly in this part of the world. The epicentre of travel and tourism is moving out of Europe and North America to southeast Asia. The Chinese government has been focused on tourism as a key pillar of economy. They have always built infra ahead of the demand. Outbound and domestic travel is on a boom there. But, it is not just China: countries such as Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos are all coming from a very low base but growing fast. Some countries have the right infrastructure to take the growth forward and some are behind in investment.
How do you view the work done by India to improve the travel tourism infrastructure?
Infrastructure issues for India have always been problematic, both for domestic and inbound tourism. In recent years, some of the airport infrastructure has been improved dramatically. But, it still has a lot togo in terms of the airport infrastructure. It is the same in the hotel sector. With more and more people travelling for business and leisure, move investment is required in hotels and road network. In my view, India still has to focus on infrastructure building. The capital spend over the next 10-15 years has to be very big to encourage tourism.
What are the challenges India faces in growing international inbound tourism?
Infrastructure is clearly one of the challenges. The second is the visa issue. India has introduced electronic visa processing and it’ll drive the inbound market. The third issue is the marketing programme of ‘Incredible India’. The programme is great, but it needs a much bigger spend to cut through against competing nations. In the US, more than half of visa fee collected goes on marketing under Brand USA. Earlier, every state used to do independent marketing. You need an umbrella so that the whole of India gets the advantage.
What concerns do the countries you visited have on this sector?
There are long-term concerns around climate change. There is also a challenge on people management, as a lot of people visit historical monuments such as the Taj Mahal every day. This needs to be managed better to ensure it is preserved for the future. Countries also want to better manage disruptions such as natural disaster or a terrorism attack or a disease. Disruption is something the travel sector is getting used to. They know that something is going to happen every year. We are getting better at dealing with it.