“The pandemic has made us rethink of the future and how do we recalibrate the strategies in view of the recent experiences of the COVID,” Arvind Singh, Union Tourism Secretary, said while addressing a session on ‘Tourism India, Post Covid’ at FICCI’s Annual Convention & 94th AGM.
“For international travellers, we have to focus on promoting wellness tourism in a safe and healthy destination. The fact that the vaccination programme has done well and that all the tourism stakeholders have been vaccinated must be highlighted,” Singh added.
He highlighted that for domestic travellers, Ministry of Tourism used the opportunity to promote domestic tourism through the webinar series ‘Dekho Apna Desh’. “This is the time for travellers who can’t travel abroad to use this opportunity to explore the country. India also has immense potential for weddings and convention, and these events should be organized in the country rather than taking them abroad,” he said and added that the industry can help the sector by improving the skill sets, services and infrastructure that will give the traveller a world class experience.
For the national tourism policy, some of the focus areas are sustainable and green tourism and increasing more digitalization in the sector by making it more user friendly not only for the operators but also for the tourists which will make travel much more convenient.
A massive emphasis is given to skill upgradation so creating more centres for skill upgradation for those employed in the hospitality industry and also an online training programme for guides.
The policy will also have a host of other incentives and environment that is required to create more investment opportunities in the sector for both domestic and Indian from international sources.
