Shayan Mallick | New Delhi World’s largest regional organisation, the SCO members include China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the Union Ministry of Tourism (MoT) will organise SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) Travel Mart on the sidelines of SATTE 2023, scheduled from February 9 to 11 at Delhi NCR’s Greater Noida Expo Mart. This was informed by Arvind Singh, Secretary – Tourism, Government of India, at a PATA meeting organised in New Delhi recently. The event coincides with India taking over as the Chairperson of the SCO for 2023.
According to Singh, the event is expected to be attended by all the key members of the group. The SCO Mart will pave way for the SCO member states to explore opportunities in India’s outbound travel space. However, Singh also said, “This year the SCO meeting will be held in Delhi. The SCO Ministerial meeting will be held in India at Varanasi in March and the Ministers from those country will be in attendance. So naturally, some of those SCO countries are very important (source markets) and we will be doing campaigns in those countries also. We also want to focus on inbound tourism from the SCO countries. These countries have traditionally been good inbound markets for us.”
According to Pallavi Mehra, Group Director, Informa Markets in India, “The 30th edition of SATTE has received overwhelming response from the Indian and global travel and tourism market. The show expects to see the participation of over 1200+ exhibitors, 600+ hosted international and domestic buyers, and agents/operators/professionals from over 120 Indian cities and towns. With a legacy of 30 years, SATTE has been the definitive leader in the travel expo space consistently delivering unparalleled business and networking opportunities. And one of the salient features of SATTE 2023 is the SCO Travel Mart. The SCO Mart, a co-located travel mart at SATTE 2023, is being organised by Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, to celebrate India’s ongoing Presidency of the SCO. So we are proud to be the platform to host MoT’s SCO Mart for such an important international grouping. We will do everything in our capacity to make the SCO members’ participation at the mart a grand success.”
Straddling Eurasia, SCO is world’s largest regional organisation in its geographical spread and population, covering 60 per cent of Eurasia, over 40 per cent of the world’s population and more than 30 per cent of the world GDP. Headquartered in Beijing, the SCO members include China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
