TBM Staff - Mumbai Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism & Hospitality (FAITH), the national tourism policy body expresses its sincere thanks to the PM Narendra Modi on stressing on the importance of Tourism during the recent post budget webinar and offering valuable suggestions to all stakeholders to put Tourism development on a mission mode- a term generally used for most critical infrastructure projects. Also the board of directors of FAITH wishes to assure the PM that as an important industry body that we are geared to fulfill his vision to put India on the global tourism map.
His speech rightly tried to dispel the long standing myth that tourism is a rich man’s activity and stressed on its socio-cultural and economic importance. He gave several valuable and out-of-the-box suggestions like to have signages in different languages at tourist places, convergence of government central-state programmes and public-private partnerships. Further his emphasis on addressing lack of professional tourist guides by creating certificate courses in local colleges is truly out of box. He dwelt further on addressing ease of travelling to the destination by improving the road-rail, air connectivity , using creative promotion techniques and preparing a roadmap for specific tourist products like coastal, beach, mangrove, Himalayan tourism, adventure, wildlife, eco-tourism, heritage, spiritual, wedding destinations, and sports which just underlines the value the PM places on tourism growth.
“FAITH wishes to reaffirm the PM that we have taken his message and we would partner with MOT to put India on the most sought after tourist destination. While we are on it, would request the tourism ministry to revive and raise the budget for promoting India abroad. Also would urge the government to comprehensively look at lowering the GST on the entire Hospitality sector as high taxation makes India an expensive tourist destination vis a vis Sri Lanka, Thailand and other neighbouring South East countries . No gain saying that every percentage reduction in taxation has a 10 times higher multiplier impact on the growth of the overall leisure and tourism sector” said Nakul Anand, Chairman, FAITH.
