By SarabJit Singh
MD, Travelite (India) a unit of KTC India Pvt. Ltd.,
Former Sr. Vice President, IATO,
Founder & Former Vice Chairman, FAITH.
A large number of foreign tourists shun India because of negative publicity or concerns over service quality standards, hygiene, safety and security, among others. This not only results in losses worth billions of dollars in foreign exchange revenue to the country every year but also bad word-of-mouth publicity.
Almost all of the reported cases and complaints are related to mishandling and shabby services by self-appointed and unrecognised fly-by-night tour operators. Not doing anything about it is our dogged insistence that everything is hunky-dory.
It is time, we set our house in order and ensure international standard services are delivered as per services commitments. Creating a strong, accountable and world-class tourism service provider is an‘urgent’ need of the hour.
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Permit remittances to ‘approved’ inbound tour operators
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Institute a quality-check mechanism of all tourism services providers
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Limit all exports related benefits to MoT approved entities
There are several ways this menace can be approached and addressed.Bringing a rule-based system that ensures that foreign exchange remittances is restricted to inbound tour operators who are recognised by Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, can be a defining strategy.Tourism related remittances shall be permitted to recognised tourism services providers only.
Furthermore, apart from fulfilling the mandated financial and other legal criteria to operate as inbound operators, there is need to institute a third-party quality-check mechanism that can undertake thorough inspection of tourism services’ ‘quality and standards’ promised by the operators.
Similarly, all the exports related benefit/incentives should also be available to the recognised tourism services providers. This will help send a strong message that there is tremendous opportunity in being part of the rule-based system and following establish norms of services standards.
These steps will compel tourism services providers in unorganized sector to get themselves recognised and inspected and commit to follow the prescribed services standards.
Certain standards have to be maintained and tour operators have to be answerable to any shortcomings in their promised services. These moves will have far-reaching impact on the quality of tourism services that we as a destination aspire to offer. The short-sighted approach by fly-by-night tour operators can be permanently addressed while the service providers in the organised sector will adhere to even higher standards of services.
Other than separating the wheat from the chaff, these step will also help bring inbound tour operators to a level playing field as they will be subject to both, taxes as per the government norms and beneficiary of government schemes and incentives available to the sector.
Most importantly, and other than ensuring and upgrading the quality of services and experiences, theseactions will also address widespread safety and security concerns that deters a huge number of foreign tourists from coming to India despite her vast tourist appeals.
A satisfied customer in turn is a huge asset in terms of word-of-mouth publicity for the destination and hospitality services experiences aligned to our philosophy of ‘Atithi Devo Bhava.’
India’s foreign tourist arrival numbers, about 11 million in 2019, doesn’t do any justice to the destination potential that our country offers.And one of the biggest culprits of why the foreign tourists are overlooking India is the unorganized sector because of the services and overall destination experiences that they offer, and not to forget, the significant loss of tax revenue to the government.
