Meet to highlight India as tourist destination

Union ministers for tourism Ambika Soni today released a report on the 'Incredible India Campaign-2005-06' on the occasion of a two-day meet on overseas marketing o India as a tourist destination. A number of promotional films produced by BBC and CNN on different aspects of Indian culture and tourism like 'heritage India', 'contemporary India', 'India as a golfing destination', 'India as an Ayurvedic destination', 'India as a medical tourism destination', etc. were also released by the minister.

Earlier, secretary, ministry of tourism, Ashok Kumar Mishra said that the rate of growth in the tourism sector has been commendable in the last few years as tourism accounts for roughly 6 per cent of the GDP and about 9 per cent of the total employment. Nevertheless, in volume terms we are way behind. Whereas a small city like Macau with a 4.5-lakh population handles 17.5 million tourists, our country with such a great variety of tourism products received only 3.92 million tourists last year, he added.

Mishra said that since the private sector is the driver of real growth in the hospitality and travel industry, our strategy should be to function as a facilitator for them to the extent that we extend support both to the overseas and domestic tour operators, arrange interface between the two. He said the ministry proposes to increase the allocation under market development assistance scheme to enable a larger number of domestic tour operators and hoteliers to take part in travel marts, road shows abroad so that we may realise our aim of achieving an overall target of 25 per cent growth in tourism sector.