Category Archives: Associations

Serafino Cota, President, Small & Medium Hotels Associations, says, “Our members don’t want to keep their hotels open right now. While the government is trying to show that it opening the state to tourism, it is not extending any help to us. Even if we get one guest with great difficulty for a few days, the government marks the hotel as ‘operational’ and then they start charging you for full electricity, water bill, etc. So people prefer to close it altogether. We have decided to open only in September 2021.”  

FHRAI has requested Minister of Finance and the RBI for an extension of moratorium for an additional 3 months, adding that 90% of the hospitality sector could be declared as NPAs post August 31. In another move, it has requested Ministry of Home Affairs for relaxing of quarantine norms for domestic travellers as well as permission to open bars and banquet halls, among others.

The ‘COVID-19 and Transforming Tourism’ policy brief from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns that economic damage to the global tourism sector is likely to exceed $1 trillion in 2020 alone, with up to 120 million jobs at risk.

The Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) has made written representations to the Hon. Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman, the Hon. Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur and to the Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Shaktikanta Das, I.A.S. requesting for an extension of moratorium for additional three months. The hotel industry has made no progress in terms of bookings even after several states unlocked and where hotels resumed operations. The industry has registered average occupancy levels at 10 to 20 per cent. With rental and salary bills, statutory payments and other establishment costs, hotels are finding it unviable to carry on running businesses. FHRAI has informed the Ministry that an extension of moratorium at this time could help hotels restructure existing loans since the process of restructuring is time consuming. Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, Vice President of FHRAI and President of Hotel and Restaurant Association of Western India (HRAWI), says, “For more than four months, hotels and restaurants have remained shut and have earned no revenue throughout the lockdown. There is no improvement in forward bookings and wherever hotels and restaurants have opened, the footfalls are negligible. In addition to the monthly outgoings and the statutory levies, we now have to spend more on employing hygiene and safety measures to follow the SOPs and guidelines issued by the Central and State governments. On account of all this, the debt restructuring plan announced by the RBI for the stressed MSMEs is not going to help the sector. Therefore we have urged that the moratorium be extended by a further three months.”

FAITH and its cause partner AIRDA, have requested the negative travel advisory from the USA to India to be addressed. FAITH Associations have requested the tourism minister to urgently take it up with Minister of External Affairs, for him to take up with his American counterpart for an immediate revision. The United States of America recently released a travel advisory, which rated level 4 for India (as on 23rd Aug 2020). On a scale of 1-4 this is the highest level of risk rating, carrying with it the advice of ‘do not travel’. As stated, reasons for the same, apart from restrictive COVID-19 protocols, the rating highlights terrorism, crimes against women and insurgency among others as concerns. The associations under FAITH have claimed that USA is the most important long-haul source market for India for most segments of travel. As India has begun the process of opening up its air corridors, such an advisory for India is detrimental to kickstarting all leisure, business & mice tourists from the USA. Additionally, travel advisory as such from the United States of America tends to send a wrong signal for the rest of the developed countries as they start opening up their international air travel. This advisory appears to have been last updated on 6th August 2020. The favourable revision of the travel advisory would be a big boost in beginning the process of creating a positive sentiment for travel, which will slowly put in motion revival for the inbound tourism industry

As part of the panel during a webinar on risk management recently, Anoop Kanuga, MC Member of Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) and Head of its Tourism Council, said, “Training existing talent to improve efficiencies will take precedence in the current situation. Digitization will play an important role and travel agencies will have to ensure that they are equipped with appropriate digital infrastructure to be ahead of the curve. Those who are nimble and are able to move quickly and address the changing needs of the traveller will emerge as winners in the long run.”

The Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI), along with its Managing Committee, has decided to reduce its annual subscription for its agents by 25 per cent across the board in view of the current situation. Pradip Lulla, President, TAFI, says, “We realise that there isn’t much business for the trade right now. Keeping this in mind we decided to reduce our fee.” The association is looking to conduct its virtual convention in November and will shortly finalise the details.

Speaking on charter flights, Nilesh Shah, President, Travel & Tourism Association of Goa, says, “We request the government to allow international charter flights into India from October-end which is when the season starts from key markets such as the UK, Germany, Russia and Scandinavian countries. If the state government is serious about restarting tourism, then it has take such bold steps.”

Rajan Sehgal, President, Indian Golf Tourism Association (IGTA) and MC member of TAAI, believes that golf tourism in India will be in great demand after the monsoons are over. “The first thing that opened after Unlock 1.0 were the golf courses. They opened all over the world. Even the ones in Delhi-NCR are full. This is because they offer open spaces, give us a chance to connect with nature, and physical distancing is maintained. I think, golf tourism in India will be in great demand after the monsoons  because Indian golfers, who used to travel to Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam for golf, will now travel within India. It will give a big boost as Delhi golfers will travel to Rajasthan, South India, and Central India to play golf. We had a serious session with the advisor to Governor of Kashmir, and we requested him to open tourism at the earliest in the UT, so that we can attract a lot of visitors from across India to Jammu & Kashmir,” he said.

Indian Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, and IATO are organising an online interactive meeting on 21st August 2020 at 1130 hours to 1330 hours, where 10 tour operators each from India and Azerbaijan will be participating. From India, only MOT recognised tour operators will be able to participate. Interested members can send their entry to IATO latest by 4 pm, 18th August. If more than 10 names are received, participation will be decided by draw of lot.