Category Archives: MOT

The first-ever meeting of the National Medical and Wellness Tourism Promotion Board will be held under the Chairmanship of Mahesh Sharma, Minister of State for Tourism and Culture (Independent Charge) and Civil Aviation on January 13, 2016 at Hotel Samrat, New Delhi.  The meeting will draw short-term and long-term road maps and strategies for marketing and promotion of medical and wellness tourism, both within India and abroad. Future activities aimed at creating synergy between the tourism sector and the healthcare sector will be outlined. Key members other than stakeholders and the representatives of related government departments, tourism and hospitality sector and experts in various disciplines including Wellness and Yoga will be participating in the meeting. The National Medical and Wellness Tourism Promotion Board was constituted by the Ministry of Tourism in October 2015 to provide leadership of the Government within a framework of prudent and effective measures, thereby enabling promotion and positioning of India as a competent and credible medical and wellness tourism destination.

Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) during the Month of December 2015 were 9.13 lakh as compared to FTAs of 8.85 lakh during  December 2014. There has been a growth of 3.2% in December 2015 over the same period last year. Ministry of Tourism has released estimates of Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) on the basis of Nationality-wise, Port-wise data received from Bureau of Immigration (BOI) and Foreign Exchange Earnings (FEEs) from tourism on the basis of data available from Reserve Bank of India. FTAs during the period January- December 2015 were 80.16 lakh with a growth of 4.4%, as compared to the FTAs of 76.79 lakh with a growth of 10.2% in January- December 2014 . FEEs during the month of December 2015 were Rs. 13,253 crore as compared to Rs. 12,988 crore in December 2014 . The FEEs in Rupees terms during December 2015 registered a positive growth of 2.0% over December 2014 as compared to positive growth of 8.3% in December 2014 .

Anup K Chatterji, GM-HRD, ITDC, claimed that skilled manpower is the key to boost tourism in the country. Speaking at The Travel India 2016 conference held at The Oberoi Grand, Kolkata, Chatterji said, “Servicing the sector with skilled manpower effectively is a pre-requisite for the actualization of tourism specific expectations. This is both an imperative and a challenge.” Addressing a gathering of important government dignitaries, industry captains and international business delegations from China and Bangladesh, he put emphasis on the need to meet the demand of skilled and trained manpower and to bridge the current skill gap in the hospitality sector. Speaking on the increasing demand for skilled manpower in the sector, Chatterji talked about ITDC’s effort to provide hospitality education to students as well as certifying and upgrading skills of existing service providers. “Ashok Institute of Hospitality & Tourism Management (AIHTM), a hospitality training institute and the HRD division of India Tourism Development Corporation aims to work towards making a difference to the academic culture for the students by offering a globally competitive curriculum and infrastructure.” He further added, “Looking at the future requirement, AIHTM is focusing more on job-oriented short term and long term courses, with a recently launched three year degree course in Hospitality and Hotel Administration in affiliation with the National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology.”