Madhavan Menon, Chairman and Managing Director, Thomas Cook India, has said, “India’s travel business will recover stronger than before in 2023 on the back of high domestic travel demand, recovery in business travel and India’s hosting of the G20 summit.”

Sudeep Jain, Managing Director, South West Asia, IHG, has said, “In Q2, 2022, our total revenue in India exceeded 2019 levels where occupancy levels jumped from 60% in Q1 to close to 75% in Q2 of 2022, demonstrating a 26% jump YoY for H1 of 2022, which was 2% ahead of 2019 levels.”

Sunaina Mehta, Joint director, Tourism, J&K, has said that, “We are looking forward that more investments take place as we are in the process of  outsourcing the assets and we look forward that better players come forward for PPP, so that some better avenues are also generated for earning livelihood for the youth of J&K and at the same time explore the potential at various destinations.”

Saurabh Vijay, Principal Secretary, Tourism & Cultural Affairs, Maharashtra, speaking at the Mumbai Roadshow for GTIS 2023, has said, “We have identified properties that can be developed in PPP mode. These properties will be showcased at the Global Tourism Investment Summit,” he added.

Meera Charnalia – Sr. Vice President and Head – MICE, Thomas Cook (India) Limited, has claimed, “We witnessed over 100% recovery vs our pre-pandemic levels for MICE sector with our robust forward pipeline reflecting a strong and growing appetite for MICE travel in 2023 and beyond.”

Kerala Tourism Minister, Mohamed Riyas said that their focus will no longer be confined to beaches, backwaters and hill stations. “We now want to transform the whole of Kerala into an interconnected tourist haven where visitors get plenty of choices and diverse experiences.”

Rajesh Magow, co-Founder & Group CEO, MakeMyTrip, has said that there is a need to overhaul taxation and compliance structure to boost the domestic travel industry. “We suggest that tourism exports be treated at par with other exports and services and such transactions may be zero rated for GST without stopping the flow of input credits,” he added.

PK Thakur, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Civil Aviation GOI has said, “The ministry is working seamlessly to install full body scanners and biometric entry pass. By the end of 2023, at least at the hypersensitive airports, we will have full body scanners”.

Shri Narayan Rao, Deputy MD, GMR Group and Chairman ASSOCHAM National Council on Civil Aviation, has said that Tier 1 and 2 airports should be privatised. “The government is planning another 25 airports in India for privatization. The most important stakeholders are airports,” he added.

According to data provided by STB, India has been ranked the second-largest tourist market for Singapore in 2022 after Indonesia, reporting 686,000 Indian arrivals. Indonesians, Indians and Australians were top spending tourists in the first nine months of 2022 with SGD 8.96 billion.