Rajen Gohain assumed the charge of new Minister of State for Railways. He is a Member of Parliament from Nagaon constituency in Assam. Soon after taking charge, he had had a brief discussion with Chairman, Railway Board, A.K. Mital. Talking to media after taking charge, Gohain listed out his priority areas as Safety and Security, Expansion And Growth of Railway Infrastructure, Passenger Amenities and Passenger Services, Improving Punctuality, Redressal of Public Grievances, Expediting Railway Projects in North-East. A graduate in Arts and also in Law, Gohain has been active in social and political field right since his youth days.

Nepal Tourism Board along with Nepal Airline Corporation is conducting a three-city roadshow in India. It started with Mumbai on July 5, followed by Ahmedabad on July 6 and Hyderabad sometime in August this year. The eight-member delegation from Nepal included hotels, agents and allied services. Ranu Shah, Senior Officer (Tourism Product & Resources Development), Nepal Tourism Board, said, “We want to promote Nepal aggressively in India after the earthquakes that hit tourism business last year.” Meanwhile, Nepal Airlines is looking at improving air connections between India and Nepal. Shailesh Kansakar, Deputy Director (External & Public Affairs), Corporate Development, Nepal Airlines, added, “We are currently busy with conducting a survey to calculate the potential in starting operations from Ahmedabad and Hyderabad to Kathmandu.”

In a bid to garner investments worth Rs 20,000 crore by 2029 for tourism projects in the state, Andhra Pradesh tourism department organised an investor’s meet which was attended by more than 26 key investors for multiple sectors like hotels, water sports, cruises among others on July 5. The department in a statement said that Andhra Pradesh is endeavouring to make the state an ideal destination for investments and facilitate ease of doing business. The tourism department also added that the progress of each project was reviewed with various departments and investors’ pending issues were resolved across the table. Investors such as ANI Technologies (Ola), Amaravati Tourism, Samudra Shipyard, Shore View Hospitality, Sky Choppers, Water Sports Simple participated in the discussions. Urging the investors to begin commercial operations at the earliest and assuring them of coordinated effort by all relevant government departments to ensure ease of doing business and faster project execution, Neerabh Kumar Prasad, Principal Secretary-Tourism, Government of Andhra Pradesh, said, “Time is ripe to fast track the execution of projects and ensure timely completion. We stand committed to extend our full cooperation to all investors to streamline the entire process.” He also informed that in total 33 new projects have taken off with an investment of Rs 2,400 crore which generate sizeable employment opportunities as well. The state has already seen investments from prominent hospitality brands such as ITC, Accor Group, Taj, JW Marriot etc. and has launched many water sports and adventure tourism facilities in Vijayawada along with some other places in the state.

With annual growth of 18.8 per cent (in a market of 80 million domestic passengers), India’s performance surpassed that of Russia (11.9 per cent growth, in a market of 47 million domestic passengers), China (9.7 per cent growth, in a market of 394 million domestic passengers) and the United States (5.4 per cent growth, in a market of 708 million domestic passengers), as per International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) industry performance statistics for 2015. This information was included in the recently released 60th Edition of the World Air Transport Statistics (WATS), the yearbook of the airline industry’s performance. “Last year airlines safely carried 3.6 billion passengers— the equivalent of 48% of the Earth’s population—and transported 52.2 million tonnes of cargo worth around $6 trillion. In doing so, we supported some $2.7 trillion in economic activity and 63 million jobs,” said Tony Tyler, IATA’s Director General and CEO. Airlines in the Asia-Pacific region once again carried the largest number of passengers with a 34 per cent market share (1.2 billion passengers) registering an increase of 10 per cent compared to the region’s passengers in 2014.

Bird Travels has been appointed as the GSA for Avianca Brazil in India. “We are very delighted to represent and promote Avianca Brazil as their GSA in India. Avianca is a member of Star Alliance covering 22 domestic and one international destination with over 200 daily flights. It has a modern fleet of 41 Airbus aircraft. The major hub airports are Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Salvador. In India we are also entering the BSP very soon for wider distribution,” said Praful Khosla, Executive Vice President, Bird Travels.

Maharashtra Government will provide financial assistance of upto Rs 50 lakh to persons who wish to set up their tourism business under its Start Up scheme. This was announced by Valsa Nair Singh, IAS, Principal Secretary,  Tourism and Culture, Government of Maharashtra. She added, “The coming two years are very important for the progress and prosperity of the tourism sector. The year 2017 will be celebrated as Visit Maharashtra Year and the year 2018 we will be celebrating completion of 200 years of the discovery of the world heritage Ajanta Caves by British officer John Smith. A campaign to promote tourism destinations of Maharashtra all over the world will be undertaken aggressively under Visit Maharashtra 2017. In 2018, many events will be hosted to attract international and domestic tourists to Ajanta and other destinations of the city. There is a huge scope to organise Food Festival and Handicraft Festival in the city, apart from Golf Tourism. A proposal to set up Buddhist Centre on MTDC’s 900 acres land at Ellora is under consideration.” The three-day Ellora-Ajanta Festival will be held with the help of the MTDC from October 14 to 16, said the principal secretary suggesting the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation to run an excursion bus to conduct City Tours connecting all the tourist places. She also underlined the need of enhancing the air connectivity of Aurangabad with cities like Jaipur, Udaipur, Nagpur and Pune other than Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. Mentioning the need for hosting film shootings at Ellora, Ajanta and other important places in Aurangabad, Smt. Valsa Nair Singh commented “The countries like Switzerland and Spain witnessed a boom in tourism due to film shootings. A beeline was formed to see …

The Ministry of External Affairs will organise the country’s first SAARC Tourism Summit in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, in the second week of October. The announcement of the two-day summit, also being aimed at tapping FDI under Make in India and Make in Maharashtra schemes, was made by Valsa Nair Singh, IAS, Principal Secretary Tourism and Culture, Government of Maharashtra at the Sensitisation Session on Aurangabad Tourism Development Program organised by the State Government, Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) and the Confederation of Indian Industry in Aurangabad on July 4, 2016. Highlighting the reasons behind the decision to host the summit in Aurangabad, Singh said, “The Ajanta-Ellora caves have always remained the biggest tourism attraction in the state among foreigners and Indians. The historical silk route and connect of the place with the Buddhist circuit across world, including China, is significant. Ajanta also has one of the world’s best visitors centre with several life size replicas of Padmapani (sculptures of Buddha). All these are reason enough for Aurangabad to be the preferred choice. The conference aims at promoting Aurangabad and other destinations of Maharashtra.” “The Department of Tourism (DoT) is trying to seek appointment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to inaugurate the event. On the first day, officials from SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries, which include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, would attend the conference. On the second day, the ministers of tourism from these countries and from Indian states would participate.” Singh said.

As part of the major reshuffle in the Union Cabinet, Jayant Sinha has been assigned the portfolio of Minister of State for Civil Aviation. His predecessor, Dr. Mahesh Sharma, will now only hold Independent Charge as the Minister of Tourism & Culture. Sinha was the Minister of State for Finance before the reshuffle took place on July 5, 2016.

Dr. Mahesh Sharma, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, has revealed that Rs. 400 crore assistance will be provided by the Centre for developing the airports in Agra, Allahabad, Kanpur and Bareilly. And this would be done within a period of one and a half months. He said that a major effort is underway to operationalise numerous airports in the State of Uttar Pradesh. This is an outcome of a Review meeting that was held earlier in the day which was chaired by Dr. Mahesh Sharma. The meeting was attended by Secretary, Civil Aviation, R.N. Choubey, senior officers of Airports Authority of India, Director, Civil Aviation, Uttar Pradesh Government and District Magistrates of the concerned Districts in Uttar Pradesh. Dr. Sharma also revealed that an airport in Kushinagar will also be developed, for which the State Government had provided 200 crore and the work is being executed by RITES and would be complete with a year. The Minister said that a Committee had been set up, comprising of two senior officers from the Ministry and two officers from the Uttar Pradesh Government. This Committee will study the feasibility of developing no frills airports in Meerut, Faizabad and Moradabad. Dr. Mahesh Sharma also informed that the case of constructing airport in Jewar had been sent to the Ministry of Defence for their NOC. The Minister informed the media that the push for developing airports in small towns was a natural follow up to the Regional Air Connectivity Scheme that had been announced last week.

OYO Rooms has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board (UTDB) for standardising and promoting hospitality in the state. Under the MoU, OYO will help in transforming and standardising hospitality real-estate units and make local homestays better equipped to suit the need of visitors and tourists. In the first phase, OYO has already standardised 15 home stays registered with UTDB. This will be followed by listing and marketing these properties on OYO’s channels. “We are very proud to partner the efforts of the Uttarakhand Government in building a tourism-friendly infrastructure while sustaining local communities. The pace of our efforts is aligned towards ensuring that while infrastructure is upgraded and standardized, the local ecosystem is not disrupted. OYO has built deep expertise in standardizing amenities and guest-experience in the unbranded hotels segment. This tie-up gives us the opportunity to transfer these skills and learning to the state of Uttarakhand.” said Abhinav Sinha, Chief Operating Officer, OYO. Commenting on the development Shailesh Bagauli, CEO, Uttarakhand Tourist Development Board said, “UTDB is happy to partner with OYO, the leading brand of hotel-networks in the country. We are confident that OYO’s expertise in standardizing and marketing large inventories to customers in different parts of India will drive immense value to this partnership. We look forward to our joint efforts contributing to increased tourist influx and a better stay experience for visitors to Uttarakhand.”