Category Archives: Breaking News (All Categories)

The government of Rajasthan has decided to open all monuments, museums and forts that were closed for public on 18th March. The Department of Archaeology and Museums of the state has issues guidelines keeping in view of social distancing norms and other requirements. Instructions have been issued to authorities to take required steps. Folk programs to support artists will also be organised in association with tourism departments. The decision on opening monuments falling in the containment zones will be taken by individual district administrators and they will remain shut until further decision. For the first two weeks, entry for all tourists will be free. As far as light and sound shows are concerned, the decision will be taken later depending on the footfall. As per the department, the monuments will be opened on alternate days for the first two weeks.

After receiving overwhelming response in the first three editions of its digital conclave, TravTalk is back with its Digital Conclave 4.0, which is scheduled to take place on 9th June where attendees can learn about reducing fear and establishing confidence in the tourism landscape again. The theme of the conclave is based on re-engineering tourism and will feature speakers such as Meenakshi Sharma, DG, Tourism, Government of India, Arjun Sharma, Chairman, Select Group and other during the course of three sessions starting at 10 am. The first session is titled as ‘Building and Enabling Tourism: What will the Restart Look like? The second session is based on ‘Revenge Tourism- When do we Restart’, while the third one is named as ‘PPP based, India Tourism Board? A practical vision for the future’. These sessions include eminent speakers such as EM Najeeb, Kamal Hingorani, Guldeep Singh Sahni, Riaz Munshi, Sunil VA and Arif Patel.

Suresh Prabhu, Member of Parliament, and former Union Minister of Civil Aviation has said that small businesses like that of tour operators and travel agents have to be helped, as they fuel the entire tourism sector. “We must find out how to help small businesses, because they are the lifelines of the overall ecosystem of the tourism sector. If there are no tourists, there will not be any airlines which do business of billions of dollars. However, those tourists will be brought to the airline because of the tour operators and travel agents—all those players actually make that ecosystem work and therefore we must realise that small businesses in this sector are crucial for sustaining larger businesses and even economy,” he said, while speaking at the PHD Chambers and WTTC Webinar, ‘Tourism, Hospitality & Transport Challenges’ by Bird Group.

In a bid to boost tourism post lockdown, Odisha government has decided to identify and enlist land parcels suitable for the development of tourism projects across the State. The land parcels found suitable for tourism projects will be shared with potential investors. Once the land is identified and demarcated, it can be offered for hotels, resorts, restaurants, camping infrastructure, water sports, eco-tourism, adventure projects, museums, convention centres and amusement parks. As part of the initiative, the Tourism department has floated an Expression of Interest (EoI) from potential landowners. Land­ owners (individual or entity) possessing land parcels of minimum 20,000 sq ft with a clear title and free from encumbrance can apply. With Odisha Tourism growing at a fast pace resulting in increasing tourist footfalls and investments especially by the private sector, a number of measures are being considered to tap investment including potential tie-up between investors and local partners particularly those who own land suitable for varied tourism projects. If found suitable, the private investor can directly contact the landowner for purchase of land or joint development of the project. It will be a win-win situation for both.

Airports Council International (ACI) World and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) have jointly issued a paper laying out a pathway for restarting the aviation industry – Safely Restarting Aviation – ACI and IATA Joint Approach. They have called on governments to ensure new measures introduced for airports and airlines in the wake of COVID-19 are consistent across the world. Any restrictions put in place should be supported by scientific evidence, they added. ACI and IATA are both central members the COVID-19 Aviation Recovery Task Force (CART) being led by the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Angela Gittens, Director General, ACI World, said during a webinar conducted by CAPA India on May 29, 2020, that, “Airports and airlines have come together with ICAO and the wider aviation industry to address the biggest challenge ever faced by commercial aviation in restarting a global industry while continuing to halt the spread of COVID-19. There is currently no single measure that could mitigate all the risks of restarting air travel but we believe a globally-consistent, outcome-based approach represents the most effective way of balancing risk mitigation with the need to unlock economies and to enable travel.” The joint approach proposes a layered approach of measures across the entire passenger journey to minimise the risk of transmission of COVID-19 at airports and onboard aircraft, and to prevent aviation becoming a meaningful source of international re-infection. Such measures should be globally consistent and subject to continued review, improvement, and removal when no longer required, to ensure an even recovery.

In order to understand the pulse of the industry amidst these unprecedented times, HVS ANAROCK conducted an anonymous online survey with Hotel General Managers (GMs) in the last week of April 2020. The survey revealed that despite expecting low occupancies, over 71% of the GMs will not discount their rates by more than 20%. Over 42% GMs believe that occupancy would be close to or higher than 50%, while 46% of the GMs believe that occupancy will remain below 40%. The survey revealed that most GMs expect demand to pick up by Q4 2020.

The Uttarakhand government is planning to resume tourism and start the Char Dham Yatra in a calibrated manner after June 8 in an effort to boost the economy. Sharing the information, Madan Kaushik, Cabinet minister and governments’ spokesperson said, “The government is planning to start the Char Dham Yatra but in a limited manner, allowing only limited people amid the pandemic. We will also gradually resume the tourism activities in the same manner as both Char Dham Yatra and tourism are basically the backbone of our economy.” In its latest guidelines, the Centre allowed religious places to open after June 8 along with free inter-state travel of people in a bid to gradually open up the country after lockdown amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Goa Tourism will be focusing on improving their infrastructure as they wait for things to come back to normal, reveals Nikhil Desai, MD, Goa Tourism Development Corporation. “In the coming year, we will focus on domestic market and further consolidate our presence in weddings, M!CE, adventure and leisure tourism. We are also using this time to ramp up our tourism infrastructure to world-class standards and focusing on introduction of new services and products. We are also focusing on completion of Swadesh Darshan projects sanctioned by the MOT. We are looking forward for sanction of financial assistance by MOT for development of UNESCO World Heritage site at old goa under PRASHAD scheme. We are also undertaking work for development of hinterland circuit in North Goa under Swadesh Darshan scheme. So, while we wait for things to come back to normal, we have doubled our efforts on improving the tourism infrastructure,” he said.

Tim Clark, President, Emirates, has said that the UAE flagship carrier could take around four years to resume flying to its entire network. The airline has grounded passenger flights owing to the Coronavirus pandemic and has only operated a few flights since then. “I think probably by the year 2022/23, 2023/24 we will see things coming back to some degree of normality and Emirates will be operating its network as it was and hopefully as successfully as it was,” Clark said in an interview at ATM Virtual 2020. Clark further added that the airline can activate its fleet within 48 hours if they must, but he feels domestic and international flights will start looking up only fort quarter 2021 once global inoculation starts. He doesn’t expect corporate or business travel will go down.

Sharing his view on what’s to come for the M!CE business, Rajdev Bhattacharya, General Manager, Global Travel & Hospitality Services and Way2go, Digital Operations & Platforms for Wipro, says, “With virtual meetings here to stay, corporates will cut down on international travel in the short term, at least till April 2021.” Speaking at the 3rd TravTalk Digital Conclave, he added that this meant that travel agencies would also have to become digital.