India is a popular destination for both business and leisure travelers.

Mr. Prakash Bedi, Vice President, Clarks Safari 

India is blessed with a varied landscape and architectural marvels, most travelers visit India to experience heritage or spiritual tourism apart from being a favorite destination for leisure and business travel. The hospitality sector is a billion-dollar industry and gives employment to 137 billion individuals.

Last year’s budget was promising, with the announcement of opening up 220 airports by 2025, the allotment of 2.4 lakh crores to Indian railways capital expenditure, and increasing coastal shipping using India’s eastern and western shipping lines, boosting the tourism sector.

With the 2024-2025 budget in the pipeline, there are a lot of expectations within the industry. The sector only has 1,90,000 branded rooms which is significantly lower than the other Asian counterparts. China has nine times more branded rooms than us. The industry needs more foreign investments and big chains setting up properties in India. Too much of licenses are acting as dampeners, it is essential to have one clearance window, to support ease of doing business and to encourage new players to enter the sector. This will lead to the expansion of the hotel industry and more inflow of international tourists.

For long, the industry has been struggling to get industry status, rationalize taxes, and easier loan conditions for small and medium properties.

We are hoping this budget will address a few of those issues. It is high time the indirect taxes especially the goods and services taxes need to be standardized as per global standards. All across the globe the GST charged is 12%, whereas in India we charge 18% GST, this leads to the driving of the room tariffs. This will make India globally competitive and attractive for foreign tourists.

India needs to protect its cultural heritage we have many heritage forts, caves, monuments, statues, etc. But due to the lack of funds most of these are in a bad state. The government needs to allocate a dedicated heritage fund for the restoration of these sites. The government further has to implement stricter policies to ensure that eco-friendly practices are followed, incentives are introduced and these national treasures are preserved.