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Tour operators plan heavy sops to lure visitors

Lola Nayar, in New Delhi

Indian travel operators are planning heavy sops to lure tourists as US strikes in Afghanistan threaten to drastically cut traffic and squeeze revenue.

In a bid to minimise losses, the Indian Association of Tour Operators is reworking strategy to attract traffic from short-haul regions like Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.

"We hope to prevail on hoteliers and airlines to offer heavy discounts to attract more regional and domestic travellers to enjoy a once in a lifetime holiday," said T S Wahi, newly elected president of IATO and managing director of the Travel Promotion Bureau.

The operators said they hoped things would look up by November.

The chairman of the tourism division of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Subhash Goyal, has urged the government to allow visas on arrival for visitors from the US, Britain, Japan, Thailand and Germany. The airports, however, would have a list of blacklisted people.

The other requests include adopting a more open sky policy for airlines and boosting domestic travel by revoking the limit on leave travel concessions given to government employees, said Goyal, who is also chairman of Stic Travel Group, a major tour operator.

The operators also said with the strikes beginning Sunday, the suspense that was preventing a lot of travellers from booking tickets after the September 11 terror attacks in the US, seems to be over.

"While we had lot of cancellations after the September attack, there have been hardly any after the US retaliation on Afghanistan," said Goyal.

"People have been booking for November and December confident that the conflict will not last long," said Keyur Joshi, chief operating officer of online travel portal mytrip.com.

"Business has in fact been getting better in the last 10 days, with inbound traffic, particularly the non-resident Indian market, looking up."

Though October is usually a busy tourist season, tour operators are happy the US strikes are happening now and not in November coinciding with Diwali, the Indian festival of lights.

Diwali is the beginning of the festive and marriage season in India, which sees a rush of NRIs and foreigners for weddings, holidays and Christmas and New Year celebrations.

Some tour agents, however, reported cancellations.

"Since the attack on the US we have received lot of postponements but now there are around 60 per cent cancellations as our clients from Australia, Sweden and Latin America are expecting the conflict to escalate," said Rani Bajaj, director of Perfect Travels.

Last year about 2.68 million people visited India. The Delhi Tourism and Transport Development Corporation says the drop in tourist traffic is expected to hit the Indian capital most because it receives 62 per cent of the inward traffic.

Delhi is part of a golden triangle of tourism that includes Jaipur in Rajasthan and Agra in Uttar Pradesh. Agra is famous for its marble monument of love, the Taj Mahal.

"This year, we had been expecting an average 5-7 per cent increase in inbound foreign tourist traffic," said a Delhi Tourism official.

The US is one of India's main tourist generating markets followed by Britain and Europe. All these regions have a sizeable ethnic Indian population.

The cancellation of the Afro-Asian Games, scheduled from November 3-11 in Delhi, has also disappointed tour operators. "The hosting of the event would surely have brought around 2,500 visitors to Delhi," said a travel industry official.

Indo-Asian News Service

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