FAITH, the policy federation of all the national associations representing the complete tourism, travel and hospitality industry of India such as FHRAI, HAI and IATO has released an India tourism vision with a vision statement, goals and an execution path for the country commemorating the 75th year of Indian independence.
Nakul Anand, chairman of FAITH said FAITH’s vision statement for Indian tourism entails making Indian tourism preferred and loved by global and domestic tourists, creating economic and wealth creation opportunities for tourism, travel and hospitality entrepreneurs for India, positioning tourism rightly as a social economic job and infrastructure creator for India, and becoming a role model sector for sustainable and inclusive growth.
FAITH said its FAITH 2035 vision document lays down ‘action goals’ in multiples of 75 referencing all indicators to the 75th year of independence. These goals include targetting 75 million inbound tourists, aiming for $ 75 billion*2 (ie $ 150 billion of foreign exchange earnings from inbound tourism, aiming for 7.5 billion domestic tourism visits, targetting 75 million * 2 ( i.e. 150 million or 15 crores) direct and indirect employment from tourism in public and private sector in hotels, travels agencies and tour operations, tourism transportation , food services, destination management and services which are looking after tourists. Targetting $ 75 billion *3 ( $ 225 billion ) economic revenue from domestic tourism, targetting $ 75 billion capex direct and indirect annually, and enabling 75 million outbound travellers from India are among the other goals. The industry body said its tourism vision 2035 proposes four strategic pillars to achieve the goals such as a shared national tourism approach, value accretive regulations, investment drivers and market excellence.
Under each of these strategic pillars FAITH proposes action plans such as tourism to be made a concurrent subject as a shared execution between centre and state, tourism exports to be treated at par with other exports and that services and such transactions may be zero rated for GST without stopping the flow of input credits, the setting up of a national tourism council of PM and CMs, and registered tourism service providers with a single centre State unique id for quality assurance. All Tourism projects and plans should be based around sustainable design principles as per FAITH.
FAITH said value accretive regulation could include GST rates at 10% with full set offs on hotels and restaurants and 1% on travel intermediaries and .1% on ticketing, all GST setoffs on fuel, liquor, construction, tourism transportation fees, travel credit for domestic travel and MICE segments, single window e – clearance for all projects, seamless tourist transportation at the national level and single source verified credits based hospitality and tourism skilling
The investment drivers could be setting up 200 centres of excellence across states through Swadesh Darshan and Prasad schemes each with to 0.1 million foreign tourists and 20 million domestic tourists leading to 20 million foreign and 4 billion domestic tourists. Setting up industrial rates for utilities in all states, targetting almost 1 million new hospitality rooms on identified land banks and creating last mile connectivity for destinations could be the other investment drivers as per FAITH.
