Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:
The Day II events of the IATO convention opened up with a business session on Inbound Tourism - Sustainability, Strategy and Emerging Trends - on Saturday. The experts opined that providing incentives to the tourism stakeholders and designing policies for sustainable tourism by the government is the need of the hour, they said.
IATO vice-president Ravi Gosain made a welcome address. Former IATO chairman Pronab Sarkar moderated the session participated by Rakesh Kumar Verma (Additional Secretary (Tourism - Central Government), Radhika Rastogi (Principal Secretary (Tourism, State Government), Nandini Chakravorty, Principal Secretary (Tourism, Government of West Bengal), Nand Kishor (MD, Bihar State Tourism Development Corporation) and Kapil Goswamy (MD, TI Holidays).
Verma emphasised on sustainable tourism saying that the union Ministry of Tourism is also trying to integrate the aspects of energy, water and waste. It is challenging, but the efforts to change the mindset of people and turn them towards sustainable tourism is underway.
Rastogi said that the finalising of the policy on sustainable tourism will be done in a few months. I appeal to the people visiting heritage and other tourist places to also enjoy the local culinaries as it will also give a push to the local economy.
The session on ‘New Era of Cruise Tourism, River Tourism and Coastal Tourism’ also turned out interesting. The expert Rajiv Duggal underlined the huge scope in sea tourism. Another expert Subhash Goyal highlighted the facilities available on cruise and how it attracts repeat business.
Another panelist Jurgen Bailom said that cruise tourism will create 350,000 jobs for Indians.
India is the next big market (for cruise tourism), said Malini Gupta.
The states of Bihar, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha were given time to present tourism potential in their state.