About two crore tourism jobs at risk, revenue loss could be Rs 1.58 lakh crore, tourism ministry officials to parliamentary panel

An estimated two crore direct and indirect jobs related to tourism industry in the country could be lost due to COVID-19 and the revenue loss could be Rs 1.58 lakh crore in the worst case, a parliamentary panel was told on Monday by Tourism ministry officials, sources said.

A meeting of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Culture and Tourism was held here in Parliament building and discussed the impact of COVID -19 on the tourism and civil aviation sectors.

Sources said that a senior official of Ministry told the panel that COVID-19 pandemic had hit tourism and airlines sectors hard and there could be huge job losses directly and directly in the tourism sector.

"Tourism Ministry official informed parliamentary panel that due to COVID-19 pandemic, the tourism sector is suffering badly and projected job loss (direct and indirect) is expected more than two crore, while projected revenue loss in the worst case is Rs 1.58 lakh crore. It includes the hotel sector, online and offline tour and travel, tour operators, adventure tourism and cruise tourism," a source told .

The sources said that civil aviation ministry officials informed the panel that they were not sure when international flights will resume fully and even domestic operations have not become fully operational.

The panel has 31 members of which 15 were present at the meeting.

The meeting was chaired by BJP member Rajiv Pratap Rudy in the absence of Chairman of this Committee T G Venkatesh.

Tourism Secretary, Aviation Secretary and a senior official of Airport Authority of India were among those present.

( With inputs from ANI )