The Hindu Business Line : Tourism industry buoyancy `to continue'

THE travel industry in India is buoyant with domestic and outbound tourism set to rise in the coming months. Besides growth, the industry is also going through structural changes such as tour operators spreading their risk, Incredible India promos and media hype, Mr Ashwini Kakkar, CEO and Managing Director, Thomas Cook, said.

He said that international tour operators are spreading their risk over various destinations. This is a lesson that they learnt from the past two years of terrorist attacks, war and disease outbreaks.

So instead of sending 33 million international tourists to China, they are spreading these numbers out to other destinations and India stands to gain from this.

The second important change is that, after 55 years, the Government has started advertising India as a destination in the overseas markets on the platform of "Incredible India", he said.

Third, a number of well-known travel magazines such as Lonely Planet and Conde Nast have recommended India as one to the top five destinations. More recently Time magazine had the Ambanis on the cover and that has generated a lot of interest , Mr Kakkar said.

With the increase in business activity, corporate travel too has picked up. This has triggered a second wave of leisure travel, as executives take a weekend off at a holiday resort. In this segment, it is the word of mouth that has helped to grow the destination, Mr Kakkar said.

On the outbound, there is a large increase in Indians travelling. Mr Kakkar said that Thomas Cook had done a research five years ago and found that in a list of priorities; Indians rated holidays as number 13. Recently, holidays have gone up to number 9.

In more developed countries, holidays are the second priority, he said. This is an indicator as tourism is bound to grow as the economy develops

This is mainly because of the rise in disposable incomes and readily available finance schemes. Group tours have also picked up with people from one community or company going on holiday together. Thomas Cook, for instance, has completely sold out its tours for April, he said.

Take the case of the India-Pakistan cricket matches for which Thomas Cook has 1,000 tickets to sell for these matches, Mr Kakkar said. There are three categories of people who want to Pakistan to watch the matches, he said. There are those who want to go back to their roots; there are companies wanting to send their incentive groups and finally the individual traveller who wants to watch cricket.

In the coming months, domestic tourism numbers are expected to grow by more than 20 per cent, Mr K. Sriram, Managing Director, Bharat Travel Service said. The last tourist season has also been good for inbound leisure travel, he said.