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Congress-led govt to see India as global tourist destination

PALLAB BHATTACHARYA, New Delhi
Encouraged by an impressive 24.9 percent growth in the inflow of foreign tourists during the first five months of this year, India's Congress-led government has decided to go aggressively to position the country as a global tourist destination.
The robust growth in foreign tourist arrival between January and May this year has brought more than 36 percent rise in foreign exchange earning through tourism, on the back of a 23 percent similar rise in 2003.
At the heart of the increase in foreign tourist traffic growth lie the business travellers who are mainly responsible for the spurt in hotel room occupancy, hospitality industry sources said.
Tourism Minister Renuka Choudhury at a conference of
Tourism Marketing here last week said the government recognised the importance of the sector in socioeconomic growth and sought publicprivate sector partnership for promotion of tourism and enhancing India's share in global tourism market.
Seeking to take advantage of the burgeoning global tourism market and tap the vast unexplored potential of India as a world tourist destination, the government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a group of representatives of travel and hospitality industry.
Under the MoU, travel and tourism industry will take promotional efforts in overseas markets through road shows and trade events and joint efforts will be made to develop new markets and off-season marketing of Indian destinations.
Development of specific regional markets like the United States,
Britain, France, Germany and South East Asian countries will be taken up in the first phase.
The tourism ministry has launched a Rs 90-crore "Incredible India" promotional campaign to boost the country's brand appeal as an international destination.
The tourism industry now provides employment, directly or indirectly, to nearly 50 million people in India and even a ten percent increase in tourism means generation of five million new jobs every year and the biggest beneficiary of this will be the women and rural artisans, Choudhury pointed out.
Choudhury also broached a new dimension of the tourism sector by speaking about "rural tourism" with focus on Indian villages. She, however, did not elaborate.
The two-day meet of captains of travel and tourism industry also
brought up once again the issue of development of tourism infrastructure in terms of increase in hotel rooms, better transport, air seat capacity and speedier handling of visas for foreign tourists.
The tourism industry hopes the first budget of the new Congress-led government meets its long-pending demand, for according it the status of infrastructure sector will entail significant benefits for promotion of tourism, said industry sources.
While business tourism is linked to international economic growth, the tourism industry in India stresses on the need to attract more leisure tourists to give the country a firmer footing on the international tourism map.