Ministry of Tourism invites final comments on draft report for setting up National Digital Tourism Mission

What is the News?

The Ministry of Tourism has released a draft report on the proposed National Digital Tourism Mission.

About India’s Tourism Sector

Contribution to GDP: Direct and indirect contribution of tourism to GDP is approximately 5% in 2018-19.

International Tourist Arrivals (ITAs): With 17.9 million ITAs in 2019, India is at 23rd position in the world in terms of ITAs. ITAs have grown with a CAGR of 6.4% over 6 years from 2014 to 2019. 

Contribution to Employment: Both direct and indirect jobs in the tourism sector contributed to 12.5% of total jobs in the country in 2019.  

Contribution to Foreign Exchange Earnings (FEE): With 2.12 lakh crore FEE in 2019, India is at 12th position in the world. 

Challenges faced by Indian Tourism Industry

The Tourism industry continues to face challenges like lack of formalization, inadequate access to timely finance, fluctuations in currency exchange, seasonal dependence, lack of infrastructure, security issues, skill deficit, unavailability of freely available IT systems, lack of social media campaigns and need for more marketing opportunities.

What is Government planning to address the challenges faced by the Tourism industry?

The Ministry of Tourism had constituted an inter-ministerial task force for the implementation of a National Digital Tourism Mission. The task force has prepared a draft report on the proposed Mission.

What is the need for National Digital Tourism Mission?

The Tourism sector is highly fragmented. Sub Sectors of tourism such as transport, accommodation, restaurants and catering and personal services are all subject to very different challenges and opportunities. 

Moreover, most of the tourism systems developed by the Central Government, State Governments, the Public sector and the Private sector function in silos. As a result, the tourism ecosystem is unable to harvest the combinatorial benefits of information exchange

Hence, the National Digital Tourism Mission is being planned. The mission will aim to bridge the existing information gap amongst different stakeholders of the tourism ecosystem through a digital highway.

Source: This post is based on the article “Ministry of Tourism invites final comments on draft report for setting up National Digital Tourism Mission” published in PIB on 9th Mar 2022