Chennai: Has the tourism ministry's campaign revolved more around the national capital and the northern states, ignoring the attractive tourist locales in the southern states?
Most likely, if a study commissioned by the ministry to assess the impact of the hospitality scheme, is to be believed. The scheme, the study says, is ending up promoting places that are already famous and popular tourist destinations.
"There should be an effort to include unexplored places with better amenities, niche products and theme-based tourism like rural tourism, monsoon tourism, food trail, IT centres and centres of academic excellence in India. In this way, the ministry can utilise the services of the scheme in publicising and testing new initiatives and projects for tourism promotion," the Operations Research Group (ORG) Private Limited said in its final report submitted to the tourism ministry in March this year.
Similarly, the state tourism departments can suggest places of tourist interest that they want to promote, and the benchmark of selection should be the level of destination development achieved there. The hospitality scheme is one of the schemes aimed at promoting inbound tourism.
The scheme is heavily tilted towards destinations in North India. Many important destinations and states have been left out from the scheme if information provided by the delegates about the places they visited is considered as the source of information, the report said. The information shows that important states of tourist interest like Orissa comprising Bhubaneswar, Konarak Temple, Similipal National Park, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, many important places in Madhya Pradesh like Orchha, Panchmarhi, Jabalpur among others, have not found place in the itinerary. The Hampi ruins, Mysore, places in Uttarakhand, Jharkhand do not find place in the scheme. A detailed list of the tourist places in India therefore needs to be developed and mapped with the scheme itinerary in order that focus is put in equitably developing different places of tourist interest in India.
Chaotic traffic, transport connectivity, potholed roads, garbage on streets, roaming beggars (in fact beggars intentionally going after foreigners knowing they will get a nice tip), in fact overall cleanliness of environment and mismanagement of public service i.e.aspects long associated with India, are the areas pointed by delegates that are in need of improvement.
Apart from these obvious improvement areas, some specific areas of improvement pointed by the delegates interviewed, are with regards to net connectivity in far-flung areas, around destinations and in trains, better hotels, lack of adequate information and promotional material, more convenient flight schedules, unprofessional attitude of guides and educating people on clean habits are the other areas that the delegates pointed out that need improvement.
