Tourism monitoring at PMO level needed: CII

“Change is driven down from the top. The economic importance of tourism can be suitably communicated if a monitoring mechanism is set up at the PMO,” the committee told reporters here.

This will ensure that this industry’s growth is driven on a priority basis by central and state government departments,it added.

The suggestion,along with a host of other ideas,will be submitted as a white paper to the inter ministerial co-ordination committee for tourism sector under the chairmanship of the principal secretary to the Prime Minster,Pulok Chatterjee.

“The industry’s task is to project to the powers to be on the key role the tourism sector plays. We will present the deliberations … collective ideas to the committee formed in the PM’s office,” CII National Committee on Tourism Chairman Nakul Anand said.

Anand,who is also the ITC Ltd Executive Director,added that the tourism sector has a powerful message to deliver and how it is a key engine in the economic growth of the country.

The committee cochairman and Le Passage to India Managing Director Arjun Sharma,Le Passage said that the country’s tourism infrastructure must be benchmarked to China.

“Our infrastructure planning and implementation must be done accordingly to ensure that the global tourist finds Indian tourism infrastructure of the same if not of superior quality than that in China,” Sharma said.

The other issues on which deliberations were held included repositioning of tourism industry in India and specific recommendations on addressing tourism bottlenecks in Agra.

Other members of the committee includes IATO President Subash Goyal,WTTC Secretary General Sujit Banerjee and Domestic Tour Operators President Subash Verma.