South Korea recently made an impassioned plea to India to open a tourist office there. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) seems delighted at the prospect and officials of the Tourism Ministry are just waiting for the order to pack their bags. The South Korean proposal follows the opening of overseas tourist offices in Moscow, Johannesburg and Israel. Tourism Ministry officials, justifying the growing empire of tourist offices abroad, say that the government has reduced their ministry to a bargain-basement version of the MEA. Wherever the country wants to ensure a presence but does not want to open consulates, the Tourism Ministry is ordered to open an office.Tourist offices are opened without any survey of the size and potential of the market, and then tourism promotion is expected in the absence of commercial activity. Tourist offices cannot sell tickets or carry out any marketing activity other than handing out brochures. The official brief runs along these lines: promote the country, coordinatecultural activities and keep in touch with tour operators. So the Paris office organised a music festival on July 6 which was followed by Ritu Beri's fashion show on July 17. Meanwhile, the Dubai office held press meets to promote Rajasthani paintings from June 22 to July 1. It also planned a Millennium Maha Yatra for NRIs to ``familiarise them with their roots.'' In the meantime, the Frankfurt office organised a Zubin Mehta concert.It seems the government is yet to stumble on the fact that in the 18 countries where we have tourist offices, a huge contingent of MEA officials are already carrying out overlapping activities. Tourist offices overseas include those in Sydney, Toronto, Paris, Frankfurt, Tel Aviv, Milan, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Singapore, Madrid, Stockholm, Dubai, Los Angles and New York. Recently, a committee of secretaries ordered the closure of tourist offices in Thailand, Malaysia and Switzerland, based on a performance analysis.Tourism Ministry officials say that they are expected to promotean inflow of tourists with one hand tied behind their back. In a reply sent to the Finance Ministry which had ordered an ``activity analysis'' of tourist offices abroad, the ministry has said categorically that nearly 99 per cent of tourists come to India by air. The total seat capacity is around 5 million, with 3.8 million outbound passengers and only around 2.39 million inbound. So, says a senior official: ``Why question us for the lack of tourists? Even assuming we do a terrible promotion job on tourists who want to come to India, can they even get airline bookings?'' He claims that the Ministry of Civil Aviation has ignored weekly demands to increase seat capacity.After a particularly vicious battle on the seat capacity issue between the ministries of tourism and aviation (which, incidentally, are under the same minister) a via media was found - a joint committee was set up nearly a year ago. It is yet to hold a single meeting.This apathy seems to be symptomatic of the attitude to tourism, and isunderscored by an activity analysis carried over a period of seven years by the Tourism Ministry itself. Organised in response to a Finance Ministry demand, it was completed this month.The area-wise performance of overseas tourist offices was based on the number of tourist arrivals from these regions against the promotional expenditure incurred. In its covering letter to the Finance Ministry the Tourism Ministry claims that ``due appreciation has to be given to the fact that these offices are competing with various international agencies in the world market for increasing India's share of the global tourist arrivals. it has therefore been considered reasonable to monitor their performance by relating tourist arrivals from their region with the money spent per tourist in dollar terms.''The letter points out bluntly that the fact that the rupee has devalued by around 33 per cent in this seven-year period has not really helped their bottomline.The review says: ``Operation Europe: the arrival figureshave shown a growth of around 5.25 percent. The plan expenditure per tourist in rupee terms has remained confined within a narrow bandwidth with the average at Rs 400, the figures for 1992-93 being Rs 385 and that for 1998-99 at Rs 368 indicating a reduced expenditure.''According to the review, the West Asia region has shown an average annual decrease of around 7.8 per cent in tourist traffic in spite of an expenditure hike of 129 per cent in absolute terms. The overall plan budget for the region has also gone up by 68 per cent in absolute terms. The review admits that performance in this region is far from satisfactory and says it is imperative to take steps to improve it. However, according to the review the Americas, Australia and East Asia have shown ``considerable effectiveness by achieving some targets.''What the Tourism Ministry does not mention is the fact that even if the elusive tourists come to the country they face a complete lack of tourism infrastructure. There is no national tourisminformation network in India, though the Tourism Ministry, in its internal policy plan, admits that ``the need to provide a hassle-free and easy information and booking service for tourists is urgently needed.''The ambitious plan envisaged information services and online real-time booking for destinations, packages, accommodation and transportation. This was to have been done by setting up a national grid linking various services providers and is currently considered by the Tourism Ministry to be ``not implementable''. Private tour operators say this is precisely the problem: while tourist offices are present all over the country and abroad, the real nuts and bolts of the industry are absent. They say that the only factor needed to push tourism in the country is online connectivity between centres and local private service providers.Director-General (Tourism) Ashok Pradhan says that a committee has been set up to monitor and evaluate overseas tourist offices, but he adds that India has to compete withcountries that have huge budgets for tourism promotion. ``And what about factors like law and order, crime and touts. What can the Tourism Ministry do about that?'' he asks rhetorically. In real terms, the government spends only Rs 3 per tourist, he says, and massive investments need to be made in basic infrastructure before more tourist traffic can come our way.
