The current national and global environment reflects a defining economic and social backdrop. Speaking on India, the rupee-dollar dynamics to the challenging investment setting is placing its set of challenges. Most industries are being affected by these developments and needless to say the service sector too is facing its share of challenges. The fact that tourism is a highly sensitive sector and it gets affected by slightest changes, it will be prudent on the part of the tourism and hospitality sector to focus on its own in-house demographic wealth than just only focus on international clientele. The current times goes on to further reiterate the fact that domestic tourism is India tourism’s mainstay.
India is a haven for culture, festivals, fairs both traditional as well as modern and it is time we moved from traditional forms of selling tourism and getting on to more innovative concepts and ideas which the clientele will want to explore. Event based tourism attractions can be a crowd puller. Events and festivals from music and dance to that of traditional festivals and melas can be positioned and highlighted in a way to bring in awareness and offer the tourist a truly experiential vacation. Every state of India has something special to offer, rich and robust with attractions and offerings, and it is upto the state tourism boards to harness these specialities along with quality private entities to provide a new avenue for tourism.
Countries across continents have taken up events as form of tourism with seriousness; special packages and tours are well structured and seamlessly profiled to attract the right clientele to them. From sports to literature, from art to adventure there are festivals and events galore across the world that are being marketed and today’s India is ready to travel that extra mile to experience a music festival or a sporting experience on international soil. This gives India all the more reason to build its events based experiential tourism so that the Indian tourist can experience its national wealth. With some countries arbitrarily announcing travel advisories against India, gives us all the more reason to get our own set-up in order.
Reema Lokesh
Editor
