Saloni Bhatia – New Delhi
Akshay Kumar, president, Mercury Himalayan Explorations has been leading Adventure Tour Operators Association of India (ATOAI) for the past three years, promoting adventure travel in the country. As one of the oldest operators of the industry, he believes that there has been tremendous growth in adventure tourism but major potential still lies untapped. Talking to Express TravelWorld, about his company he shared, “We have a big base of tourists coming to India for adventure travel as we offer everything from rafting, off-road expeditions, youth adventures, trekking, climbing, luxury camping to other expeditions in adventure travel. While we started as an inbound company only, we moved to providing exclusive trips for domestic travel as well.”
Commenting on the growth of adventure tourism in the country, he said, “The industry has grown more than 300 per cent in the last ten years. The adventure segment has evolved and the economy has opened up as more people are finding alternative ways to spend their holidays. Tour operators have already recognised domestic market as a very important source for adventure travel. But unfortunately the growth has been unregulated. There are little or no barriers for people to enter the sector which had led to increase in number of operators. But not everyone has trained professionals or are financially sound to run the business in an appropriate manner. Safety on adventure trips, carrying capacity in sensitive areas and availability of trained manpower is now a key concern for all of us.”
Talking about the recent achievements of the association, he informed, “We had requested the state governments and tourism ministry to include ATOAI recommended standard guidelines for all who wish to register as an adventure tour operator. The guidelines mainly include the kind of equipment that you have to use, what experience the guide should have and who are the local guides and people whom one should associate with. While MOT has already accepted these SOPs some state governments like Andhra Pradesh have also included them in their new tourism policies. Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand have expressed interest to make these guidelines mandatory for operators.”
He added, “We have already signed an MoU with Madhya Pradesh Government to start 25 training programmes in their villages. Our professionals will identify spots where adventure tourism can be promoted and then train the people skills to meet the client’s expectations. We have already done it in Uttarakhand and look forward to bring it to more states.”