As president of MTOA what is your immediate agenda with respect to the association?
The first important goal is to bring big and small tour operators present in Maharashtra under one umbrella. There are many associations but they do not tender their service to tour operators effectively. Maharashtra Tourism will be on top priority and all members are committed to promote Maharashtra at the state, national and international levels. We will try our best to be associated with MTDC for proper marketing of Maharashtra Tourism in near future. The association is trying to develop good relationship with Indian Railways and IRCTC. Railway and aviation sectors are important to all tour operators. We will try to take various issues to these authorities to solve problems and improve our association for better tourism.
What according to you are the challenges that Maharashtra tourism is facing and are there any pointed solutions to the same?
It is very important for MTDC to be associated with private partners such as tour operators, hoteliers to promote destinations jointly in various exhibitions, roadshows and seminars. Often there is no information available or signboards on highway to promote the nearby tourist destination. It is very important to have various signboards on national highways stating the nearest tourist attractions and various service providers such as hotels, tour operator and information with history of location. For such promotion we should form local tourism bodies who can be able to handle the growth in the business. To print regional tourism brochures along with presence of private hotels and local transport, guides, restaurants etc, information. All these information should be readily available at various centres.
Infrastructure facility such as clean toilets, shower facilities at beaches, garbage collection centre, wide road and parking facilities should be on top priority.
To create employment for locals we must organise various workshops and at the same time promote them to tender various services to tourist including souvenir shops, restaurants, fast food corners, etc.
Is the PPP model in tourism in Maharashtra a success or is there more that can be achieved?
The PPP model in tourism will be successful if we implement it properly. At present all such PPP model are on papers only the selection of private partner is very crucial and all such project should be with special time bound.
Who are members of MTOA and what is the criteria for membership?
All tour operators located in Maharashtra and conducting tour Indian and international can be member of association.
What according to you should be the road map for Maharashtra tourism keeping in view its diverse tourism products?
As Maharashtra is a vast state we strongly feel that it should have various regional tourism boards which can focus specific region and start promoting based on pros and cons of Places.
We expect following regional tourism boards to start with:
- South Konkan including Sindhdurg, Ratnagiri, Raigad
- North Konkan -Thane district
- Nashik
- Pune
- Kholapur
- Aurangabad
- Nagpur
This will provide an opportunity for local entrepreneurs to start tourism ventures in their region. They will be more focused on promoting their destination and will get more political support from MP’s and MLA’s. All such regions should be part of MTDC and it should be marketed by MTDC. It is also very important that MTDC should stop selling rooms with immediate effect or do this activity in other names. This staff should not be associated with destination promotion team. MTDC’s core focus business should be promoting destination. It is high time now that all tour operators, tour agents and service providers to start selling Maharashtra with MTDC or without MTDC more proactively. There are lot of attractions in Maharashtra – beaches, temples, forts, craters and wildlife sanctuaries. We are optimistic and confident that we will do everything to promote Maharashtra in the near future.
