The Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) is scheduled to hold its 34th IATO Annual Convention in the city of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh from September 6 – 9, 2018.
The convention theme is Mission ’20 Million Tourists – Challenges & Possibilities’. The inauguration of the convention is on September 6, 2018 at 4.30 pm at Novotel Visakhapatnam. N. Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh has given his consent to be the chief guest. KJ Alphons, minister of state (IC) for Tourism, Government of India and Rashmi Verma, secretary (Tourism) have also consented to grace the inaugural function.
Speaking about the convention Pronab Sarkar, president, IATO, said, “This year’s convention theme is inspired by the challenges our industry is facing to meet the target of 20 million tourists by 2020, set up by our ministry. We are also going to address issues like women safety and the perception of brand India in the tourism space in the global scenario. We are not happy about how a media house has highlighted India as an unsafe travel destination for women, which is rather discouraging. We need to seriously address this kind of publicity. Apart from this, we are aiming to take up few other issues that could be a challenge to bring in the kind of quality tourists we are expecting. We are hoping to get some solutions for a positive inbound tourism business scene in the future.”