Tourism industry prays for a ‘normal season’
Having borne the brunt of negative publicity in the run up to the Commonwealth Games, the tourism industry is now pitching its hope on a pleasant paradox, that of “normal tourist season” bringing in more tourists from abroad than the CWG. But it will also depend on how the Centre, the Delhi government and the industry manages to market its new found enthusiasm into attr-acting more people from outside.
Just to give an idea of how less the number of tourists have been, the tourism ministry had estimated that more than one lakh tourists would be coming to India during the Games, taking off from the fact that 96,000 tourists had visited Melbourne Games in 2006. An estimated 30,000 hotel rooms were needed and, by the last count, some 10,000 new rooms, along with thousands of guest houses and bread and breakfast schemes were supposed to make up for the shortage of the rooms. The hotel industry itself was expecting that the room rentals would go up by around 25 per cent. All that simply did not happen, thanks to the negative publicity related to security, disease and shoddy preparations. The attack on tourists from Taiwan only added to the fears of foreign tourists.
However, as the Games got underway, things began settling down and almost all the events went off without any major hiccups. The crowd, which seemed indifferent initially, began trickling into the stadia despite the glitches related to ticketing. But the tourism sector continued to reel under cancelled bookings. “Our initial assessment was that around 10,000 people would come and, now that the Games are over, the numbers could not have been more than 15,000 to 20,000. That too due to the interest shown by people neighbouring states, particularly for events like boxing and wrestling. Foreigners just did not come,” said Mr Jagdeep Rikhy, vice-president Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI).
Another executive of a travel agent body, however, said that the capital now had the infrastructure in place to attract people. “Those who will go from here are likely to spread the good word. It would not be surprising if more foreign tourists begin coming in during the ‘normal season’, which is from October to March,” said an executive from another travel body.
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