Time for tourism industry to redefine itself: FAITH chairman Nakul Anand
Domestic tourism will help the sector get back into shape as more people will look to take ‘revenge holidays’ after being in the lock-down phase for so long, President of The Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism and Hospitality (FAITH) Nakul Anand has said.
He said travel would be essential as the entire population has been staying inside and going out to some place within drivable distance may be one of the things they may want do.
“Every disaster comes with seeds of opportunity. We must keep one eye on the microscope and one on the telescope, as the opportunities that come our way may be perishable. What is so very important is that once the crisis gets over there will be a new world order,” he said in an interview to CNBC-TV18.
“Remember, India has 10.5 million inbound tourists and nearly 25-26 million outbound tourists. This outbound group is not going to go out for a while, and that involves MICE conferences, destination weddings etc and they will have to adapt to the new social distancing norms. But also remember that India’s business travel is a very large sector. About 600 million sq.ft of commercial complex is what India has, and last year itself we added 45 million, growing by 40% over the previous year. This is a very high rate of absorption. So I think the MICE and conference segments would come back, even if some have switched to videoconferences etc,” he told the television channel.
Anand said the government should put together a task force that will look at new opportunities. “We have assets like Yoga and Ayurveda. We should look to redefine the trajectory of the tourism sector so that we move from L’ toV’ shaped recovery very quickly.
Talking about the impact that the coronavirus crisis can have on the sector he said, “We are talking of 53,0000 travel agents, 1.50 lakh tour operators including inbound, outbound and domestic ones, 15,000 adventure tour operators, 53,000 hotels, 5 lakh restaurants of which 95% of them are in MSME category. The travel and tourism industry jointly represent or constitute 10% of the GDP. My view is that pandemic will cost the industry Rs 5 lakh crores in revenue and approximately anything between 3.5-4 crore jobs,” he told CNBC-TV18.
“I think in phase-1, hotel business and travel and tourism industry are going to survive only by domestic tourism. We are looking to government to help us with tax breaks etc. But the lifeline is cash flow. Only if we survive can we revive. The industry needs to redefine itself. We have told the government that we are ready to work jointly with them. Travel will come back except that it’s not going to come from long haul countries. People are not going to travel for reasons that we believe that they were traveling so far. They will travel for completely different reasons. I think there is a great opportunity for us to redefine Incredible India,” he added.