How can the industry think waiver of the $35 visa fee will lure more tourists?
If there was a prize for the most asinine and vacuous proposal, there is no doubt that recipient would be the hotel associations and tour operators of India. In the face of the tourist slowdown for the current tourist season due to the global financial crisis, these worthies, exhibiting a total lack of imagination, have come up with a great solution. The remedy for them is the waiver of visa fee for foreign travelers. And what is the visa fee they are talking about, a mere $35! It is indeed most laughable that any tourist would decide to come to India to avail of a discount of this measly amount! What is more shocking is that the Secretary, Tourism considers this proposal worthy of being taken up with the Ministry of External Affairs! This kind of pathetic thinking is a revelation of why India does not get its due share of tourists despite the fact that it has so much to offer to them that they should come in droves not once but again and again.
It has been my experience as a diplomat abroad that for the Department of Tourism and the tourism industry in India, the Ministry of External Affairs and Indian Embassies have always been, and continue to be, the whipping boy for their failure to put in imaginative policies and plans to attract mass tourism into India. For them the alleged difficulties in getting visas for India or the so-called cumbersome visa procedures have been the sole reasons that hinder the flow of tourists to India. A comparative study of visa procedures of various countries which are top tourist destinations in the world would show that Indian visa regulations are relatively more tourist-friendly than most countries. Anyway, considering the deteriorating international security environment, every country has to scrutinize visa application carefully to ensure that undesirable elements do not enter its territory.
A realistic study of why India’s share of world tourist inflows is relatively so low would show that the problem does not lie in the visa procedures or visa fees. The problems are more at home and the failure of the Tourism Department and the tourist industry as a whole to take a holistic view of the situation from the viewpoint of a foreign tourist. I suspect that most of those who are in this business are themselves aware of it but do not have the imagination or the will to do something about it and, like ostriches with heads in the sand, are content to lay the blame on the Ministry of External Affairs and the Embassies. In fact, these two institutions have really very little role to play in this except publicizing India as a tourist destination which they do well in good measure.
The problems a foreign tourist faces are manifold and they need to be tackled on a war footing if India has to be become a competitive force in the world tourist market.
As a first step, all those involved in this business need to pay more attention to the tourism advisories put out by the Embassies of the target countries. Admittedly these suffer from some inane generalities but they give a fair idea of how foreigners perceive India as a tourist destination because these are based on feedbacks which the embassies and governments receive from their citizens. Instead of attempting to rectify the situation, the Department of Tourism’s response has been to plead to the respective Embassies to modify the critical aspects of their advisories.
The problems which tourists face in India could be broadly classified into three areas: underdeveloped and weak infrastructure; general state of hygiene and cleanliness, and the general attitude towards tourists.
The issue about level of tourist infrastructure is well known but very little is being done about it. Take our airports and railway stations. Indian airports are pathetic in terms of design and comfort and even the latest attempts at modernization have not achieved much. At most they give the appearance of glorified bus stops as compared to airports in the region. Railway stations, by and large, retain that old Raj look but I guess are filthier and dirtier than before.
Taxi services are substandard and exploitative. The taxis are by and large in a rundown state and even smelly. The manners of taxi drivers are appalling. Why cannot the administration make it mandatory for taxi owners to train their drivers, provide them uniforms and make them presentable. From the time China was awarded the Olympic Games, the Chinese Government embarked on a programme of training Chinese taxi drivers so that they would present a friendly face to tourists. The impending Commonwealth Games in Delhi requires such a programme in Delhi to start with.
The hotel infrastructure is underdeveloped and the range of hotels is limited. Either there are five-star hotels with fancy tariffs beyond the pocket of most tourists or one- or two-star hotels with such standards that they would not qualify to be called hotels in many countries. This is changing but the pace is slow and there is a crying need for good three-star hotels with clean bathrooms and bedsheets.
Most first-time tourists are greatly put off by the general standards of cleanliness of our cities and towns. After 60 years of independence, we still have not learned how to dispose of garbage or provide proper sewage facilities or build good roads. I remember very clearly a conversation I had with an official of PATA from Australia who very hesitatingly asked me, “Why is it that all India’s major cities and towns give a general appearance of being in an unfinished state?”
Most of all, we need to change our attitude towards foreign tourists. Despite mouthing ad nauseum “Atithi devo bhavo”, most of those involved in the tourism business see the foreign tourist as an object of exploitation. One constantly hears from foreign visitors that they were forever being cheated or overcharged. My son, who was on an official trip to India, once hired a taxi from the Taj Lands End to go to Taj Mahal hotel in Colaba. The hotel charged him a whopping Rs 2000 for the trip! For that amount he could have hired a taxi for about four days. Unless there is a fundamental change in the mental attitude of the tourist industry along its entire food chain to regard a foreign tourist as a guest and a visitor who brings wealth to the country and needs to be treated as such, India will have only a determined and committed minority who are fascinated by India’s mystery, philosophy, culture and history and who can see beyond and through the dirt and filth.
To be a mass tourism destination like Spain or France, India has a long way to go and cheap sops like waiving visa fees, free travel and hospitality to those visiting India the third time is only tinkering with the problem. And certainly, tax payers should not foot the bill for such sops. It is for the industry to cut their cloth according to the needs of the time by reducing tariffs.
The present world economic situation is an opportunity for the industry and the Department of Tourism to introspect on how to bring about a fundamental change in the tourism industry rather than tinkering with impractical and meaningless short-term solutions. Expensive advertising campaigns like ‘Incredible India’ can only succeed when the expectations raised are matched by conditions on the ground.
