IATO valedictory meet : Call to attract Chinese tourists by promoting tourism of the country

Visakhapatnam: Director General of Union Ministry of Tourism Satyajeet Rajan called upon the members of Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) to attract Chinese tourists by promoting tourism of the country in social media, short movies and a few other formats in the Chinese language.

Addressing the valedictory session of the 34th IATO annual convention here on Saturday, Satyajeet Rajan said China is the biggest outbound market in the world but India had failed to attract the Chinese tourists and India wants to attract at least one per cent share of China’s total outbound tourists in the coming year and 10 per cent in the next five years.

IATO has to play a bigger and key role for the larger share of growing number of Chinese visitors by vigorously promoting the tourism in Chinese language and promote the tour facilitators, he added.

It may be recalled that in 2017 around 144 million outbound tourists were from China out of which only 2.4 lakh visited India.

There will be a huge scope to promote the mountain and forest tourism in the country but so far only five per cent of the forest and mountains in the country were allowed for the tourism.

If the forest department gives clearance for certain components in the country, eco-tourism will see growth, he opined. Referring to the safety of women tourists, Rajan said that India is a safe destination for woman travellers and he appealed to the IATO members to promote India as a haven for women visitors to attract more tourists.

IATO president Pranob Sarkar said that the 34th annual convention of IATO was a grand success and he predicted that AP state tourism will see growth by next year.

IATO will come up with a list of suggestions to AP Tourism Development Corporation to attract the foreign and domestic visitors, he added.