Foreign tourists are postponing their India holiday and there have been some cancellations as well, with trips to the North-East seeing the most adverse impact.
In view of the enormous potential of health tourism in creating jobs and raking in foreign exchange, ministries of health and tourism on Wednesday decided to get started by setting up a Web site and a database.
"The minister along with a delegation of stakeholders in tourism will meet the PM shortly to seek his intervention to give a boost to tourism sector in the country," sources close to Sahay said.
The new government, it seems, wants to change the face of the tourism sector.
China said on Tuesday that it supports the Maldives in safeguarding its sovereignty, as the first batch of Indian military personnel operating a helicopter left the island nation and was replaced by a civilian crew.
The proposal for setting up a National Tourism Promotion Board seems to have become unviable with stakeholders showing reluctance in accepting a parallel authority when Department of Tourism was doing the same task.
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Relaxation in visa regime with introduction of visa-on-arrival enabling electronic travel authorisation (ETA) for 43 countries was a high point for the Tourism Ministry in 2014.
'The private sector believes that some enablers in labour-intensive sectors like apparel, toys, tourism, and media retail, can unlock a lot of jobs.'
With this allocation of portfolios, the Sharad Pawar-led NCP has got most of the 'plum' ministries.
The government will soon give infrastructure status to the tourism sector, enabling hotels to get cheaper loans for new projects, said a senior government official.
Having failed to receive even a lukewarm response to the open tender for marketing India as a tourist destination overseas, the ministry of tourism has decided to extend the deadline by over a fortnight to mid-August.
The finance ministry on Wednesday reimposed expenditure curbs on ministries and government departments for July-September quarter. There will be no spending restrictions on the ministries of health, rural development, agriculture, MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) and railways as part of a two-pronged strategy. "The existing guidelines for expenditure control have been reviewed. "Keeping in view the evolving situation arising out of Covid-19 and anticipated cash position of the government, it is felt essential to regulate Quarterly Expenditure Plan (QEP)/Monthly Expenditure Plan (MEP) of specific ministries/departments for July-September, 2021," the Department of Economic Affairs in the finance ministry said in a notification.
In a bid to support revival of sectors hit most by the Covid-19 pandemic, Reserve Bank of India on Friday decided to open a separate liquidity window of Rs 15,000 crore for certain contact-intensive sectors like hotels and restaurants, tourism and aviation ancillary services.
As part of the guidelines of the code, the signatories are encouraged to assist the tourists.
Atishi will have a brief tenure in office as assembly elections in the national capital are due in February.
He urged China to bolster the flow of its tourists to the Maldives.
If Saudi Arabia, with just two Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, can create a huge tourism-based ecosystem beyond oil, Ayodhya is sure to become the world's hottest religious tourism site in less than a decade, predicts R Jagannathan.
Nangiohbok Rymbai, a graduate in economics who works as a daily wage labourer in Shillong, tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar what he would like to see in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget.
Thousands of yoga enthusiasts from across the world rolled out their yoga mats as they joined day-long sessions of the ancient Indian practice to commemorate the 10th International Day of Yoga on Friday.
The BJP in its policy document stated that tourism plays a key role in socio-economic progress through creation of jobs.
Foreign tourist arrivals continued to dip despite the Visit India 2009 scheme launched by the government offering several concessions to woo tourists.
'They were ahead of their times. We don't expect this from a civilisation of the first century AD.'
Government departments have been tasked with identifying major goals, which will include annual targets from the financial year 2024-2025 to 2028-2029.
There were also posts on social media claiming that some Indians are cancelling their scheduled trip to the Maldives in view of the row.
A top Maldivian government official said that during the meeting, Naseer made it clear that the remarks do not reflect the views of the Maldivian government, and reaffirmed Maldives' continued support for its neighbour, the Sun Online reported.
The avoidable stresses and strains in ties helped in one way. It showed for the entire region how a matured India handled diplomatic relations, especially with a smaller and suspicious neighbour, with practised dignity and patience, unruffled by provocations in word, deed and action, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
In a bid to attract holiday makers from abroad, India has launched a major tourism promotion campaign at the ITB Berlin, the world's largest travel trade show.
'We don't have a say which MP stays where. We prepare everything and allot according to the list we get from Parliament.'
India earned over Rs 3.22 lakh crore (Rs 3.22 trillion) worth of foreign exchange through tourism.
The fund will be used to restore and reconstruct the government tourist facilities
In the next 25 years, the Mumbai port will need five terminals because the current passenger traffic of 200,000 is expected to climb to 4 million.
Data for the first nine days of January shows that tourist arrivals from India to the Maldives has been at similar levels as last year during the same period.
The Budget is likely to expand the scope of LTA and LTC.
The ministry of tourism is less concerned about the impact of the floods on life and property, but is more focused on promoting tourism, says Swathi Seshadri. Anupam Chakravartty reports
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