National Digital Tourism Mission

National Digital Tourism Mission: Relevance

• GS 3: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment.

Tourism in India: Context

• Recently, Ministry of Tourism has invited final comments from the stakeholders on draft report for setting up of National Digital Tourism Mission.

राष्ट्रीय डिजिटल पर्यटन मिशन

National Digital Tourism Mission: Key points

• Ministry of Tourism had constituted an inter-ministerial task force for National Digital Tourism Mission to define the context, mission, vision, objectives, and overall scope of the National Digital Tourism Mission.
• The Task Force has prepared a draft report on proposed National Digital Tourism Mission, which inter-alia lays down domain and technology principles, standards, digital stack, governance structure and plan for implementation of the envisaged National Digital Tourism Mission.
• The vision of National Digital Tourism Mission is to bridge the existing information gap amongst different stakeholders of tourism ecosystem through a digital highway.
• The National Digital Tourism Mission envisages to achieve the objective of harnessing the full potential of digitization in tourism sector by facilitating exchange of information and services in tourism sector.

Challenges to Indian tourism

• Lack of formalisation: It leads to gaps in credit worthiness, handle currency exchange fluctuations, lack of infrastructure.
• Compliance overhead: Absence of single window, labour compliances etc.
• Unsteady flow: Seasonal dependence, COVID, security issues.
• Technology upgradation: Lack of internet bookability in India, lack of tourism products, lack of social media promotion campaigns.
• Employable manpower: Lack of professional approach, low productivity, multi-lingual translators etc.
• Transport: Lack of secure, fast and quality transport, unified ticket options etc.

Tourism in India: Steps by the government

• Incredible India Website and Mobile App: A multi-lingual ‘Incredible India’ website and mobile application assist international and domestic tourists to access information about various tourism destinations and attractions in the country.
• National Integrated Database of Hospitality Industry (NIDHI): NIDHI has been established for registration and classification of tourism service providers namely Tour Operators, Hotels and other Tourism Service Providers.
• Swadesh and PRASHAD Schemes: Two flagship schemes has been launched specifically to boost tourism sector in India.
• During COVID, the Ministry has developed an initiative called SAATHI (System for Assessment, Awareness & Training for Hospitality Industry), for effective implementation of Guidelines/SOPs issued with reference to COVID 19 and beyond for safe operations of Hotels, Restaurants, B&Bs and other units.

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