How will the recent Tourism Awareness Programme help tourism in this country?
Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) has launched this programme for the entire region. But we are trying to promote India in every possible way. Tourism is said to be the biggest industry in the next millennium. How will India benefit? In many ways. More people are travelling which means infrastructure will have to be built to take care of that. One big market that India can focus on is people of Indian origin abroad. Everyone wants to know about their heritage and roots. If this market is focused on, there will be an automatic boost. Do you agree that India has been unable to capitalise on its strengths? One of the great strengths has been the golden triangle. But India hasn’t promoted its beaches. You have to be like Disneyland. It was estimated that people would come to the place thrice in their lifetime. On an average, people visit it five times. Should the tourism bodies here be brought under one umbrella? One of the good things is that we work with the private and public secto
