To boost tourism, waive visa fee, reduce entry ticket rates at heritage monuments: IATO to government

NEW DELHI: Amid measures by the government to open up heritage monuments and encourage tourist footfalls, the Indian association of tour operators (IATO) has demanded that the government reduce entrance fee for foreign tourists and bring it at par with the entrance fee charged for Saarc countries.
Currently, entry tickets for foreign tourists are nearly 10-times costlier than those that are sold for Indian tourists, as well as those from Saarc or Bimstec countries.
On Friday, while IATO welcomed the government’s decision to open ASI-run monuments for tourists and extended its support to the decision to cap the number of tourists to ensure crowd control and social distancing, it said it is "deeply disappointed" that its request for reducing entrance fee for foreign tourists to levels charged from Saarc countries has been ignored by the government.
IATO president Pronab Sarkar had requested the culture ministry to reduce entrance fee for foreign nationals for entrance at ASI monuments and said they should be charged the same entrance fee that is being levied on nationals of Saarc countries till March 31, 2022.
"Countries like Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore in our neighbourhood are very proactive and have already started marketing their tourism products with extremely lucrative packages. For Indian tourism industry to compete with our neighbours and other South East Asian countries, we need to offer extremely competitive packages for which we need full support from the government," Sarkar said.
IATO also requested the tourism ministry to support the industry by temporarily waiving visa fee for all categories of foreign nationals to help promote tourism and for the local industry to recover from the shock of a three month-long lockdown induced by coronavirus.
"Any reduction in government levies will help inbound tour operators to reduce the overall package cost and will give a message globally that India is ready for welcoming the foreign tourists," Sarkar added.