India working toward a complete national tourism policy

Published on : Tuesday, May 17, 2022

G Kishan Reddy, the Union Tourism and Culture Minister said that the government is working toward a complete national tourism policy for stimulating the pandemic-stricken tourism industry.

Reddy urged the industry stakeholders to come up with a road map for the growth of the cruise tourism industry and toproduce an action plan on cruise tourism.

Numerous measures would be taken to uphold river cruise tourism, which includes river front improvement, increasing the number of cruise ships to 1,000, infrastructure progress for water parks, among others. Minister Reddy said this at an event hosted by the ports, shipping and waterways ministry in association with FICCI.

During the event, around eight Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) were signed between Mumbai Port Trust, Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) and other cruise services operators with attendance of the Union Minister for ports, shipping and waterways SarbanandaSonowaltogether with Reddy.

The domestic river cruise industry is at anembryonicphase with an initial emphasis on NW 1 (Ganga) and NW 2 (Brahmaputra) servicing around 13,000 passenger movements in 2019, across 100 cruise trips, accounting for around 1 per cent of the worldwide river cruise market.

River cruise tourism became affected due to the pandemic and is now being considered for a facelift. Globally, the river cruise market saw an expansion of around 5 per cent in the last few years and is expected to grab around 37 per cent of the cruise market by 2027.