Giving wanderlust its due: There is a need for tourism analysts to hold planners accountable

Tourism is not a fad. It is a compulsion driven by the urge to discover new places. Because we have this compulsion to venture into the unknown, we need each other. When humans travel, meet and exchange ideas, civilisation flourishes. People met and exchanged ideas at a shallow point in a river in England which they used as a crossing, a ford for their oxen. They also met at a bridge over the river Cam. Oxford and Cambridge became great centres of learning.

In India, places ending in haat or ghat indicate similar social origins. The ghat of the goddess Kali could have been the origin of the word Calcutta. British colonials chose this river port to establish their trading empire and the new wave of travellers had a major impact on our land. They, however, were interested in maintaining the status quo as far as it met their trading interests. When India got its freedom from these traders, it was time for our land to take a giant leap into the future. The erudite Jawaharlal Nehru, trained in the analytical methods of the Inns of Court (as were Sardar Patel and B R Ambedkar), realised that India suffered from the British cultivated image of a land of snake charmers. To correct this false perception, Nehru built Vigyan Bhavan and Delhi’s Ashoka Hotel. He then invited UNESCO to hold its annual meeting in Delhi. The premier cultural body of the UN was impressed. This new and realistic idea of our nation was cemented in the western world’s mind by his grandson Rajiv Gandhi. He took the festivals of India to influential world capitals. Suddenly, the outworn idea of India underwent a sea change. Our nation had shown its true multicultural, polyethnic, brilliantly radiant self.

Rajiv Gandhi had swooped down from the stuffy government office, confiscated typewriters and replaced them with computers. Sam Pitroda had worked a miracle with telecommunications. The cumbersome method of booking trunk calls had given way to direct dialling. Indian tourism was now ready to take off, but state tourism organisations did not have the finances or the know-how to promote their  myriad attractions. This was when we, by a happy coincidence, got our bbig reak.

On Sunday, August 6, 1977, our first travel column appeared on these pages. Tamil Nadu tourism was the first to invite us to join a coach tour. Our piece caught the attention of the other state tourism organisations and invitations for fam tours started to pour in.

Tourism is not a hit-or-miss occupation. There is a vast difference between selling and marketing tourism. Marketing calls for surveying the needs of the target customers and then tailoring the outreach to cater to those needs. One of us, on learning that some well-heeled families often took cruises on rice boats on the backwaters, told the tourism minister of the state “why don’t you develop the backwaters as a tourist attraction?” His scoffing reply was “madam, who will cruise on the backwaters? I have just come from Gujarat. I will open a lion safari park” He did and the poor lions suffered in the high humidity of a Kerala “sanctuary”.

That was a sad example of what has now become a repeated mistake in our tourism practices — ill-informed politicians pander to their whims, construct elaborate tourism “attractions” to boost their over-inflated egos. Their bluffs need to be called.

We know that India has the highest tourism potential of any country. That is because we have every terrain and climate zone, and a range of customs, traditions, cuisines, crafts, art forms and festivals unmatched by any other nation. We must, without hesitation, celebrate our diversity which in the final analysis is our greatest resource.

Hugh and Colleen Gantzer are travel writers