Draft strategy released
Panaji: The draft national strategy for cruise tourism, which was released in the state on Wednesday during the G20 Tourism Working Group meeting, aims at making India the preferred cruising nation for deep sea cruises, coastal cruises, river cruises and yacht cruises, leveraging the natural, historical and cultural advantages of India and the country’s tourism travel and hospitality skills.
The draft document states that the mission is to accelerate the growth of India’s maritime sector for cruises, coastal and river assets such as islands, lighthouses, sea fronts and river front development.
It also aims to create port and terminal-led development for sea, coastal and river cruises built around and embedded into natural, historical and cultural advantages of India and the country’s tourism travel and hospitality skills.
The draft also speaks about creating a single-window approach and ease of doing business for cruise tourism, driven and coordinated through a nodal point that will enable continuity in policies and implementation.
According to the draft document, the stakeholders for cruise tourism include the ministry of ports, shipping and waterways, port authorities, inland waterways authority of India, immigration, state governments, department of revenue and customs, shipbuilders, cruise operators, general sales agents, travel agents and tour operators, shipping agents, industry associations and local tourism and destination authorities and organisations.
Keeping in consideration the importance of and the structure of cruise tourism for India, strategic pillars have been identified which include infrastructure and circuit enablement, market development, ease of doing business for cruise tourism, integrated tourism around cruise terminals, fiscal support, investment facilitation for cruise tourism and institutional structure and governance.
The draft states that India has significant capabilities in cruise tourism for the coastal and river sectors. This is due to the presence of 12 major and 200 minor ports along the 75,000 km-long coastline across the west and east coasts and a network of more than 20,000 km-long navigable 110 waterways connecting around 400 rivers.
India has an enormous coastline of 75,000 km across nine states, two Union territories and two island territories with almost 40% of the population living in these geographies. These coastline states and territories of India have an estimated more than 200 ports and unparalleled natural, cultural, religious, historic and heritage tourism assets.
Earlier, asserting the ethos of ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited the G20 delegates to visit India during the 2024 general elections and witness the “festival of democracy” in all its diversity.
A recorded message from Modi was played at the inaugural session of the G20 tourism ministerial meeting in which he underlined that “terrorism divides, but tourism unites”.
The Prime Minister expressed confidence that the deliberations and the ‘Goa Roadmap’ would “multiply the collective efforts to realise tourism’s transformative power”.
A Goa Roadmap and Action Plan, a ministerial communique endorsing it, would be issued at the end of the G20 ministerial on Thursday.