Eight craft villages have been taken under the ‘Linking Textile with Tourism’ programme, benefitting around 1,000 artisans to promote craft and tourism at a single location, said Ministry of Textiles. Under the programme, major tourist places are being linked with handicraft clusters and infrastructure supports combined with soft interventions.

A successful sales mission was organized by the Oman Tourism India Office through an interactive session with more than 40 prominent outbound travel operators in Chandigarh on July 5 and Bengaluru on July 7. To showcase their new products to the travel industry, representatives from Oman Air attended the event as well. The objective of the roadshows was to educate key travel operators about the destination offerings of Oman for Indian travellers who are interested in traveling in the leisure and luxury segments. The trade stakeholders were surprised to learn about the exquisite culture, heritage, and adventure offers of Oman, which led to the session’s success and effectiveness as an educational one. Most importantly, they promised to promote and market Oman to their clients.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has stated that Taj Mahal remains the highest revenue-generating monument in India. Despite the pandemic, resulting in travel restrictions with limited number of visitors allowed inside the monument, Taj Mahal sold tickets amounting to a total of Rs 132 crore. In 2019-2020, the total revenue received from Taj Mahal was Rs 97.5 crore. In 2021-22, it was Rs 26.61 crore. ASI noted that 24 per cent of the total revenue has been generated by the Taj Mahal alone. 

According to the WTTC Annual Research INDIA, the domestic visitor’s spend in India in 2021 was close to 2019 levels. The figures revealed that it was $155.8 billion in 2019 and 151.1 billion in 2021. In 2020, however, it was only $97 billion. 

The Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture recently presented a report titled ‘Role of Indian Missions Globally for the growth of Tourism in India’ in the Rajya Sabha, where it mentioned that Ministry of Home Affairs is developing e-VISA mobile application, which can be expedited. 

New Zealand’s border fully reopens from August 1. To highlight details on what to expect while travelling to the country, TNZ’s webinar today at 11 am which will also be attended by key govt agencies such as NZ Customs Service & Biosecurity New Zealand. Write to jaspreet.kaur@ddppl.com or 9650196532 to register. 

With the tourist sector recovering following lifting of COVID-19 restrictions by many countries, Oman recorded 794,000 inbound travellers till the end of the end of May 2022. As many as 111,883 Indian travelers visited Oman till the end of May 2022 as compared to 24,881 recorded in April this year. According to the tourism indicators for May 2022 released by National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), while 1.5 million travelers departed Oman by the end of May 2022, the nation received 794,000 travellers from GCC nations, India, Yemen, Germany, and United Kingdom by the end of May 2022.  The top five nationalities arriving into Oman out of the total inbound included GCC nations, India, Yemen, Pakistan and Germany and the number of travelers recorded were 349,986; 111,883; 28,495; 23,603, and 23,289, respectively. As many as 216,000 visitors arrived in Oman in the month of May 2022 alone as compared 6,036 in May 2021. The total number of inbound visitors increased by over 35 times as compared to the inbound visitors in May 2021.  The number of Omanis departing the country during the month of May 2022 was registered at 184,000 compared to 135, 969 recorded in the same month of the previous year. Many travelers could not leave Oman following strict COVID-19 restrictions.  While this was so, the percentage of Gulf visitors increased by 54.5 per cent out of the total inbound visitors during May 2022. As many as 216,000 visitors arrived in Oman during the month of May 2022 as against 6,036 in May 2021.  Meanwhile, according to the survey, three to five-star hotels generated a revenue of OMR 73 million from 3-5 star hotels by the end …

To satisfy the current and projected rise in demand for commercial air travel, Indian airlines have placed large orders for aircraft. The nation’s airplane fleet is projected to quadruple in size to approximately 2500 airplanes by 2038 and India to become the third largest aviation market in the world by 2024. 

Travel Agents Federation of India’s eastern region chairman Anil Punjabi said with a lot of bookings and enquiries from people from various countries and Indian states, tourist arrivals to Kolkata and other parts of the state will be at an “all-time high” this time during Durga Puja. 

Continuing with its series of exclusive webinars to help the travel trade discover Spain, the Tourism Office of Spain – Mumbai, along with Andalucia Tourism, will conduct an exclusive one-hour webinar titled ‘Self Drive in Andalucia’ on Saturday, July 23 at 3 pm IST. Sign up today for the Spain Specialist Program (SSP) and register now to attend the webinar. The webinar will conclude with an exciting quiz on the destination and the winner will leave with a 7-day trip to Andalucia in November 2022. For more information, write to jaspreet.kaur@ddppl.com or 9650196532.