Arvind Singh, Secretary, Tourism, has said that at international travel fairs, every country has significant representation of hotels and airlines at their stalls. “However, India only has tour operators and travel agents. There is hardly any presence of hotels and airlines. Going ahead, we need to ramp that up because we have world class airlines and hotels,” he said.

Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister of Civil Aviation, has said that tourism and civil aviation are two sides of the same coin. “These two sectors are conjoined twins in terms of seeing development of each other’s sector,” he claimed.

G Kishan Reddy, Minister of Tourism and Culture has said that the government of India has always felt that the promotion of India’s tourism will only be effective when different Ministries at the Union level and States work in cohesion by combining their domain expertise.

Campbell Wilson, CEO, Air India, has shared that Air India has completed one year of returning to the TATA Group. An infographic on the achievements in the last year, which claims that the airline’s average daily revenue has doubled in the last one year.

J K Mohanty, Chairman – HRAO & IATO Eastern Region, has said, “The budget should provide adequate resources for the development of tourism infrastructure in the country. Further, the hospitality sector had been demanding infrastructure status for last 10 years but govt has not paid any attention to this.”

Madhavan Menon, Chairman and Managing Director, Thomas Cook India, has said, “India’s travel business will recover stronger than before in 2023 on the back of high domestic travel demand, recovery in business travel and India’s hosting of the G20 summit.”

Sudeep Jain, Managing Director, South West Asia, IHG, has said, “In Q2, 2022, our total revenue in India exceeded 2019 levels where occupancy levels jumped from 60% in Q1 to close to 75% in Q2 of 2022, demonstrating a 26% jump YoY for H1 of 2022, which was 2% ahead of 2019 levels.”

Sunaina Mehta, Joint director, Tourism, J&K, has said that, “We are looking forward that more investments take place as we are in the process of  outsourcing the assets and we look forward that better players come forward for PPP, so that some better avenues are also generated for earning livelihood for the youth of J&K and at the same time explore the potential at various destinations.”

Saurabh Vijay, Principal Secretary, Tourism & Cultural Affairs, Maharashtra, speaking at the Mumbai Roadshow for GTIS 2023, has said, “We have identified properties that can be developed in PPP mode. These properties will be showcased at the Global Tourism Investment Summit,” he added.

Meera Charnalia – Sr. Vice President and Head – MICE, Thomas Cook (India) Limited, has claimed, “We witnessed over 100% recovery vs our pre-pandemic levels for MICE sector with our robust forward pipeline reflecting a strong and growing appetite for MICE travel in 2023 and beyond.”