Category Archives: MOT

Harpreet Singh (IPoS), Joint Secretary, Ministry of Development of North-Eastern Region (DONER), mentioned that tourism continues to be an important sector for the Indian economy and majority of the infrastructure development projects undertaken by the Government are towards the tourism sector. He added that the 8 states of NER comprising 8% of the area of the country and close to 4% of the population has huge potential for tourism but it still has only 0.3% share of domestic tourists and 0.93% share of the foreign tourists. There holds immense potential which needs to be tapped in the NE region through effective infrastructure development and better connectivity, added Singh.

Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia hailed the rapid uptick in the usage of the DigiYatra app at Varanasi airport, saying that it had improved the ease of travel considerably. The DigiYatra facility will allow passengers to link their travel and identity documents and create a facial scan beforehand, which will do away with the need for them to produce boarding passes or identity cards when they arrive at an airport, drop their baggage, or proceed for boarding. Instead, passengers will need to show their face to a facial recognition camera to authenticate themselves.

Arvind Singh, Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, mentioned that the recovery of India’s tourism post Covid can be witnessed through the whooping number of tourists of approximately 20 lakhs, who visited Jammu & Kashmir till October 2022. “As most of the countries of Asia Pacific opened up a little late post Covid as a preventive measure, we are still going slow on global tourists coming into India, affecting our inbound numbers but we have been able to revive strongly due to our rapid vaccination drive and prompt Government action for opening up to the globe attracting foreign tourists,” he said.

Arvind Singh, Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, has said that the Mission LiFE by Govt has lot of relevance for travel & tourism. “All the stakeholders can contribute to mission life by adopting responsible tourism practices,” he added.

Rakesh Verma, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, has shared that the MOT has participated in WTM London and now they are planning to participate in Fitur and ITB Berlin. “In both the events, we will participate along with the industry and the states,” he added.

According to an official order, those Canadian passport-holders who wish to visit India for tourism, business, medical or conference purposes, may apply for eVisa at https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/tvoa.html and follow instructions contained therein. Canadian passport-holders seeking to travel to India for any purpose, not qualifying for eVisa, may apply for paper visa at https://www.bisindia-canada.com/. The same process is applicable to Laissez-passer travel document holders. Those who have applied for visa through various BLS Centres in Canada are advised to wait for issuance of the same. All such applications will be processed on priority. Those applicants who wish to withdraw their respective visa applications may do so by visiting the website https://www.bisindia-canada.com/ and choosing the option for Application Withdrawal’. Those who have booked appointments to apply for tourist, business, medical or conference visa at BLS Centres in Canada and would, now, like to apply for eVisa instead, are requested to vacate/cancel their appointment siots so that the same becomes available to others seeking visa/consular services.

Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh, has revealed, that usually one crore tourist used to come in a year in Varanasi, but this year, the destination received one crore tourists in one single month during monsoon.”

According to an official order, Ministry of Tourism has decided to wind up all the overseas India Tourism offices before 31 March 2023. In line with this, all the officers posted in the ITOs overseas have been requested to take necessary action and submit an action taken report.

Arvind Singh, Secretary, Tourism, has said that inbound tourism is projected to recover faster in 2023. “There is a strong interest of the hospitality industry to invest in the North-East and Southern islands which is an encouraging sign,” he said.

In a reply to a question in Rajya Sabha, G Kishan Reddy, Union Minister of Tourism, shared that domestic tourist visits in India fell from 2.32 billion in 2019, to 677 million in 2021, owing to the impact of the pandemic.