Tourism Industry Data Base Collection
The times of COVID are really difficult for all of us and it was quite depressing for the entire tourism industry when our government did not come out with any bailout package or even a mention for the most directly battered industry.
One of the reasons I could decipher was that we are still quite fragmented and that there is no factual data of our strength. I particularly recall two instances, first when the central government wanted to know tourism industry’s total employment and another when a few states of India wanted to understand how many are involved with tourism, we just could not come out with any factual document. The reason was pretty much the same that we just do not have any record and each sub-sector comes up with its own, fragmenting the industry and making it look small. Above all, as tour operators and travel agents we are considered an unorganised sector thus such a data is always a challenge.
I am taking up a mammoth exercise of collecting and processing factual data pan-India and then organising it to help associations project themselves better when putting forward their case in front of any ministry or for the purpose of any research pertaining to tourism anytime in future.
The immediate idea is to:-
Create a reliable data so as to ascertain the number of people involved on tourism
Convert tourism from unorganized to organized sector and get a proper industry status
Who should fill this form:-
Any Indian who is working in the industry which includes travel agents, tour operators, hotels, F&B, aviation, cruise and even support domains such as souvenir shops, photographer, tourism academicians and tourism trade bodies. This form is restricted to Indian Nationals only.
Managing Directors, Directors, Partners, Proprietors and their employees including even the office boy or drivers should undertake this.
The success of this mammoth exercise will depend on how much each of us can forward this form and insist all to fill it up.
In the first phase I am doing a simple online form, link of which may be forwarded through e-mail, SMS, WhatsApp etc. https://forms.gle/Tt1bNghxrDbtAcmGA or it be filled here. In the second phase it would be through an App (under construction).
I sincerely believe such an exercise if taken up seriously and religiously will create a great pool of information and as an industry give us a great bargaining power.
For Tourism we stand together
Prateek Hira
(Project Coordinator)