‘Do not discriminate against foreigners’
NEWDELHI:AFTER an Udaipur hotel denied tourists from Italy, South Korea, and Iran with valid visas rooms due to fear of coronavirus, the Union tourism ministry stepped in and asked four state governments to ensure no discrimination against foreign travellers.
Ministry officials said that a meeting is also slated in the Prime Minister’s Office on Saturday to discuss the response of the tourism industry amid fears of the spread of Covid-19.
India’s Director General of Tourism, Meenakshi Sharma said the ministry has written to states after some instances of rooms being refused to tourists came to its notice. “We came across four instances and wrote to the chief secretaries of four states, asking them to ensure strict compliance with orders and not discriminate against travellers,” said Sharma.
Ministry officials said Rajasthan, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh are among the states which have received letters from the Centre. HT couldn’t establish the identity of the fourth state.
Pronob Sarkar, president of the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO), India’s apex body of tour operators said that several such cases have come to the body’s notice.
He added that in hotels in Delhi, too, save for the high-end five star ones, foreign tourists are being turned away. “Do you think these tourists will come back after they face such harassment?” said Sarkar.
In its advisory, the health ministry has suspended visas to tourists from Italy, Iran, South Korea, Japan and China.
The scare is prompted by 14 Italian tourists testing positive for coronavirus on Wednesday; they were first quarantined at a Indo-tibetan Police Force camp, and then shifted to the Medanta Hospital.