Sejoe Jose

Director, Marvel Tours

The current booking trends are positive, though cannot be compared to the trends pre-COVID times. The only way more positive trends might follow if the government acts on the below two points: Indians should be allowed to travel freely within India, thus encouraging domestic tourism and giving hope to the millions of people depending on tourism,. Secondly, the government should announce a date in advance, even if it is in Dec 2020 or Jan 2021 to open international borders, thus helping the FTO to start promoting India from that date. Though, I am not stating we will reach pre-COVID days but we will start rolling the trend on a more positive note.

Revenge Tourism is done by the vivid experimental traveller and they in turn start posting photos of their trip on social media. This will give a very positive image for India and its states. This will definitely help and has the potential to boost tourism initially.

The new trends and strategy in tourism due to the pandemic is that we are creating equal opportunity for old and new operators as Tourism is going to start fresh. At Marvel Tours, we are planning an online system which is meant for B2B (as I see, many new operators opening new shops) which will help these operators to get all data required so they do not have to do the full exercise again of contracting, etc.

During this period of lockdown, Mother Nature rebooted to an extent that it has reduced pollution level and the environment looks refreshed. The silver lining from the pandemic is we have to learn to maintain less pollution and reduce waste and implement it as a critical criterion for tourism infrastructures operated by hotels/tour operators and all in the industry. The government should be stricter on factories and all individuals to ensure keep our nature clean. This will help tourists and more important locals to live healthily and avoid these pandemics again.