OTOAI touches 407-member mark
OTOAI has registered 407 members till date. Guldeep Singh Sahni, President, OTOAI, called on its members to give suggestions on the GST.
At the fourth Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Outbound Tour Operators Association of India (OTOAI) held recently in New Delhi, Sahni announced that OTOAI has reached a milestone in nurturing outbound tour operators in the country. “We have touched 407 members till now. We are definitely very clear about one thing that we are not in the number game, but we are into the game of real outbound tour operators. We have a lot of pending applications and some we have refused. We would like to in- vite tour operators who are into the business for many years but not our members yet and also invite operators from Tier II and Tier III cities and discuss the issues that they want to be resolved.”
The association also called on its members to stand united on the issue of Goods and Services Tax (GST). Sahni said, “We are going to take the GST issue proactively so that members are educated. We are going to file all the objections that the members have regarding GST in the next 15-20 days and discuss it with the government and after that till the implementation we will be fighting out the impact of GST on outbound tourism.”
He added, “I would request all our members to come together and make suggestions regarding GST. We don’t have much time in hand for this and it is a big deal.”
The main agenda of the fourth AGM of OTOAI, apart from GST and membership building, was to present the accounts to all the members and to let them know about the association’s various activities throughout the year. Sahni informed that last year OTOAI worked closely with the partner DMCs. This year it’s going to be working closely with not only the NTO members but also the non-members.