MICE on MOT radar
To leverage MICE in India, the Ministry of Tourism has constituted an exclusive advisory body and will also appoint professional consultants to study the market and chart out an action plan.
MICE segment of travel is the fastest growing and high yielding segment of tourism which can act as a means to tide over the seasonality of the tourism industry, feels Vinod Zutshi, Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India. “India’s efforts in attracting big conventions to its shores need to be re-imagined, moving away from the current model of supporting integrated operators to generate business to more reserved oriented framework. In addition, pre-and post-leisure activities need to be leveraged as a way of increasing the value of MICE tourism,” he says. Initiatives
The government offers various revenue generating schemes to help fund the bidding process for large conventions. In the upcoming budget, MOT will propose the constitution of a corpus fund which would help bring in big international conferences into India, informed Zutshi. “We have a Viability Gap Funding Scheme which allows us to grant 25 per cent of funding of the complete amount up to ` 50 crore in case of a project. It is unfortunate that not a single request was made for this grant in my tenure of two years. The private stakeholders have to realise that such schemes can be availed,” says Zutshi.
He points out that MOT has sanctioned a huge amount in Khajuraho to build a convention centre. A similar project has been sanctioned in Bodh Gaya which is planned to be even bigger than Khajuraho and two projects in Jammu and Kashmir to link eco-tourism, leisure tourism with conventions. MOT is also supporting Fam trips for international conference planners and trying to rationalise business visas. Way forward
An exclusive advisory body will be constituted for MICE tourism with Secretary Tourism as Chairperson. The state governments, public and private sector stakeholders, associations and ICPB will all work in tandem with this advisory body. It will be a neutral body, responsible to chart out ways to push MICE travel to India, the Tourism Secretary informs.
The ministry will also appoint professional consultants who will conduct studies on the MICE market, chart out a roadmap for 5-10 years, define roles of the stakeholders and provide recommendations which will be implemented as a strategy/ action plan, he adds. India @WTM
India is a partner country at WTM this year. "We are going to have a beautiful pavilion, buzzing with different events and many states which will be joining us. Being the partner country, we have certain additional facilities and events allotted to us. We are trying to make the best use of it," says Zutshi. There will be a session on Incredible India as well. Gujarat Tourism wants to make the Rann Utsav an international event, and they are interested in taking a slot to promote that. "We would use this platform to promote all such important events and even the states would make their presentations. There will be a separate hall, which will be used for events, which is generally not available. In addition, we will be representing ourselves at the UNWTO and WTM roundtable conferences, which will put us on the world platform. Tourism Ministers and even Chief Ministers of many Indian states are likely to attend this year’s WTM," he adds.