Taxes make India expensive
Calling the Indian travel industry, high-taxed, Harmit Singh, Chairman, Punjab, Haryana & Himachal Pradesh Chapter, IATO, says taxes are also eating into the industry’s growth.
In
an increasingly competitive world, all destinations compete and are committed to build an environment that facilitates tourism inflow. But according to Harmit Singh, the travel and tourism in India is a high-taxed industry, which makes India expensive as a
tourist destination.
“The most important issue related to tourism growth is taxation.
Various taxes are levied across the entire industry right from tour operators, transporters, airline industry to hotels and these include service tax, luxury tax, tax on transportation, tax on aviation turbine fuel (airline industry), and various taxes on transportation. In addition, these tax rates tend to vary across different states in the country. It is affecting the growth of the industry in India and India is losing out to other low-cost destinations. In fact, the inbound tourism segment is the one that gets the mostaffected,” said Singh.
Further, to undo the negative image of Incredible India as an expensive destination, Singh recommends that the government at state and central level should promote travel sector as industry. He also insists that the service standards in the industry should also be raised. Singh is also wary of the online industry, where there is ample scope to increase transparency.
“Use of Internet in the travel and tourism industry has increased rapidly in recent years and has emerged as one of major segments for online spends. However, some of the biggest frauds have been detected in this segment. While the online travel industry has registered robust growth, major concerns relating to security of online transactions persist. The industry needs to take measures to make the process of online bookings more secure and transparent and also needs to create awareness regarding this,” said Singh.