Railways chugs along heritage tourism
Ashwani Lohani, Chief Administrative Officer, Indian Railways Organisation for Alternate Fuels (IROAF), says that for inbound tourism to grow in India the number of flights to the country has to be increased.
What heritage trains are currently running in India?
There are lots of heritage trains running in the country, some are in the luxury segment. The Palace on Wheels was initially a heritage train as it had many saloons of the Maharajas. Later on, those saloons were discarded and they came out with new trains. All the luxury trains which are there right now are actually new trains.
The only heritage train in India is the Fairy Queen that was started in the year 1997. It’s hauled by the oldest running steam engine in the world and it runs twice a month during October to March between Delhi and Alwar.
What do you make of inbound tourism in India? Do you think 2014 will be better than 2013?
The number of tourists who can come to India from outside India is directly dependent on the air-seats that we have got. Till date, we have not come to a stage where our flights are going empty, our flights are fairly full and the load factor is fairly high. We should look at increasing the number of flights as we now have large airports. Around 10 years back, Delhi and Mumbai had smaller airports, now the scenario has changed. We have to get more flights and build more big airports at different places.
What about the new visa rules that the government is planning to introduce for foreigners?
The new visa rules will help to ease inbound tourism and also ease the hassles of inbound tourists, but how far the numbers will increase that will depend on the number of air seats between India and the rest of the world.
How is rail tourism faring so far in India?
We are promoting heritage tourism. We have created a heritage site at Rewari and we run these heritage trains and luxury trains. IRCTC is doing a lot to promote rail tourism. But rail tourism has two meanings, one is rail tourism per se where you travel on a train and the train itself is the destination, and the second is that the train takes you to various tourist destinations, and in both aspects the railways is playing a major part.