Optimism is in the air

The month of November has indeed been all about meetings and greetings for the travel industry. WTM 2014 in London, the leading global event for the travel industry, has reflected the enthusiasm and helped put business into perspective. With the global economy expected to recover in the years to come, the world’s travel industry has ended 2014 confident of good tourism business. It seems that after a recent period of relatively sluggish growth, especially in many recession-hit countries, the travel industry is now looking up. There has been an impressive four per cent increase in attendees with the event opening its doors to almost 52,000 delegates over the four days. The delegate increase makes it the largest trade-only WTM event and is the fifth consecutive year of growth. Other visitor group increases include trade visitors (six per cent), international media (two per cent) and exhibitor personnel (two per cent) compared to WTM 2013. Furthermore, overall visits to WTM are fast-approaching the 100,000 mark, with WTM 2014 having 98,426 visits.

The optimism and the desire to conduct business at WTM were apparent at the India Pavilion as well. The networking opportunities to help stakeholders learn and unlearn simultaneously was commendable.

In the home turf, the industry is on a new high. There have been some interesting developments here. With a new Tourism Minister, Dr. Mahesh Sharma; Tourism Secretary, Dr. Lalit Panwar; Tourism Joint Secretary, Suman Billa; the Ministry of Tourism is all geared up to deliver tourismrelated products and services. We welcome the new team. We hope the industry and government join hands to aggressively tap the potential of tourism in our country.

The season would surely be a barometer to measure how these measures are really working out in our favour.