Astro Tourism, Sports Tourism And Religious & Spiritual Tourism Are Changing The Face Of Tourism Industry In India

The 1st India BW Businessworld Tourism Summit 2018 was held at The Lalit in New Delhi today. BW Businessworld’s Chairman and CEO, Dr. Annurag Batra welcomed all the guests formally and also announced that after the summit, BW Businessworld is going to Relaunch Rail Bandhu (The Onboard Magazine of Indian Railways). BW will now be publishing the monthly railway magazine.  

Speaking about the challenges in acquiring Rail Bandhu, Dr. Batra said that, “The distribution of Rail Bandhu is a challenge but now along with RK Group’s collaboration and BW’s better editorial output, we will make a difference.” Dr. Batra also said that India can create more jobs and grow our GDP exponentially, if we correctly plan and organize our tourism sector.

“If we are going to tap our domestic tourism only that will be enough because we have a rich legacy of ancient heritage and it needs to be captured in the right direction, he further added. 

While summarizing, he did speak about the travel tech start-ups which he opined can also determine the future course of travel. 

Following to the inaugural speech, Avijit Arya, founder of Internet Moghuls gave the keynote address on Tourism: The X factor & GDP Growth Driver, he said that tourism is a growing market in India and people who dare to think differently will only be surviving. Arya spoke about the entrepreneurship skills that he had even when internet penetrations in India (late 90s) was abysmally low. Therefore, he mentioned that with the advent of the 4th industrial revolution, we (Indians) can do wonders in the business of tourism.

Arya told the audience that more than half of the world’s population is under the age of 30 and Around 90% of those young people live in countries that are developing and most haven’t travelled. He too said that more people than ever in human history can access travel globally. While speaking about the future of tourism, he said that along with conventional tourism, emerging forms of tourism like Astro Tourism, Sports Tourism and Religious & Spiritual Tourism are changing the face of this industry.