India’s Travel Sector Has Same Old Hopes From a New Budget
Photo Credit: Aerial view of Anjuna area in Goa, India. Pexels / Manideep Karne
Skift Take
India has the demand, albeit from within, to help tourism meet its potential. All it needs now are the policy reforms that the industry has been seeking for decades.
With India’s Union Budget announcement less than a week away, leaders from the travel sector have expressed hopes for measures to boost the industry. The expectations are the same as they have been for years now – infrastructure status for hotels, simpler Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, policy support for destination development, better planning for existing infrastructure, and support for digital platforms, to name a few.
Among the hospitality industry, the call for infrastructure status has been a long-standing demand. In last year’s budget, India had focused on the development of 50 destinations. As part of that, it said that hotels in these destinations would have access to loans on easier terms and eligibility to borrow from the government’s India Infrastructure Financing Company (IIFCL).
This was a welcome move and one that the industry agrees with. But that alone is not enough.
“With supply growth continuing to lag demand, p
