The task force would assist in providing the required permissions for travellers to land at a port in the country.
In order to boost cruise tourism along the vast coast, including that in financial capital Mumbai, Central government has instituted a task force apart from planning several incentive schemes to turn around the fate of this industry in India. The announcement was made during a maritime event held in Goregaon on Friday.
The task force will help in giving all the required permissions for landing of travellers at a port in India, in a quick manner, as the task force will have members who will be top officials from different government agencies under one platform.
"Since the tourists visiting the city in a cruise ship spend only about a day, it become even more important that least time is taken to take them out of the port to the land," said Valsa Nair, principal secretary (Tourism and culture) Maharashtra government.
The task force which has top officials from different departments, claims to be giving further push to develop infrastructure, simplifying procedures, increasing marketing and communication activities, and incentives and commissions around the cruise tourism.
Further, in order to make the cruise tourism more mainstream, the government is apparently also working on to include vacations spent on cruise ships eligible for seeking Leave Travel Concession (LTC), where the government employees get reimbursed for the travelling cost.
"We are looking at including cruise tours under the LTC scheme. Employees can go on cruise ships at government expense," joint secretary in the ministry of tourism Suman Billa said during a session on tourism at the Maritime India Summit on Friday. He said such a move will shore up the sagging numbers of tourists opting for cruise tours and will be a huge boost for the sector.
According to the figures available with government, in the past five years between FY10 and FY14, there has been a 14 per cent decline in the number of tourists opting for cruise tours in the country —a trend the government wants to reverse.
In FY10, there were 55,000 domestic and 1.35 lakh foreign tourists who boarded cruise ships, which dropped to 45,000 and 70,000, respectively, in FY14. Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma, who was among the speakers at the event, said that presently only 0.40 per cent of the tourists in India opt for cruise tours, while India's share in the global cruise tourism market is 0.68 per cent. The government is targeting to take this up to 1 per cent by 2020.
The task force which has top officials from different departments of the government, claims to be giving further push to develop infrastructure, simplifying procedures, increasing marketing and communication activities, and incentives and commissions around the cruise tourism. —With Agency inputs
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