Create National Heritage Tourism & Hospitality Policy of India: H.H. Maharaja Gajsingh II, Jodhpur

India is known for its rich culture and heritage that embraces all religions, traditions and customs. Spread out across the country, the Indian heritage acts as tourism assets in terms of palaces, forts, museums, monuments, historical sites, flora, fauna, music, dance, food, and so on.

India is ranked globally as being the ninth-best in terms of its cultural assets by the tourism global competitiveness of the World Economic Forum.  

To create a special focus on Indian heritage, H.H. Maharaja Gajsingh II of Jodhpur, who is the President of Indian Heritage Hotels Associations (IHHA), highlighted that Heritage Tourism Policy should be standardised. He said, “Each state’s heritage tourism policy should become standardised and become the national Heritage Tourism & Hospitality Policy of India by taking the best examples from the states which have formulated them such as Rajasthan, MP, Punjab, Karnataka, Maharashtra and so on.”

He also expressed that heritage hotels bring our history back to life with an enormous amount of efforts to restore and conserve them while creating unique hospitality experiences. “Heritage civic structures are extremely delicate to maintain and thus our depreciation policies, property & other municipal taxes need to be accommodative & supportive to help their owners maintain them commercially,” he added.

Mentioning the government’s significant drive through the PPP model of ‘Adopt a Heritage and Iconic monuments’, the IHHA president optimistically expressed, “We look forward to a goal of having at least 5 PPP adopt a heritage monuments in each state each year and at least one iconic monument in each state each year. Our PPP contractual documentation for the same should be made robust enough to facilitate that which will also revive our economy through private capital infusion and will create critical jobs.”

“But before that revival, we also need to survive today. Thus each state should waive off all property cesses, fixed electrical and water rates excise & SGST for the year for heritage tourism properties and wherever they have been paid they should be offered as credit,” he further demanded.

Concluding his address at the India Tourism Vision Day organised by Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism & Hospitality (FAITH) – the policy federation of all the national associations representing the complete tourism, travel and hospitality industry of India (ADTOI, ATOAI, FHRAI, HAI, IATO, ICPB, IHHA, ITTA, TAAI, TAFI), H.H. Maharaja Gajsingh II of Jodhpur said that he looks forward to working with all state governments and with the central government to enhance heritage tourism of India.