Turn India's Positives Into Competitive Advantage

I DO BELIEVE that no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come. We live in exciting times and India's time is now. History will record these as the golden years of Indian tourism. But numbers tell a different story. India's share of the world tourism pie is a minuscule 0.7 per cent. With 6.8 million international visitor arrivals in 2013 (a number that is likely to rise by 7.8 per cent when the 2014 figures are finally in), India is ranked No. 10 in Asia and No. 65 among 140 countries in the WTO Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2013. Even the Ministry of Tourism's target of 11 million international visitor arrivals by 2017 will take India's share in global tourism to a mere 1.0 per cent. We cannot wait any longer to convert the country's natural, economic and cultural advantages into a strong competitive advantage. To enable the industry to do it, the government must respond proactively to our ten long-standing demands.

• Ensure that the proposed GST regime gets the much-deserved level playing field.
• Grant infrastructure status, including hotels above Rs 20 crore.
• Revisit the taxation policy on exports and aviation turbine fuel (ATF).
• Promote the idea of 'One India', or seamless tourism across the country.
• Eliminate double taxation and enable depreciation benefits.
• Deliver on Atithi Devo Bhava. Alter the perception that India is 'unsafe' by creating a tourism police force and sensitising law-enforcement agencies to the special needs of women travellers.
• Create islands of excellence -- a minimum of one per state -- and evolve from 'World Class Products' to 'World Class Experiences'.
• Focus on new potential source markets such as China and give tourism from neighbouring nations the big thrust it requires.
• Invest in potential growth segments: yoga and wellness; culinary tourism; Buddhist circuits (four out of five are in India); adventure and wildlife; river and seas cruises; Himalayas; MICE.
• The Centre and the states must work in unison with the travel and tourism sectors to harness the vast potential of Incredible India.

The government has already demonstrated its sincerity to address these demands and emerging opportunities beckon. In this environment, with the Namaste as the enduring symbol of the ITC Hotels experience, we offer comprehensive hospitality solutions with a collection of more than 100 hotels in over 70 destinations in India. We have upwards of 40 hotels in various stages of development with 5,000-plus rooms being readied to be added to our inventory over the next five-six years. We have made our first foray into the leisure segment with a luxury resort -- the ITC Grand Bharat at Manesar, Gurgaon. It will be followed by the ITC Vilasa at Mahabalipuram in mid-2015. And we established yet another milestone in the journey of ITC Hotels, when we broke ground for our first international project, the ITC One at the Colombo One Luxury Hotel & Residences in Sri Lanka. Our pipeline also includes hotels in Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Guntur, Hyderabad, Kathmandu, Kolkata and Srinagar. ITC's triple bottomline approach to business is reflected in our ethos of Responsible Luxury -- offering luxury experiences that are planet positive. Responsible Luxury at ITC Hotels is manifest in our hotel concepts that are 'rooted to the soil', in our world-renowned Indian dining concepts such as Bukhara and Dum Pukht, and in our globally acclaimed spa brand Kaya Kalp. Our Responsible Luxury endeavours have led to 55 per cent of the total energy demand of ITC Hotels being met through renewable sources. Water consumption has gone down by 50 per cent across the chain over the last five years. Almost 100 per cent of the solid waste generated is reused or recycled. And more than 40 per cent of our food ingredients and beverages are sourced within a 100km radius to create a carbon-positive footprint.

Nakul Anand is Executive Director, ITC Limited, and Chairman of the travel and tourism industry's new national umbrella body, FAITH

The article first appeared in the inaugural edition of BW Hotelier, JAN-FEB 2015.