Air India Chief Ashwani Lohani has been appointed as the Chairman of WTTCII for the year 2017. The appointment was announced at the Annual General Meeting of the World Travel & Tourism Council, India Initiative (WTTCII) held today in New Delhi. He also served as the Vice Chairman of WTTCII for 2016 and has taken over from the previous Chairman Kapil Chopra, President, The Oberoi Group, who recently completed his one-year tenure. Veteran hotelier Sunder G. Advani, Chairman & Managing Director, Advani Hotels & Resorts (India) has been appointed as the Vice Chairman of WTTCII.
Commenting on the development, Ashwani Lohani said “Over the years, WTTCII has been championing convergence between Government of India and States to facilitate tourism in India and we will continue to do so. With the GST in place by next year, the States will have the major onus of implementing smart policies for facilitating tourism on the ground. We will continue to work with the States, with the strength of our Members, to improve access, address infrastructural gaps and policy bottlenecks for tourism to flourish, and most importantly create jobs, employment and provide a vigorous boost to tourism’s contribution to the State’s GDP. The sub sectors of aviation, hospitality, transportation, railway compliments each other. In a country like India, all the sub sectors of tourism need to be integrated and treated uniformly by the Government in its various policy initiatives to give it a competitive edge vis-à-vis other countries.”
While Sunder Advani said, “We welcome the ground breaking move by Government of India introducing E-visa policy for 158 countries at 16 Airports and 5 Cruise Ports. These measures will bring in high spending foreign tourists who will spend more and add to growth of our GDP. While there has been some growth in foreign tourist arrivals and revenues earned but, as an industry, we desire and can achieve exponential growth in numbers and revenues. We will need to work together with the help of the Government to showcase India as an attractive tourist destination through aggressive and targeted marketing. The new Aviation Policy and Regional Connectivity Scheme announced by the Government of India will definitely spur growth in the aviation sector. While we commend the Government to standardize GST……..at 18%.We hope that the individual States will not also levy taxes on this Sector which is already losing out to our competitors like Thailand, Sri Lanka which have very low tax rates.”
About WTTCII
World Travel & Tourism Council, India Initiative (WTTCII) is an Apex Industry Council with Members from the Airlines, Hospitality, Travel Services, State Governments and Government of India organizations. Established in the year 2000, WTTCII has been working closely with the Government of India, Ministry of Tourism, and other Ministries relevant to Tourism and Industry Stakeholders for the development of the Tourism Sector in India, especially on policy issues. WTTCII works to raise awareness of Travel & Tourism as one of the largest industries that contribute in terms of employment potential, economy and sustainable development in India. www.wttcii.org
