Tourism has been awaiting good news for a while and the timing couldn’t have been better. As India reels under the dropping graph of foreign tourists the government took the best initiative in years opened up the VISA norms. On 7th October government gave go ahead for extending visa on arrival (VOA) to 40 countries, establishing an online application system for visas and facilitating visa on arrival for pensioners and those attending conferences.
This means foreign tourists will no longer face the tormenting experiences and procedural delays in the Indian Embassy. Tourist from 40 countries including the US, the UK, Germany, France, Brazil, Russia and China among others will now avail visa on arrival when they arrive on Indian shores. The government has also agreed to extend visa on arrival to foreign travelers above 60 years of age from all countries and cut down the time taken to give visas to groups that are keen to attend conventions.
The implementation may take some time but it is certainly a sure shot winner of a decision for the tourism Industry. The ministries have been asked to prepare the ground work for to roll out the visa on arrival scheme. As a large amount of infrastructure and manpower would be required the roll out may take some time.
Currently visa on arrival facility is available at international airports of Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Kochi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. It was also decided at the meeting that visa on arrival visa facility would be extended to more airports like Goa, Gaya, Chandigarh and Amritsar which have a large flow of foreign tourists. So far, citizens of around 11 countries including Japan, New Zealand and Vietnam are able to avail this facility.
This open regime will not open flood gates in the Indian Tourism sector immediately, but would certainly lead to one, if the promotional campaigns by Ministry of tourism is scaled up in tandem with this. Awareness about India and its products needs a radical push with consistency across all nations where we are going to provide the VISA on arrival, especially into those nations where we don’t have campaigns running. A concentrated effort from the trade would definitely bring in huge change in no of arrivals translating into much required Forex.
Kudos to Government of India for making such a populous decision, special credit to Ministry of Home and Ministry of Tourism. Tourism industry welcomes this much awaited decision and looks forward to a fast implementation.
