Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that out-of-the-box thinking and long-term approach can take tourism to new heights. He said that even the villages of remote areas have now come on the tourism map in the country.
Addressing the post-budget webinar organized on the topic ‘Development of tourism in mission mode’, he also talked about installing multilingual information boards at tourist places. Apart from this, he stressed on developing such apps, in which information is given in different languages of the country.
He said that today’s India is moving forward with a ‘new work culture’. Expressing happiness over the appreciation people are getting for this year’s budget, Modi said that no one would have thought of such a post-budget webinar. “But our government connected all the concerned people and worked with them before and after the budget,” he added. The Prime Minister said, “This webinar is about a change in the tourism sector and when all the concerned people come together, we get the desired result within a stipulated time.”
Modi said, “Some people think that tourism is an imaginary word, which is only for high income group people. But in India, it has a long socio-cultural meaning.”
“With out-of-the-box thinking and a long-term approach, tourism can be taken to new heights,” said Prime Minister Modi. He asserted that due to religious places there has been a huge boom in the tourism sector and last year seven crore people visited the Kashi Vishwanath temple. Modi said that before the revival of this temple, about 70-80 lakh devotees used to reach here every year, but after the revival, seven crore devotees reached here last year.
He then told that before the reconstruction of Kedarghati in Kedarnath, where only 4-5 lakh devotees used to reach there, later 15 lakh devotees reached there. This webinar is part of the 12 post-budget webinars being organized by the government. The government’s aim behind this is to take various suggestions and consultations for the effective implementation of the schemes announced in the general budget.
The general budget states that tourism will be promoted in a ‘mission mode’, with active participation of states, government programs and public-private partnership model. In the webinar, Modi said that if public facilities have increased, digital connectivity has improved, hotels and hospitals have improved and cleanliness is being taken care of, then the Indian tourism sector can grow manifold.
The Prime Minister said that destination weddings are a growing trend and have huge potential in India. “We have to develop at least 50 tourist centers which should be the first thing in the mind of any tourist planning to visit India,” the Prime Minister said.
