"I am very happy to be with you today at this important travel and tourism meet.
All of us in India are pleased that the PATA Annual Conference has come back to
India after a gap of 24 years. I heartily welcome all the delegates to this
conference and also the dignitaries who have joined this occasion today.
In the past half century, especially in the past few decades, the economic
profile of the Asia Pacific region has changed dramatically. Leaving the dark
days of colonial rule behind, the countries of the region are engaged in
rewriting their own destinies - as independent, self-confident, and steadily
progressing nations. Many of them have become shining success stories,
powerhouses of trade and technology, industry and innovation. I was in Singapore
last week and was heartened to know that it is today richer, in terms of per
capita income, than its former colonial master.
If the Asia Pacific region's socio-economic status has changed, so also has its
profile in tourism. The region is today dotted with innumerable centers of
tourist attraction, which draw large numbers of tourists from around the world.
Almost every country is promoting its traditional centers of attraction, and
also adding many new ones. Indeed, tourism has become a powerful driver of
economic growth for several countries in the region - both those that are
already prosperous and those that are not yet so.
If Singapore is an example of the former, then Cambodia, the other country that
I visited last week, is a telling example of the latter. I was pleasantly
surprised to know that the tourist inflow in Cambodia, mainly to experience the
wonder of the Angkor temples, has soared from a mere fifty thousand a year to
nearly five hundred thousand in just five years.
I am sure the region boasts of many such telling examples. And they cover almost
every conceivable type of tourism - from monument tourism to mountain tourism;
from culture tourism to conference tourism; from beach tourism to business
tourism; and from tourism for the senses to tourism for the soul.
No doubt, the governments of the respective countries have done much to bring
about this change, through innovative policies and supportive infrastructure
facilities. Nevertheless, if any one trans-national organization can be credited
for the phenomenal growth of the travel and tourism industry in the region, it
has to be the Pacific Asia Travel Association.
Ever since its first conference in Hawaii in 1952, when calm and peace descended
after the devastation of the Second World War, PATA has played a pioneering and
visionary role in bringing together nations of the Asia Pacific. It was, I am
told, also the first organization in the tourism sector to recognize the
benefits of private-public partnership for promotion and marketing of travel
destinations in the region.
Through its impressive record of devoted leadership and outstanding voluntarism,
PATA, in the last half century, has also accomplished more than any other travel
organization in educating the tourists, as well as in improving the tourist
destinations - environmentally, socially, and culturally. As we all know, the
United Nations has declared the year 2002 as the International Year of
Eco-Tourism and Mountains. I heartily applaud PATA for this concern for
sustainable and eco-friendly tourism, which has to be at the very core of all
our activities in promoting tourism. This responsibility can be handled only by
creating a well-regulated, and often self-regulated, partnership between the
government, private sector players in the infrastructure and hospitality
business, mass media, voluntary organizations, and, last but not the least,
tourists themselves.
Distinguished delegates, India is now all geared up to reach its true potential
in tourism. We fully recognize that the Asia Pacific region is extremely
important for us if this potential is to be fully tapped. We offer both the
ancient and the modern. We are investing large sums for expanding and
modernizing our infrastructure in airports and airlines, railways, national
highways, hotels and transport, development of tourism circuits, preservation
and maintenance of monuments, human resource development, information technology
and all things related to tourism. It is our endeavor to ensure that our
visitors have the best and the most pleasant time when they visit any part of
India.
Of course, we have many things to learn from our more successful friends. Just
as each of the forty-odd countries represented in this conference can benefit
from sharing knowledge and experience.
As your Association enters the second half-century of its existence, it is now
faced with different challenges. Some of these challenges are not specific to
tourism alone; they are common to all sectors of the economy. Indeed, these
concern the very security and well being of our societies.
I am referring here mainly to the problem of terrorism and extremism. It has
today emerged as a global menace. No continent, and no country, is entirely free
from its reach, or the reach of its negative effects. This was evident from the
impact of the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11 on the United States.
In particular, the travel and tourism industry, including the civil aviation
industry, was badly hit. We in India, being victims of terrorism for close to
two decades, know all too well how it has adversely affected tourism in Jammu
and Kashmir and elsewhere.
Therefore, the time has come for the entire tourism fraternity in the world to
intensify its campaign against terrorism and extremism. I have said before - and
it bears reiteration today - that all of us should know why terrorism has hit
tourism the most. Just as terrorism is a foe of tourism, tourism, in the
broadest sweep of its effects, is an antidote to terrorism and extremism.
Whereas terrorism feeds on intolerance and arrogance, tourism breeds tolerance
and empathy. Terrorism has no respect for human life. In contrast, tourism
teaches us to savor and to celebrate all that is beautiful in nature and in
human life. Terrorism seeks to erect walls of hatred between faiths and
communities. Tourism breaks such barriers. Terrorism detests pluralism, whereas
tourism pays tribute to it.
In a world that is becoming smaller and more inter-dependent with each passing
year, tourism is encouraging all of us to develop an international outlook, even
as it makes us proud of the natural and cultural heritage of our own individual
countries. As far as India is concerned, ours is the land of Gautam Buddha,
Bhagwan Mahavira, Guru Nanak Dev, Mahatma Gandhi, and many other apostles of
peace. We firmly believe that promotion of peace, friendship, goodwill, and
understanding among nations and among different religious and ethnic communities
has to be the overriding objective of tourism in the new century. This, I am
told, is also the central message of the World Tourism Organization. I hope that
your conference will transmit this message powerfully throughout our region and
the world.
On this occasion, let me express another concern which, I am sure, is shared by
many of you. I urge travel and tourism operators not to look at their business
purely from a narrow angle of short-term commercial benefit. Excessive
commercialism, especially when it takes place in the absence of effective
regulatory mechanisms, can lead to negative consequences. Environmental
degradation and erosion of traditional social values can make the growth of
tourism unsustainable, much like the story of how greed led to the killing of
the goose that laid golden eggs. In our own country, we have examples of some
tourism centers that have visibly suffered due to unplanned and unaesthetic
growth.
Your conference, therefore, should catalyze a process of learning from each
other's best practices in the Asia Pacific region. How can we encourage
responsible and active participation of the local people in planning and
implementing tourism promotion schemes? How can we promote better municipal
governance especially in and around tourism centers? How can we check vandalism
and promote responsible tourism? On these and other such questions, there is an
immense lot that our countries can learn from each other.
There is a good concept that is rapidly gaining currency these days. It is: How
to develop and market Joint Tourism Circuits. For example, even though Singapore
has a thriving tourism industry, Prime Minister Goh told me that he would like
India and Singapore to design joint tourism packages and promote them jointly so
that at least a section of international tourists who come to one country can be
enticed to experience different types of attractions in the other country. One
can also think of a regional Buddhist Circuit that will link India's own
Buddhist Circuit with countries in South-East and Far-East Asia. There is also
scope for developing a regional Ramayana Circuit and a package that links the
centers of Sufi spiritualism in India, West Asia, Central Asia, and South-East
Asia.
There is an added reason for joint promotion of tourism within the region. As
all of us know, more and more Asians are becoming rich and are joining the ranks
of international tourists. It should be our endeavor to facilitate, for example,
more Chinese and Malaysians to come to India and more Indians to travel to
Cambodia and Vietnam. I am told that nearly two hundred thousand Indian tourists
go to Bangkok each year. If at least five to ten percent of them can be
persuaded to go the nearby Angkor temples at a marginal incremental cost, they
would be wonderstruck at the age-old cultural links that bind India and
Indo-China.
In this context, it is necessary to recognize that promoting tourism within the
Asia-Pacific region through a cooperative effort is not a zero-sum game. We will
all gain if more tourists, especially our own tourists, start visiting each
other's countries. Above all, it benefits tourists themselves since they can get
to see and experience more by spending less.
For countries like India, it also brings an additional benefit. Employment
generation is one of the primary goals of our economic policies. And tourism, as
all of us know, has a high potential to create business and employment
opportunities at different levels of education and skills.
Ladies and Gentlemen, before I conclude, I would like to wish you all a
wonderful and memorable stay in India. In a sense, you too are tourists who have
come here for the purpose of the conference. And we welcome you with the same
courtesy that is shown to all guests in the Indian tradition and which is
encapsulated in the Sanskrit maxim: Atithi Devo Bhava - When a guest comes,
think that a god has come.
I thank PATA for choosing New Delhi as the venue and I do hope that you will
come back to India sooner than in the past.
I wish your conference all success.
Thank you".
India