While the tourism and hospitality in India is witnessing a boom, the industry still requires government’s support to fully recover. One key ask from the government would be to grant industry status to tourism and accordingly incentivise all states upon implementing tourism friendly policies. In tandem with this, we would urge the government to allocate budget for setting up homestays in the lesser explored and offbeat destinations across India, for promotion of rural and agriculture tourism. Our homestay projects in Ektanagar and J&K, in collaboration with respective state governments, have yielded great results and helped in creating a stable source of income for the people residing in these villages. Implementing such initiatives on a national level will create employment avenues for thousands and provide the much-needed boost to the economy. A community that stands to benefit greatly from this are farmers. The government can set up a special fund to help farmers in building homestays. This would not only help the farmers with a second source of income, but also give the travellers a taste of real India and the most authentic experiences we have to offer.
We would also urge the government to reconsider 12% GST being currently levied on room tariff below INR 1000 per night. With the current geo-political tensions and inflationary pressures, travel cost has risen. The current rates make it difficult for people to find an affordable stay when travelling. This also negatively impacts the earnings of small hoteliers. We recommend exemption of budget hotels from GST for the larger good of hospitality and tourism sector. Under the RBI infrastructure lending norm criteria, hotels built with INR 200 crore investment get the infrastructure status. We urge the government to bring down the same to INR 10 crore to give a boost to budget segment hotels. This will help hotels avail term loans at lower rates of interest and also benefit from longer repayment periods.”
