FAITH urges govt to set up 'tourism transition corpus'

All these segments will get unlocked post the deployment of the vaccine, it added. Till then, FAITH said that there should be a bridge fund targeted at the tourism sector to enable tourism travel and hospitality companies to draw down from that corpus.

The Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism and Hospitality (FAITH) on Wednesday urged the government to set up a targeted tourism transition corpus to make funds available for the Indian tourism, travel and hospitality industry till the COVID-19 vaccine is deployed. Reports across the world indicate that by mid-2021 vaccines will be hopefully deployed across most of the international markets and India too. Such a scenario is expected to result in the recovery of the tourism sector, FAITH said in a statement.

Currently, FAITH said that barring some spurts of domestic travel during long weekends, almost all segments of tourism are non-performing, including inbound tourism, corporate travel, meetings and events travel. All these segments will get unlocked post the deployment of the vaccine, it added.

Till then, FAITH said that there should be a bridge fund targeted at the tourism sector to enable tourism travel and hospitality companies to draw down from that corpus. The corpus can be set up by the Ministry of Finance for direct benefit transfer on an interest-free basis, the apex industry body said. This draw down from the corpus by the tourism enterprises may be adjustable over five years against their GST and income tax liabilities, it added.

According to FAITH, the draw down will set in motion a virtuous cycle enabling tourism travel and hospitality companies to keep their business and jobs alive, and to be ready for the tourism demand. FAITH is the national federation of the ten national tourism, travel and hospitality organisations. They include Association of Domestic Tour Operators of India (ADTOI), Adventure Tour Operators Association of India (ATOAI), Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI), Hotels Association of India (HAI) and Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO).

Other members are India Convention Promotion Bureau (ICPB), Indian Heritage Hotels Association (IHHA), Indian Tourist Transporters Association (ITTA), Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) and Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI)..

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