HYDERABAD: The Travel Agents' Association of India (TAAI), which wrapped up its 55th convention of the Indian Travel Congress here recently, plans to give a big thrust to domestic tourism. It proposes to work in tandem with State Tourism departments and help package tourism products, says the association's newly elected president C. Venkateshwara Prasad.

Speaking to The Hindu , he says that although India and China have about the same population, the latter, our friendly neighbour, has three times more domestic tourists. "We have some of the most amazing tourism attractions in the world, but they are neither packaged nor marketed in a manner that we can leverage their true potential."

Upgrade hotels

Mr. Prasad, who heads the city-based Travelexpress, says TAAI is chalking out a programme to upgrade services of unclassified hotels and bring them to acceptable levels. This will be done keeping in mind the need to achieve short-term room capacity-addition, he says. Unanimously elected, he has an ambitious scheme to have a consumer protection plan in case start-up airlines and sick international airlines fold up.

"Over the years, the business has become unprofitable. Margins have shrunk, while operational costs have risen sharply," he says adding that TAAI will strive to develop business models and processes for agents so that they can deliver quality service while maintaining reasonable profit levels.

On service tax

He points out that one of the key demands to be raised the TAAI will be abolition of 12.24 per cent service tax on business and first class air fares. It will also try for replacement of multiple taxes with a single goods and services tax for hotel and tourism industry on the lines of the system in vogue in advanced nations.

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