As the 2023 G20 Summit of global leaders approaches, it is worth reflecting on what we can learn from India’s management of tourism. There have been four meetings of the G20 Tourism Track. The Tourism Working Group has worked on five inter-connected priority areas: Green Tourism, Digitalization, Skills, Tourism MSMEs, and Destination Management. The meetings occurred in the Rann of Kutch, Darjeeling, Srinagar and Goa. The fourth meeting concluded in Goa in June.
At the final meeting in June, the UNWTO presented the Goa Roadmap, developed with the Tourism Working Group, building upon India’s five priority areas. The Roadmap includes a set of proposed actions to create a holistic approach to destination management that strengthens public-private-community partnerships and enhances a whole-of-government approach. The Goa Roadmap spells out what this means: a “holistic approach to destination management goes beyond the DMO structures, to include collaboration between actors (government, industry and local residents) at the local level (which DMOs can facilitate), as well as vertical integration to ensure that all destinations are working towards the shared strategic goals and align with national tourism policies and strategies.”
Since 2002 and the Cape Town Declaration, the Responsible Tourism movement has been calling for joined-up government, but it remains a rare phenomenon, and it is difficult to sustain as competing interests seek advantage by securing the support of different parts of national, regional or state, and local government. The 2002 Declaration recognised that “dialogue, partnerships and multi-stakeholder processes – involving government, business and local communities – to make better places for hosts and guests can only be realised at the local level, and that all stakeholders have different, albeit interdependent, responsibilities; tourism can only be managed for sustainability at the destination level.”
India has since 2007 become the world’s leading Responsible Tourism destination. Back in May, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi committed the government of India to “Developing Tourism in Mission Mode” with a budget focused on the holistic development of destinations. India’s 2023 Union Budget advocates a shift from department-centric and scheme-centric approaches to a destination-centric approach to planning, developing and managing tourism. He identified no less than 21 ministries and departments of central governments that engage with tourism, to which must be added many other bodies at a more local level.
Modi argues persuasively that convergence, getting all of the ministries, departments and agencies at national, state and local levels to work together, is essential to managing tourism sustainably. He argues that only if all take responsibility and work together can tourism be used successfully for sustainable local economic development and positively impact the “lives of people at the grassroot level” impacting livelihoods and the “social and economic empowerment of people working at the bottom of the pyramid.” Kerala’s Responsible Tourism Mission demonstrates what can be achieved in practice when a state government, local government, panchayats, communities and tourism businesses work together to make better tourism.
In May, I argued here that already by 2010, India had emerged as a global leader in using tourism to make better places for people to live. In 2022, India won four of the six international awards for Responsible Tourism. Kerala pioneered Responsible Tourism in India. Madhya Pradesh has learnt from Kerala and adapted the Responsible Tourism principles to deliver on local priorities in communities across the state. In Kerala, the state government works with the panchayats (village councils), focusing on creating additional livelihoods for communities, ensuring that they benefit from the large numbers of tourists arriving in their midst, and reducing the litter resulting from tourism in the backwaters for which Kerala is famous. In 2017, Kerala established a Responsible Tourism Mission, which has rolled out this approach across the state.
Back in May, I expressed in an article on Travel Tomorrow that Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s “destination-centric” strategy for “Developing Tourism in Mission Mode” by ensuring the convergence of government programmes and public-private partnerships would encourage other governments to follow India’s lead. After the G20 summit concludes, we can only hope that Prime Minister Modi’s “destination-centric” strategy for “Developing Tourism in Mission Mode” by ensuring convergence of government programmes and public-private partnerships will be in the final declarations along with recognition of the powerful examples of the success of Responsible Tourism in Kerala and more recently in Madhya Pradesh.
