BHUBANESWAR: Odisha will be playing host to Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) for the second time after a gap of nine years. The 33rd IATO conference is set to be inaugurated by Union Tourism Minister KJ Alphons here on Thursday. This will Alphons’s first visit to the State after taking charge.
Over 1000 delegates from the travel and tourism industry will participate in the three-day event that would highlight Odisha as the next preferred destination on the tourism map of India. Informing this to mediapersons on Wednesday, Principal Secretary in the Tourism Department Mona Sharma said, the conference will be a step towards increasing domestic and international tourist flow to the State by next season. “At present, the growth of tourist arrival to the State is about 9 per cent (pc) which is more than global tourist arrival of 4 pc. This increasing trend is a positive sign for the State, which is mostly culturally oriented. However, new products like ethnic tourism, Buddhist tourism, eco-tourism and Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Events (MICE) tourism have come up in the State which needs to be highlighted and IATO conference is the platform for the purpose,” she added.
Tour operators from across the country, stakeholders in the sector and travel writers will also take part in the meeting that would include sessions on Odisha Tourism. The stakeholders will be taken on familiarity trips to various destinations in the State. On Friday, Tourism Department and IATO will organise a ‘Run for responsible tourism’ in the city which will be flagged off by sprinter Dutee Chand.
The IATO is the national apex body of the tourism industry with over 4,000 members covering all its segments.
Among others, president of IATO Pronab Sarkar, Lally Mathews, co-chairman of the convention and Director of Tourism Department Nitin B Jawale were present. In October, the Tourism Department will host the Odisha Travel Bazaar in collaboration with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) on the lines of Rajasthan’s Great Indian Travel Bazaar. The last IATO conference was held in Bhubaneswar in 2008.