BHUBANESWAR: Hotelier and owner of Swosti Group of Hotels, Jitendra Kumar Mohanty was conferred the IATO ‘Hall of Fame’ award at 33rd annual convention of Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) that began in Bhubaneswar on Thursday.Every year, IATO selects one or more persons for their contribution to the tourism industry.Mohanty was honoured for putting Odisha on the tourism map of the country with his out-of-the-box thinking and innovative ideas in the sector.
According to IATO, “His pioneering efforts made sure that Odisha, got high-end tourists thereby making an invaluable contribution to the State’s exchequer. Mohanty’s Swosti Group had recently opened a worldclass luxury resort at Chilika lake.Mohanty said, there is a need for more hotel rooms in Odisha due to the increasing footfall of tourists to the State.
Odisha can only get much more tourists when it has good hotels and better accommodation facilities spread out in all tourist locations, he said, adding that both the Central and State Governments should collaborate on more tourism projects in Odisha. Odisha has one of the best tourism policies in the country and more and more stakeholders in tourism sector should come forward to benefit from it, he added.Some of the past recipients of the award include Rai Bahadur, MS Oberoi, Sir Edmund Hillary, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Maharaja Gaj Singh and Dr Mohammad Ali.