BHUBANESWAR: With the Covid pandemic inflicting enormous damage to the tourism industry, the need of the hour is to adopt transformative strategies, seek new technological options and disruptive initiations to put the travel trade back on the road to recovery, said Union Minister of State for Education and External Affairs Dr Rajkumar Ranjan Singh.
Inaugurating a two-day international conference on ‘Trends and Disruptions in Hospitality and Tourism’ at Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) on Friday, Singh said religious tourism could be used to strengthen India’s tourism outreach specifically in the South-east Asia region. Pointing out that BIMSTEC and ASEAN nations have deep connection with Buddhism, he said Buddhist tourist circuits in India could provide an impetus to tourism as people in these countries are keen to visit those places.
The conference ‘Aatithya- Past, Present and Future 3.0’, was organised by the School of Hotel Management (SHM), SOA’s faculty of hospitality and tourism management. SOA Chancellor Prof DP Ray presided over the inaugural program.