COVID-19 Gravely Cripples India’s Tourism Sector  

• Coronavirus pandemic has crippled the Indian tourism & hospitality industry at an astonishing pace.
• ICC demands a complete GST holiday for tourism, travel & hospitality industry for the next 12 months till the recovery happens.
• Industry Body seeks formation of a ‘Travel & Tourism Stabilisation Fund’ with direct benefit transfer to each unit to prevent financial loss and consequent job loss.
• FTAs in Feb, 2020 has dropped by 9.3% month-on-month & 7% year-on-year, according to the MoT’s data. 

 Travel and tourism alone account for 9.2% of India’s GDP (2018). The sector generated 26.7 million jobs in 2018. The cascading effect of the coronavirus has been found to cripple the Indian tourism and hospitality industry at an astonishing pace.

 The recently published statistics by Ministry of Tourism, Government of India has also corroborated the same concern as the Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTA) has been found to be down by about 67% annually in the January-March quarter, while domestic tourists notched a much lower figure by about 40%.

FTAs in February, 2020 has dropped by 9.3% month-on-month and 7% year-on-year, according to government data. In February 2020, there were 10.15 lakh FTAs, against 10.87 lakh in February 2019 and 11.18 lakh in January 2020. The situation is getting uglier as India has announced suspension of all tourist visas till April 15 in a bid to contain the spread of the vir