War clouds keep tourists at home

indiamike

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Rema Nagarajan and Nina Mehta
(New Delhi, June 1)</font>
<p>&nbsp;The sub-continental nuclear conflict may not happen but apprehensions that it could have hit hard India's travel industry. With several countries advising citizens against visiting India and Pakistan, both tourists and business travellers have rushed to cancel bookings.</p>
<p>&quot;There is a 60-70 per cent fall in foreign in-bound leisure travel as compared to the same period last year,&quot; said Arjun Sharma, formerly of Sita World Travel. &quot;If the situation continues for some more time, it will be a death blow for the industry.&quot;</p>
<p>Tarun Thukral, general manager, Le Meridien, New Delhi, agreed: “The situation for the hospitality industry is bad in capital letters, bold and underlined.”</p>
<p>The US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Japan have issued advisories to their citizens, asking them to either miss trips to India, or to stay away from certain parts of the country. But as an executive with Cox and Kings put it: “Tourists don't distinguish between safe and dangerous parts of a country.
They'd rather skip India altogether.”</p>
<p>Things in fact, could turn worse yet. People generally take a while to react to advisories, said travel expert Inder Sharma.</p>
<p>And the Cox and Kings executive feared the scare might hit the winter season as well. “Bookings for the winter starts months in advance and no new bookings have come in yet.”
<p>Corporate travel is estimated to have taken a 5-per-cent dip due to the scare. NASSCOM, for one, has cancelled its June 3 seminar in Mumbai.
<p>The scare has affected overseas IT orders too, confessed infotech industry insiders. “In a situation where highly placed expats are reluctant to stay back due to an impending war, questions are being raised on the implementation of offshore projects,” said the CEO of a leading infotech concern.</p>