RUNNING HEAD
WORLD ROUTES FEATURE DESTINATION Tourism
From left: Prashant Sukul, Kiran Jain and Raveen Pinto used the opportunity to raise India’s profi le.
Feature Destination Sponsor World Routes 2010 trendsetter >> India’s collaborative approach to tourism was on display in Vancouver.
India had a huge Pavillion, which was part of its Feature Destination sponsorship package. It used this to showcase all of its tourism stakeholders and their diverse offerings.
ONE2ONE WITH PRASHANT SUKUL I
ndia offers tourists such a myriad of tourism experiences it was no surprise that the world’s second fastest growing economy chose to showcase its tourism and aviation expertise with a huge shared Hosted Networking Stand. We caught up with Prashant Sukul, joint secretary in India’s Ministry of Aviation.
Why is air travel such a vital sector for India? For a county of this size air travel is essential. Between 16–17 million people a day travel on the railways and as these people become more affl uent the demand for air travel will only grow. It is therefore important that demand is catered for now through airport infrastructure upgrades.
What effect has the LCC phenomenon had on India? Air travel was previously considered very exclusive but today the middle class is growing and they want to fl y. The middle class now makes up about 30% of the population and the idea is to make air travel more accessible to all Indians. Low-cost carriers have defi nitely captured a fair amount of this new market and IndiGo now even has a similar domestic market share as Air India.
This exclusive interview originally appeared in the Hub Daily.
What are currently the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s main projects? We are focused on the modernisation of India’s airports, particularly at Mumbai and Delhi, as well as Calcutta and Hyderabad, and the expansion of Bangalore. There are 20 modernisation programmes going on, so it is a large-scale programme and covers new passenger facilities, as well as air navigation and ATC upgrades and modernisations. Plus, passenger traffi c has more than doubled in recent years. Between 2003 and 2008 India saw passenger growth of around 11%–12% per year. Then we saw a sharp decline due to high oil prices, followed by the recession. We are now back to about 10% growth and we expect double-digit growth this year and in the coming years.
What were you hoping to achieve at World Routes? We were marketing the Indian gateways and their operators and demonstrating their ability to carry out large-scale airport work. We also wanted to market India to the airlines, as we would be delighted to see more direct fl ights into India. India is an excellent commercial proposition - as all the airlines operating into India will tell you.
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