Draft Report on the National Digital Tourism Mission

An inter-ministerial task force for the National Digital Tourism Mission was constituted by the Ministry of Tourism on July 23, 2021. The main objective of the task force was to undertake consultations with the tourism industry and domain experts, define the context, mission, vision, aims and overall scope of the National Digital Tourism Mission. The aim of the Mission is to bridge the existing information gap among different stakeholders like the national and state tourism organizations, tourism service providers, tourists etc and establish a healthy tourism ecosystem through a digital highway.

This topic is important for prelims and GS-3 paper of the Mains IAS Exam. Updates related to the National Digital Tourism Mission will be made available here.

Why is the National Digital Tourism Mission in the news?

In March 2022, the Ministry of Tourism invited final comments on a draft report for setting up the National Digital Tourism Mission. The draft report has been published on the tourism ministry’s website for suggestions and feedback from the public.

Draft Report on the National Digital Tourism Mission – Key Points

• The draft report prepared by the inter-ministerial task force comprises the following:
  • Domain and technology principles
  • Standards
  • Digital stack
  • Governance structure
  • Plan for implementation of the National Digital Tourism Mission
• The draft report points out that the tourism sector in India is highly fragmented. The tourism systems formed by the Central government, State governments, public and private sectors function in silos. Therefore, the tourism ecosystem is not able to harvest the combinatorial benefits of information exchange.
• Sub-sectors of tourism i.e. accommodation, transport, restaurants and catering, and personal services face very different challenges and opportunities and therefore policies have to be devised accordingly.
• In the tourism sector, the data systems currently don’t interact with each other using a common language, thereby limiting data analytics and resultant policymaking. Therefore, it is important to have a seamless, standardized data exchange among various stakeholders in the tourism sector.

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