India News | Union Tourism Minister Meets Online Travel Agents, Discusses Post-lockdown Protocols
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. Union Tourism Minister Prahlad Patel on Friday met a delegation of leading online travel agents (OTAs) of the country to discuss calibrated opening of hotels and accommodation units and issuing post-lockdown protocols for travel-related activities.
New Delhi, May 29 (PTI) Union Tourism Minister Prahlad Patel on Friday met a delegation of leading online travel agents (OTAs) of the country to discuss calibrated opening of hotels and accommodation units and issuing post-lockdown protocols for travel-related activities.
He shared the plan of the ministry for rebooting the travel sector starting with domestic tourism and also noted the inputs and ideas put forward by the online travel agents, according to an official statement.
"The delegation further discussed matters relating to partnership with the Ministry of Tourism on ways to leverage the Incredible India digital platform to provide better access to various tourist services.
"The other areas of cooperation included creating an e-market place for tourist guides and reform in tax collected at source (TCS) and tax deducted at source (TDS) for the OTA sector," it stated.
The delegation also requested Tourism Minister Patel to liberalise the ministry's OTA 2018 guidelines by making it simple and "based on principle of self-certification" powered with industry-driven quality assurance and grievance redressal system.
Those present in the meeting included senior officials from the ministry and the online travel agents were represented by Ritesh Agarwal from OYO, Deep Kalra from Make My Trip, Dhhruv Shingri from Yatra.com and Rikant Pittie from EaseMyTrip.com
OTAs are online companies who through their websites enable people to book various travel related services. They are third party agents reselling trips, hotels, cars, flights, vacation packages and other provided or organised by others.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)