G20 meeting to emphasise tourism, archaeological sites' conservation

Rural tourism and promoting India’s prominent archeological sites will be the focus at the first meeting of the G20 Tourism Working Group which will be held at Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch later this month, the tourism ministry said today. The best practices and success of the Indian tourism sector will be showcased to the attending delegates.

In all, there will be three meetings of the G20 Tourism Working Group, the last of which will be held in Goa. In the Goa meeting, a declaration and a ministerial communique will be released. “We will lay down strategies arrived at by a consensus between delegates of the G20 countries,” Arvind Singh, secretary of the union ministry of tourism said.

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Also in the pipeline are a MICE tourism convention in Bangalore later this year, a global investors summit in Delhi in April and a meeting of CEOs by the World Travel and Tourism Council. Delegates visiting the Working Group meeting at the Rann of Kutch will also be taken to Dholavira. G20 meetings will be spread across 55 key tourism and archeological sites across the country.

In Kutch, the delegates will also be given as gifts products from various districts of the state. Singh added that for the G20 events, the ministry’s priority areas will be sustainable tourism practices, harnessing digitisation for the sector, empowering youth with skills, nurturing tourism MSMEs and startups, and rethinking the strategic management of destinations.

Singh said that these events will help India gear up for the SDG goals better. “One of the priorities through the G20 platform is to reach a consensus on how the SDG goals will be achieved by 2030. There will be emphasis on sustainable tourism which is important not only for environment but also to create opportunities for local enterprise,” he said.