Over the last six years Great Indian Travel Bazaar (GITB) done a magnificent work putting Rajasthan on the global tourism map. The annual inbound travel trade show on the calendar of international foreign tour operators, co-organized in April every year by FICCI and the Department of Tourism, Rajasthan and Ministry of Tourism is now up for a bid from firms and re-scheduled for August 2014. The travel mart, if at all it is organized, would be called Jaipur International Travel Bazaar and not GITB.
After the first edition of GITB, a memorandum of understanding was signed between FICCI and the department of tourism for five years. “The GITB was a concept suggested by FICCI and the name was jointly registered between the two. The then minister tourism Bina Kak announced at the GITB 2013 inaugural that the seventh edition of GITB would be organized in Jaipur in 2014 and the dates would be announced in due time. We had been following it up with the department regarding the memorandum but so far, there has been no development. Now there is very little time to put GITB together,” said Gyan Prakash, director FICCI Rajasthan.
According to sources, the tourism department is keen on being transparent about the bidding for the event. So, they have now come up with an advertisement inviting ‘Expression of Interest’, re-christening the fair as Jaipur International Travel Bazaar 2014 scheduled to be organized from 9-10 August and the last day of submitting the bids is somewhere in January.
Rated among the travel fraternity as the number one travel trade show, B2B meetings and inbound tourism were the focus of GITB. In 2012, 259 buyers from 54 countries participated in the exhibition with an organization 8,200 meetings to sell India world over. The event provided an exposure to the best tourism products from across India under one umbrella. In the sixth edition in 2013, the numbers went up with more than 9,000 meetings being held. Ironically, it is said there wasn’t a single scheduled B2B meeting at the tourism department stall in 2013.
“Its ironic but the department that is supposed to facilitate tourism has completely finished an event that was doing Rajasthan immense good since the last few years. This was the single significant tourism mart in North India where 279 international buyers and sellers from 57 countries had come down to our door-step for business. FICCI, over the last six years, had developed a large database and infrastructure to host a show of this magnitude. The tourism stakeholders are up in arms and it is certainly not going down well with them,” said Randhir Singh Mandawa, general secretary, Heritage Hotels Association of India. This is a great loss to the tourism industry in Rajasthan, he added.
GITB was co-organised by the tourism department and FICCI. It is also supported by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), leading national and regional associations like Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO), Hotel & Restaurant Association of Rajasthan (HRAR), Indian Heritage Hotels Association (IHHA) and Rajasthan Association of Tour Operators (RATO).
src: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-12-14/jaipur/45189393_1_tourism-council-great-indian-travel-bazaar-gitb
Its really great job done by tourism department and FICCI.