February 8th, 2009 
Aman After Mumbai attacks everyone thinks twice about coming to India. Yes I am talking about the tourists. After 26-11, there is a huge downfall in the number of tourists coming to India. The world really needs a reason or two to think of coming to India. I got this idea of writing after watching that “Atithi Devo Bhava” advertisement. The idea that is portrayed is correct. If you look at the way our auto rickshaw drivers or the common public deal with theses guests of the nation it really makes one ashamed. This really is not what we call as Indian Hospitality. When they go to any historical monument or a place of interest beggars, hawkers, guides and who not surrounds them to get money from them. The idea behind that advertisement is to tell common public to behave with the guests.
I am not saying that we should make arrangement of sand bashing sessions followed by belly dancing on the sand dunes as they do in Dubai nor I m in favor of romantic dinner on mountain top in Mount Abu. All we need is to improve our service level. We have enough on our cultural and heritage front to attract the tourists. Recently a report was published on the internet showing top ten worst hotels in India. Surprisingly all of them are of five star rating and are in the capital city of New Delhi. Now if we will have such reviews how can we attract more tourists? Out of those ten surveys almost half of them have been answered by Indians. The people of India do not like the hospitality they get from their countrymen and how can we expect the foreign nationals to praise our behavior and hospitality.
Government of India should realize that the tourists want a closer encounter with their destination. They just do not come here to se. slum dog tourism is on the rise. They like action oriented travel. They do not want to go over the glossy romantic pictures of India. Tourism has been for long, tended to be a passive thing, which in fact is not right. The heritage must be put to use. The traveler wants to take home a memory. They do not want memento.
We need to make travelling what you can do, what you eat, how you feel and learn. This is possible when you do all this as much as you can. It requires involvement. What they see on the websites when the search for the information be it the backwaters of Kerala or exploring old Delhi by rickshaw, they come here to realize it. They come here to live it. We need to arrange for the same.
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