Feedback sought on rural, medical tourism

Our Correspondent

KULLU, JUNE 20

The Union Ministry of Tourism has invited comments on the draft national strategy and road map to promote rural tourism, MICE industry and medical and wellness tourism.

The main objective is facilitating tourism by augmenting tourism infrastructure, ensuring ease of travel, promoting tourism products and destinations. There is an immense potential of rural tourism and the ministry has been actively working on it promotion. Driven by the spirit of “Vocal for Local”, rural tourism can contribute significantly to the mission of “Atmanirbhar Bharat”.

MICE is an acronym for meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions. MICE is one of the important segments of business tourism, which also overlaps with leisure tourism. It is one of the fast-growing segments and brings several advantages to the country.

Medical tourism is a term used to describe the rapidly growing practice of travelling internationally to obtain healthcare. The key drivers for growth of medical tourism and wellness tourism are mainly affordability and accessibility of good healthcare services, minimal waiting time, availability of latest medical technologies and accreditations.

The ministry has sought feedback, comments and suggestions on or before June 30 to make the documents more comprehensive. These drafts can be accessed from the link available under the “what’s new” section on the website (https://tourism.gov.in/) of the ministry. The feedback can be sent at e-mail IDs js.tourism@gov.in, bibhuti.dash72@gov.in or prakash.om50@nic.in.