With unparalleled efforts of the Ministry of Tourism, leaders of the industry and associations, a unique platform, namely, the Confederation of Indian Travel and Tourism Industry (CITTI), under the leadership of Kumari Selja, Union Minister of Tourism, is finally underway, which is like a dream that has been realised after 60 years of commitment, persuasion and hard work.

It is pertinent to glance through the names of the legends, who had stood by the idea of forming a single platform to pursue larger interests of the tourism sector in India. It includes Nari and Adi Katgara, Cyrus Guzder, Inder Sharma, Gautam Khanna, Vinoo Ubhayakar, M S Oberoi, Krishen Kumar, Krishan Amla, Late Lalit Suri and many others. The present leaders, who had contributed to making this dream into a reality include Rajindera Kumar, Priya Paul, Jyotsna Suri, Arjun Sharma, Peter Kerkar, Nakul Anand, Nandini Verma, Jehangir Katgara, Captain C P Krishnan Nair, Vivek Nair, Ajoy Misra, Raymond Bickson, D K Beri, K B Kachru, Naresh Goyal, Ragini Chopra, Ashwini Kakkar, Dipak Deva, Madhavan Menon, Vijay Thakur, Rajesh Mudgill, Pradeep Thukral, Harish Sud, R K Puri, Rajji Rai, Ajeet Bajaj, Tejbir Singh Anand and many others.

Senior representatives of the tourism industry had many times come together in the past to discuss this subject. The effort finally fructified, when MOT spearheaded the initiative. The final proposal to form CITTI was given shape in a meeting chaired by Sujit Banerjee, Former Secretary, MOT, which Sanjay Kothari, Additional Secretary, MOT, Anand Kumar, Joint Secretary, MOT, and many other senior officials of the Ministry attended. The industry was represented by its associations that participated in the meeting and included IATO, WTTC-India Initiative, PATA- India, FHRAI, HAI, TAAI, TAFI, ADTOI, ATOAI, IMTA etc.

The CITTI initiative has been a result of long deliberations of the Steering Committee set up under the Chairmanship of Anand Kumar, Joint Secretary, MOT with all leading industry association partners. The said committee will now formulate the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), rules and regulations that will govern CITTI.

As per the present deliberations, CITTI will have all the leading trade associations as part of its governing council. All these associations will become members after paying a sum of `10 lakh to CITTI’s corpus, which will also receive `1 crore from the Ministry of Tourism. Individuals and corporates will also be allowed to become members at a predetermined fee.

A full time CEO to attain the mandate of CITTI will be on board and will report to the Governing Council. Among the various charters and objectives set for CITTI, the foremost priority will be to conduct the Global Travel Mart- India, which will be an international travel trade exhibition in India. Sources reveal that the first such global event is likely to be organised in September 2012.

Amidst various unique travel offerings, Destination India has seen an increase in the number of international tourist arrivals from 2.38 million in the year 2002 to a mere 5.11 million in the year 2009. However, once CITTI brings all the associations on board, along with other strategic stakeholders under a single umbrella, the target of touching 10 million travellers by 2013 and 15 million travellers by 2015 won’t remain a distant dream.