The government is mulling setting up a special purpose vehicle for marketing cruise tourism in India and abroad. This is one of the proposals that may be included in the policy paper being prepared by the shipping department.
"Cruise tourism comes under the jurisdiction of both the shipping department and the tourism ministry, but there is nobody to look at the individual needs of customers and prepare customised packages," a shipping department official said.
The department is preparing a paper to suggest policy measures for promoting cruise tourism. The paper will first be presented to a high-powered committee, comprising representatives from both shipping and tourism ministry. The policy will be enforced after being approved by the committee, and subsequently by the Cabinet.
Other proposals include various tax concessions to lure more foreign cruise operators to do business in India. On Indian waters, a vessel operator was liable to pay a host of levies like entertainment tax on the various programmes being held on-board, an official said.
The policy is also expected to spell out various infrastructural facilities that need to be set up in world class cruise terminals planned at Goa, Cochin, Mumbai, New Mangalore and Tuticorin.
Other levies include taxes imposed on bunkering, services rendered and on the duty-free shops inside the vessel.
The shipping department officials said the cruise operators were not subjected to such levies in international waters. With only 40,000 to 50,000 Indians undertaking cruises every year, this business has not taken off in India. The ministry aimed an increase of 12.3 per cent in traffic in next five years, officials said.
Earlier, there were restriction on vessels for picking up passengers from more than one domestic port, which was reason why no global operator had a cruise route in India. Often the cruises operate indirectly by transporting Indian tourists by air to neighbouring cruise destinations like Singapore and Dubai.
However, despite relaxation of the cabotage, hardly any operators have come in. For instance, many operators like Indian Ocean Liners, Residensea, Carnival, Mediterranean Cuiseliner, Dubai Alliance and Silver Sea had made preliminary inquiries about operating in India but only Star Cruises has started operations in last one year. |
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