New Delhi: Addressing the members of trade media, the presidential candidate, Lally Mathews, ED Divine Voyages, contesting for the position of President, announced the manifesto of his team.
He said that it was time to bring in more transparency and democratise the working style of the organisation. He said that if elected, his team will closely work with sub-committees and empower them to work in their areas and allocate them a budget to carry out their operations.
“I would like to make all EC meetings live, to bring in the transparency in our workings to make the functioning transparent,” said Mathews
“Several organisations like ADTOI, OTOAI came out of IATO, because of our closed style of working, had we been more transparent, democratic and more inclusive, this would not have happened 10 years ago. It is now high time to ensure all members get participation and a platform to express their opinions, suggestions and ideas to make IATO stronger, more visible, transparent and inclusive” said EM Najeeb, Chairman, ATE Group of Companies contesting for the position of Sr. Vice President.
“If elected We will be working to make the amendments to the constitution that have been pending for past 7-8 years. We also want to work with the government to find tangible solutions towards the survival and revival of tourism industry so nobody from tourism industry goes out of a job, and their skills and experience remains within the industry.” He added.
The entire team shared its concern over the recent decision of IATO to change the status of ACTIVE members to ALLIED members.
They said the decision to make this change was based on members failure to comply with the Ministry of Tourism’s criteria for a recognised tour operator. They thought this was a totally wrong decision since there is no provision in IATO’s constitution to change the status of its members and there exist no criteria for members to have a recognition from Ministry of Tourism, to join IATO
Rajesh Mudgill, Managing Director, Planet India Travels candidate for the position of Honorary Secretary said “Today the need is to look for international collaborations, look for ways to work with international outbound associations have tie-ups with them, have bilateral meetings so all members can reach out to them directly and increase business”
When asked about priorities for working on Survival, Skill development and Working with Government on Policymaking, he said that the Immediate concern is to look into the survival of all our members, hence the team has plans to rigorously work with the government to find out ways to provide some soft loans at lowest interests for the members and to discuss ways of getting the SEIS refunds at the earliest.
“As an organisation, we have failed to present our real issues to the government. We have relied heavily on other organisations to do this for us. Since these organisations had several of their own concerns, our issues took a back seat
“For policymaking, it is very important to brief the government correctly. We plan to work with the government and raise issues specific to our members to find faster solutions “said Mudgil
Talking about the skill development, Sunil Mishra, Cosmos Tours & Travels contesting for the position of Honorary Treasurer said that the students are the soldiers of our industry and developing a skilled workforce is one of our key priorities.
“We need to make it more practical and relevant for students. In the months of July and august we had trained over 2500 students from 96 universities. This skill development programme was organised at our teams’ level independently. We intend to continue working in the same way.
We plan to organise educational seminars including language courses fro our members in collaboration with reputed language schools.
The “Team for Change” included Lally Mathews, MD Divine Voyages, contesting for President, E M Najeeb, Chairman, ATE Group of Companies contesting for Sr. Vice President, Lajpat Rai, Managing Director, Lotus Trans Travels, contesting for Vice President. Rajesh Mudgill, Managing Director, Planet India Travels contesting for Honorary Secretary, Sunil Mishra, Cosmos Tours & Travels contesting for Honorary Treasurer & Sanjay Razdan, Razdan Holidays contesting for Honorary Joint Secretary.
The contestants for EC Members – Active are Arun Anand – Midtown Travels, Harish Mathur – Concord Travels & Tours, Ravinder Kumar – Indian Legends Holidays, Tony Marwah – Indian Travel Promotion Company and Vishal Yadav – Incredible Destination Management Service
The contestants for EC Members – Allied are A. Aarif – Parveen Travels and P. Vijayasarathy -Benchmark Hotels
Mr Lally Mathew is Executive Director of Divine Voyajes not MD. as per letter 7th November 2019