The Government of India(GOI) took several significant steps in order to raise the number of Foreign Tourist Arrivals(FTA)’s in the country. These steps involved efforts to make tourism more affordable, convenient and accessible for the visitors. The government is serious about getting 20 million FTA’s into India in the year 2020, recently it launched the five year tourist e- visa charged just USD 80 along with this a 1 year tourist e-visa was also launched which will be charged USD 40. Apart from work on the visa front 137 Himalayan peaks were opened up for foreign mountaineers so as to showcase India as an attractive destination for mountaineers. Earlier foreign mountaineers who desired to to climb these peaks were required to get a clearance from the the Ministry of Home Affairs, but now they would be able to directly apply to the Indian Mountaineering Foundation(IMF) for climbing these peaks. In the month of September the GST Council cut GST rates for Hoteliers, Hoteliers now need to pay zero GST on rooms charged upto Rupees 1000 per day and rooms charged between rupees 2001 to 7500 the GST rates were brought down to 12% from the earlier 18%, for room charged INR 7500 and above GST rates were brought down to 18% from the earlier 28%. Other such tourism friendly measures include introducing signages in various foreign languages for making these more convenient for foreign visitors The Ministry of Tourism has also introduced the spectacle of night lighting at many of the historical Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) sites and increased there visiting hours, illumination of monuments have been started at monuments of Delhi and UP as of now. For the benefit of foreign tourists signages in various languages have been introduced starting from the Buddhist circuit where signages in Korean, Sinhalese, Japanese have been introduced.
