The tourism industry in Jaisalmer, crippled by the Covid-19 pandemic, has taken a novel initiative to boost tourism. Alarmed at Spicejet stopping flight operations to Jaislamer, the tourist industry has offered to reimburse the airline for its losses. Spicejet recently stopped operations to Jaisalmer due to poor traffic on the Delhi-Jaisalmer and Jaisalmer-Ahmedabad routes. Worried at the prospect of a further slide in tourist traffic, around 100 representatives from the hospitality sector, travel and tours associations, tourist guides associations, tent owners association and handicrafts associations worked out a unique solution. They said that they will reimburse Spicejet for any loss it suffers on its operations on these routes and have urged the airline to restart operations. After a positive response from the airline, operations are expected to start within 10 days. The tourism industry has seen a fall of around 50-60 percent in tourist traffic to Jaisalmer as compared to last year, said Manvendra Singh Shekhawat, founder president of the organisation ‘I Love Jaisalmer’ which has been working on projects related to strengthening tourism ecosystem of Jaisalmer, and also managing director of Suryagarh Hotel In December 2020, Jaisalmer, a popular tourist destination on Rajasthan’s western border, saw over 9000 tourist arrivals by air. After having spoken to Spicejet, Shekhawat wrote to Jaisalmer collector Ashish Modi and gave several suggestions including minimum seat guarantee/viability gap funding by the tourism industry to the airline to help minimise its losses. “He was very forthcoming, and promptly called a meeting of all stakeholders including hoteliers, travel and tours association, tourist guides association and tent owners association, representing hundreds of tourism professionals and entrepreneurs, to find a solution,” said Shekhawat. The Spicejet representatives joined the meeting online. “The airline had communicated that it was not financially viable for them to operate on this route but we checked the data available and realised that it might be worthwhile to check if the tourist footfall would increase since the Covid-19 pandemic is subsiding,” said Modi. “This is just a stop-gap arrangement for not discontinuing the services. We are trying it out for a month to see if the tourist footfall will increase,” he said. The handholding was done by the district administration to bring the multiple stakeholders such as hoteliers, taxi operators, tours and travel associations, handicraft associations with a shared interest onto one platform for discussions and to find a solution. “The airline management told us if they could get a bank guarantee then they were willing to resume flights and fix schedules in a way so that the footfall increases,” said Modi. The hotel and tourism industry representatives gave suggestions to lower cost of operations such as reducing the daily flights to thrice weekly, operating flights to Delhi-Jaisalmer-Delhi flights and Ahmedabad-Jaisalmer-Ahmedabad flights on different days to maximise load factor. The hoteliers and other stakeholders have offered to reimburse the airline for any losses. “The cost of a Delhi-Jaisalmer flight is Rs 6 lakh daily and Rs1 lakh daily for an Ahmedabad- Jaisalmer flight. We have decided to share this cost between all the stakeholders according to their capacity ranging from 5 percent to 25 percent,” said Shekhawat. “The Spicejet officials were very forthcoming and agreeable to our suggestions,” said Shekhawat. “In these trying times, our main motive is to provide easy air connectivity to Jaisalmer to keep the destination competitive. We are actively reaching out to the civil aviation ministry, ministry of tourism to provide additional help and are hopeful to receive a positive response,” he said. Shekhawat said after a verbal agreement with airline management, they are now going to draft an MoU and offer the airline a bank guarantee after which flight operations should restart within 10 days.
