The Union Budget 2026–27 gives travellers reasons to smile, offering tax reliefs, improved connectivity and a skills push aimed at making travel easier and more accessible. Steps such as Tax Collected at Source (TCS) relief and renewed focus on heritage tourism, adventure tourism and medical tourism signal optimism for a better travel season. Improved air, rail and regional connectivity are expected to make lesser-known destinations easier to reach, while investments in skills and infrastructure aim to enhance visitor experience and service quality across the tourism value chain.
But does it really go far enough? While the announcements sound promising, the Budget stops short of bold reforms needed to unlock tourism’s full potential as a growth and jobs engine.
Presenting the tourism industry’s perspective, D. Ramchandram, Co-Chair, Tourism Committee, Federation of Telangana Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FTCCI), said the Budget contains positive initiatives but fails to tackle core structural challenges. He welcomed measures such as the seaplane push, setting up hospitality institutions, upgrading hotel management institutes, training 10,000 tourist guides, creating five medical tourism hubs, promoting heritage and archaeological sites, adventure tourism, Buddhist circuits and TCS relief. However, he said these steps are not enough to make Indian tourism globally competitive and employment-intensive.
Ramchandram said key demands, industry or infrastructure status for tourism, GST rationalisation, a comprehensive National Tourism Policy, MSME-focused support, tourism-specific skill development and targeted assistance for Telangana were missing. Without infrastructure status, he noted, tourism projects continue to be treated as real estate, restricting access to affordable long-term finance and slowing investment, especially in Tier-II and Tier-III cities of Telangana.
He also highlighted the absence of a modern National Tourism Policy aligned with global best practices, high GST rates hurting inbound tourism, lack of dedicated credit support for tourism MSMEs, which make up nearly 80 per cent of the sector and support over 40 million jobs, and the absence of a state-specific push for Telangana, despite Hyderabad’s medical tourism ecosystem and heritage destinations like Warangal and the Qutb Shahi monuments.
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