Events & Activities –

The department periodically organizes National tourism conferences, international panel meets, national workshops on student’s internship and research techniques and application on tourism studies. The field trips, tourism internship training programs and resource talks are some of the events are organized on every academic year by the department to cater practical exposure concerning tourism studies to the student’s community.

National Conference organized by the department on the occasion of World Tourism Day
In celebration for the World Tourism Day, the Department of Tourism and Travel Management, Jyoti Nivas College Autonomous organized a national level virtual Conference on “Tourism for Inclusive Growth: Resilience, Resurgence, Reclaim”. The conference was conducted on 27th September, 2021 in the online platform Microsoft teams from 14:00 PM – 16:00 PM.
The chief patron of this event was the principal of Jyoti Nivas College, Dr. Sr. Lalitha Thomas and the eminent resource people for the national conference were Mr. Vinod Zutshi, a former Indian administrator from the 1982 batch with 35 years working experience for the Central government and the State government of Rajasthan and the Former secretary for the Ministry of Tourism under the Government of India, Professor Deepak Raj Gupta, professor of the school of Hospitality and Tourism Management in the University of Jammu and Mr. Ajay Prakash, the President of the Travel Agents Federation of India.
The keynote speaker Mr. Zutshi IAS gave us an overview of what the sector has lost due to Covid-19 and the ways to overcome it by working towards sustainable tourism. The industry needs health protocols, safety awareness, and primarily government support. Innovative strategies, plans, schemes, models using the latest technologies are the need of the hour. There is an up strain in the tourism industry like never before and the biggest threat is the lockdown. He further added the principles of sustainable tourism namely growth, using resources, reducing wastage, integrating national and international, market tourism, and ongoing research amongst the many. He explained about how the government must come up with new policies and how the ministry of tourism of India has a role in rebuilding, speed, and scale of development, destination skilled programs, training. And to provide this, all the state ministries of tourism need to come together. In his words, tour and technology go hand in hand.
The talk was followed by Mr. Ajay Prakash, who has worked in Air India, Nomat travels, Chairman, Mumbai. He began by addressing the tourism students as the most excited ones on the 41st Tourism Day. Continuing, how the sector had lost people and the business was hit by Covid-19. All this connects us from across boundaries, the human resources in the industry are to connect bridges and come up with protocols to overcome. He stated 3 major steps that need the efforts to be put into and they are Resilience, Responsibility, and Relevance. He talked about how there is an ongoing demand for wildlife sanctuaries and that tourism is about people and the environment.
Volunteer Tourism, Mr. Deepak Raj Gupta began with how Covid-19 affects tourism largely and 75% of people are working under the unorganized sector in India which he strongly feels is an improvement. He is optimistic about the Tourism industry bouncing back if one spend time in domestic tourism, rural tourism, and handloom in India. Government should come forward and build confidence for all stakeholders. Students should join Tourism management courses and should be trained well. Technology and entrepreneurship play a vital role. He referred to Mr. M. S. D Roy who started as a bell boy and dreamt of owning a hotel in Shimla and became one.

Tourism Research Lecture Series - 1
The Department conducted the first series of their Tourism Research Lecture Series on 31st August 2021, Tuesday. The speaker, Dr. Reyaz Ahmad Qureshi is senior personnel in the tourism industry and had been serving the Ministry of Tourism, Jammu and Kashmir for decades. Dr. Reyaz has done his presentation on the topic, “Emerging Opportunities in Tourism Research: An Indian Scenario”.
The presentation and lecture began with a brief introductory talk about the tourism industry, its position and contribution to India, the changes in scenario in the industry and how most countries were stepping up their games to develop tourism in their respective countries as a major force. He further mentioned how tourism was a highly competitive industry and emphasized on the potential of India to develop tourism with the abundant natural resources, diverse culture, topography, religion, language, architecture, lifestyle, and climate.
He talked about tourism growing in a high speed as a sector and its contribution to our economy and employment generation. He further gave the brief overview of tourism scenario in India. He emphasized on the huge employment opportunities and foreign exchange it has generated. He further mentioned that India has very big potential for developing tourism which unfortunately, is not much focused upon by the people as they are not eager to know about those potential in our country and added in the phase of development, we have got lot of development. Then giving a brief overview as to why tourism research is important, he explained the importance to research of the flora and fauna of our country, our domestic tourism market and international tourism market. He emphasized the importance of research to figure out about our competitors in the tourism market, and to know about the relations between the public administration and the destinations. He further added the necessity of the Tourism related Authority to have knowledge about tourist’s tastes and preferences.
In the context of sustainable development, he talked about tourism can be regarded as complex system with many diverse elements of diverse organisations like Travel Agent, Tour Operations, Hotel Lodges, in both public and private sector. He also spoke about the key components of Tourism System like locality, local community, enunciating about the presence and requirement of the public administration and private sectors in addition to the local inhabitants. He further expressed the responsibility of the above-mentioned groups in the administration and development of particular destination.

Tourism Research Lecture Series - 2
The department of Tourism and Travel Management, Jyoti Nivas College Autonomous conducted series 2, “Impact of Tourism Activities on Destinations” of their on-going Tourism Research Lecture Series on 21st September 2021. Dr. Shweta Gaur who was the resource person of the day is a doctorate in regional development and is an Engagement Manager at Sattva Consulting. She has great experiences under her belt in Tourism and Community Empowerment and education research & training. She has been part of pan-India research projects for the Government of India such as “Quality of Education in Government Schools of Karnataka”, “Social Audit of Karnataka Knowledge Commission”, “Endogenous Rural Tourism and Community Empowerment”, “Life skills Education in Government Schools and Holistic Development of Children.”
Starting on the day’s lecture Dr. Shweta spoke about the views on tourism and its contributions to the people and the impacts of COVID19 on this industry. She mentioned that Tourism has no permanent form and it changes from time to time. She divided the session into three sections to better understand the phenomena of Tourism. She divided the students into rooms with certain numbers and made them discuss on the questions she gave for 10 minutes and after which she brought them back to the main session for the representative of each group would speak to her. Dr. Shweta Gaur delivered an inspiring and highly educating talk to the students regarding the "Impacts of Tourism Activities on Destinations and Reflection on the Strategic Measures to minimize its Harmful Effects".