visa rules: India needs to relax visa rules to lure more tourists, says Agoda CEO

The Indian government should look to relax visa rules to promote the country as a major tourist destination, said Omri Morgenshtern, the chief executive of Singapore-headquartered online travel platform Agoda. “The basic thing to attract tourists to a country is relaxing visa rules and increasing the number of flights. If there is a visa restriction, then that’s a friction,” Morgenshtern told ET in an interview.He said searches on India on the platform have grown 60% since 2019. “What’s fascinating is that a lot of searches are coming from beyond the usual markets for India like the US and Middle East. A lot of people from Asian countries like Japan are finding India fascinating,” he said. Indians are travelling abroad like never before, taking advantage of airfares and hotel rates on a par with domestic travel and free visas offered by many countries. However, inbound travel remains below pre-Covid-19 levels recorded in 2019, despite growing after the pandemic, according to…