Journalism of Courage
WITH SUMMER vacations set to begin, the Incredible India Tourist Helpline is gearing up to handle a much heavier flow of calls. Since its formal launch in February, the state-sponsored helpline for domestic and foreign tourists has been receiving only a trickle of calls, and not all of them tourism-related. The helpline offers sightseeing-related information and also helps them in situations of distress.
“The best experience so far has been helping out a Russian woman who was stranded in Bhopal and apprehended by police. While she didn’t know English, the police didn’t know Russian. After she called us, our Russian-speaking executive acted as a bridge between her and police personnel, who then took her to the nearest Russian embassy,” he added.
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When it was launched as a pilot project last year, the helpline — available on toll free number 1800111363 or on the short code 1363 — handled calls only in Hindi and English. In February this year, it was expanded to include 10 foreign languages — Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
Before their induction, call centre employees had also been given a week-long training and orientation programme by the Tourism Ministry, on custom laws, foreign exchange, food, transport, connectivity, sightseeing and how to handle emergencies.
“The mandate given to the call centre is to offer information relating to travel and tourism in India to visitors, and to assist them with advice on action to be taken during times of distress while travelling in India and if need be, alert the concerned authorities. Now, those travelling in or planning to travel to India can seek help and information for a hassle-free experience,” said Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma.
Last week, Sharma had spoken at length in Parliament about this first-of-its-kind initiative. He added that with the helpline having completed a quarter this week, his ministry was set to conduct its first review.
“I have deputed a person from my own ministry to make random calls to the helpline to assess how it is going and how callers are being handled. After all, the government is incurring a huge expense on this facility. Once we get the first quarterly report, we will work on making it better,” he said.
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