New Delhi – ATOAI organized a National Awareness Webinar called The Great Indian Outdoors at the Threshold today, 15th September 2021 via virtual platform Zoom from 1100hrs to 13:00hrs.

The session was conducted by ATOAI Vice President, Mr. Vaibhav Kala.

The Great Indian outdoors opened up two decades ago to a large domestic audience. Over the past 20 years, the industry has mushroomed to over 15,000 stakeholders in the outdoor adventure travel industry.

Fighting to keep up with this pace of growth, are guidelines and regulations, that need to be implemented, to curb a rising fatality and accident rate, that not only threatens the industry but also degrades the USP of India’s natural heritage. The arrest of this situation is the need of the hour.

The panel discussion was moderated by the ATOAI President, Mr. Vishwas Makhija and the speakers were:
1. Dr. V. Venu, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala
2. Ms. Rupinder Brar, Additional Director General, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India
3. Brig. Ashok Abbey, President, Indian Mountaineering Foundation
4. Ms. Soity Banerjee, Project Editor, Outlook Responsible Tourism Initiative

The Webinar was an inclusive event and was well attended by over 500 people from all across the country via different online mediums such as Zoom, Facebook, YouTube etc. and lasted for about 2 hours.

The Webinar was dedicated in the memory of Late Mr. Akshay Kumar – Past President ATOAI. This topic was so close to his heart that he would do whatever possible to save our natural heritage, & whatever possible to raise the bar of the standards of adventure tourism in our country.

ATOAI is the national representative body of Indian adventure tour operators with about 500 member organizations pan India. ATOAI works closely with the industry and the Governments both at the Central and State levels to advocate policies, study trends, and create a safe environment for guests to participate in adventures across 31 verticals.