[App Fridays] The Ministry of Tourism and its ‘Incredible India’ initiative

Almost all of us cherish the thought of going on a holiday to a new or exotic place completely different from our familiar surroundings. While we travel abroad to experience this, most of us are not aware of the incredible diversity and volume of breathtakingly beautiful and interesting places one can visit in their own home country, India. The Ministry of Tourism through its ‘Incredible India’ initiative aims to change that.

What is it about?

The Ministry of Tourism in India has come out with an app titled ‘Incredible India’ for International and domestic tourists to access and discover information about Indian tourism more easily.

The app provides access to information about Ministry of Tourism recognized tourism service providers namely approved inbound tour operators, travel agents, domestic tour operators, adventure tour operators, tourist tour operators, classified hotels and approved regional level tourist guides available in respective cities or tourist centers across India.

Tourists can also query similar details for any other city he or she plans to travel to in future. In addition to this, the application will provide places of interest, which will help the tourist in seeking services from the Government of India recognized service providers and receive quality and reliable services from them.

Features

Users can either let the GPS detect their location and provide information based on that or they can also search manually based on their choice.

After the location is selected, the app provides information about places of interest, classified hotels by the Ministry, approved travel trade operators and approved guides.

Users can also add any hotels, operators and guides as their ‘Favourites’ to make it easier to search for them.

There is also a ‘Contact Us’ tab organised according to the states to help users clarify any queries. The name, office address, contact number and email Ids are also provided. It is also possible to ‘Clear All Data’, which erases all Favourites and searches and also ‘Update Data’ which may be used to install updates from the developer.

Pros and Cons

The app is simple to use and has a patriotic background design with saffron, white and green.

All the information is available easily and it is also possible to place a call, email or add to contact list easily through the app. Users can also read about places of interest and then easily locate it, by just clicking ‘Locate’ which will then open the user’s default browser and identify the place and provide other details.

While trying out the manual search function with all four of the categories, including places of interest, hotels, travel trades and guides selected, it failed to provide any details about a few cities and returned no results, while it worked fine for a few other cities.

Since the app is quite new the options are limited to the popular cities and there is a scope for a lot more cities and towns to be added.

YS Verdict

This is an incredible ‘Made In India’ app that has great potential to provide authentic and valuable information which can be useful for both domestic and international travellers, who are looking to explore a new city or town and need access to the relevant information on the go.

A must try app for all the travel junkies and casual travellers alike. You can download it here for Android devices.