I’ll admit it I’m tired of writing the same sentence. India has never had a shortage of things to sell to travelers. Heritage, food, beaches, mountains, wildlife, festivals. The shelves are full.
The trouble is that most of the shelves are in the back of the store. We’ve written plenty about why inbound travel lags a booming domestic market, from visas to connectivity to cost. But a traveler can’t buy what they can’t find.
Last week, the government took a real swing at that problem. The Ministry of Tourism and ONDC launched the National Digital Tourism Stack, which puts homestays, guides, attractions and transport providers on one open digital layer. More than 23,000 experiences and homestays are in scope, with a pilot in January 2027 and a wider rollout from July.
It’s a smart idea for a market this fragmented. Big hotel chains and airlines know how to be found. The family-run homestay and the neighborhood guide mostly don’t, relying on WhatsApp threads, Instagram pages and whoever happens to know a guy.
The digital stack is also built with AI in mind. Travelers may soon skip searching and just ask an agent what to do in India. For that to work, the agent has to find, understand and trust what’s out there.
Of course, no stack will fix a visa queue or a safety perception problem. But it’s a start. For once, the shelves in the back of the store might finally get some light.
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Airlines are being reordered from the outside, by the platforms, agents, and AI now rewriting how trips get discovered and booked.
This September in New York, Corneel Koster (CEO, Virgin Atlantic), Mark Galardo (Air Canada), and Delta's Scott Jordan take the stage alongside the CEOs of Booking Holdings, Expedia, and Uber, in the room where airline strategy meets the forces reshaping distribution.
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