The Current Travel Tangle
Anyone who has planned a multi-city trip across India knows the routine: one app for flights, another for hotels, a third for train tickets, and perhaps several websites to find local guides or unique experiences. While digital tools have made travel
easier, the experience remains fragmented. Booking a flight is simple, but finding a verified homestay in a remote village or a ticket for a local temple 'aarti' often requires navigating a different, sometimes unreliable, set of platforms. This digital separation creates what officials call a “painful experience” for tourists, who have to piece together their itineraries from dozens of disconnected sources. The current system also leaves many small-scale tourism providers, like local artisans, guides, and small homestay owners, invisible to the wider digital marketplace, limiting their access to potential customers.
Enter the National Digital Tourism Stack
To solve this, the Ministry of Tourism, in collaboration with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), launched the National Digital Tourism Stack (NDTS) on World Tourism Day 2026. The NDTS isn't another government booking website or a standalone app. Instead, it’s a shared digital infrastructure—a backend system designed to connect all tourism services onto a single network. The vision is built on a “list once, reach multiple platforms” model. A small homestay owner in a lesser-known destination could list their property on the network, and it would become discoverable and bookable across various participating travel apps, not just one. The system aims to cover everything from accommodation and transport to local tours and cultural attractions, all supported by features like verified supplier credentials, secure digital payments, and a unified grievance redressal mechanism.
A Seamless Experience for Travellers
For travellers, the primary benefit of the NDTS will be convenience and choice. The goal is to move towards a “One ticket, One pass” system, where different parts of a journey can be planned and booked through a connected interface. This could mean discovering and booking a flight, a rural homestay, a museum ticket, and a local guided tour in one seamless process instead of switching between multiple unrelated platforms. By bringing thousands of previously offline or hard-to-find services online, the stack will give travellers access to a wider range of authentic experiences. It also aims to build trust by verifying service providers, ensuring that tourists can book with confidence. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to be a core component, enabling personalised recommendations and travel planning based on a user's preferences.
Empowering Small Tourism Operators
A major goal of the NDTS is to ensure the economic benefits of tourism reach smaller communities and entrepreneurs. Currently, large online travel agencies dominate the market, often making it difficult for small businesses to compete. The open-network model of the NDTS is designed to level the playing field, reducing dependence on a single booking platform. By making local guides, artisans, and homestay operators more visible, the initiative aims to drive tourist spending into rural and lesser-known areas. This supports local jobs and helps distribute tourism demand beyond already overcrowded hotspots. The government plans to onboard 23,000 tourism offerings, including 9,000 homestays and 14,000 tourism experiences, by the end of 2028.
The Road to a 2026 Holiday Plan
While the project has been formally launched, its implementation will happen in phases. The initial preparation and development will continue through the end of 2026. A pilot phase is scheduled to begin in January 2027, with a small batch of homestays and tourism experiences going live on the network. A broader, nationwide rollout and onboarding drive is planned to run from mid-2027 through the end of 2028. Challenges remain, including ensuring widespread adoption by both service providers and existing travel apps, managing data privacy, and building the robust technological backbone required. However, the foundation is being laid, with over 1,000 tourism experiences, including at ASI monuments and museums, already available on the ONDC Network as a starting point.
