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How Spiritual Events Like Mahakumbh Uniting Global Travel Industry and Inspire New Tourism Trend? – Travel And Tour World
Monday, December 23, 2024
India has long been revered as a land of spirituality, culture, and heritage. With its ancient traditions, sacred sites, and globally recognized spiritual events, India has successfully positioned itself as a major player in spiritual tourism. One of the most notable examples of this is the Mahakumbh Mela, an event that transcends religious boundaries and attracts millions from across the world. Spiritual tourism in India is not just a cultural experience but a significant economic and social phenomenon that unites the global travel industry.
The Significance of Spiritual Tourism in India
India’s spiritual tourism is deeply rooted in its diverse cultural and religious fabric. The country is home to numerous sacred sites, from the ghats of Varanasi to the temples of Tamil Nadu. These destinations offer not only a religious experience but also an opportunity for travelers to explore India’s rich history and traditions.
The rise of spiritual tourism in India has been fueled by a growing global interest in wellness, mindfulness, and cultural immersion. Travelers from all walks of life seek solace, enlightenment, and a deeper connection to themselves through India’s spiritual offerings. This burgeoning sector contributes significantly to India’s tourism economy, attracting both domestic and international visitors.
Latest from Travel And Tour World: Boosting Tourism and Employment: Mahakumbh Set to Create Opportunities for Over 45,000 Families in UP
Mahakumbh: The Pinnacle of Spiritual Tourism
The Mahakumbh Mela, held every 12 years at Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad), is the largest gathering of people on the planet. Recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage, this event draws millions of pilgrims, tourists, and spiritual seekers. The scale and grandeur of Mahakumbh make it a global spectacle, highlighting India’s spiritual tourism prowess.
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During the Mahakumbh, the holy confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati rivers becomes the epicenter of religious fervor. Devotees believe that taking a dip in the sacred waters purifies the soul and washes away sins. This belief, combined with the event’s cultural significance, attracts travelers from diverse backgrounds, fostering unity and shared experiences.
Economic and Cultural Impact
The Mahakumbh Mela is not just a religious event but a major economic driver for the region. Local businesses, artisans, and service providers benefit immensely from the influx of tourists. Hotels, transport services, and eateries see a surge in demand, creating a ripple effect on the local economy.
On a cultural level, Mahakumbh serves as a platform to showcase India’s traditions, art forms, and rituals. International travelers are introduced to the richness of Indian culture, encouraging cross-cultural exchanges and fostering global goodwill. The event’s ability to unite people from different countries and cultures underscores its universal appeal.
Latest from Travel And Tour World: Mahakumbh 2025 Prelude’ Event in New Delhi Highlights Uttar Pradesh’s Preparations for the Grand Spiritual Gathering in Prayagraj: New updates you need to know
Leveraging Technology for Global Reach
India’s tourism authorities have embraced technology to enhance the global appeal of spiritual tourism. Virtual tours, digital marketing campaigns, and online ticketing systems make events like Mahakumbh more accessible to international audiences. Social media platforms play a crucial role in amplifying the reach, showcasing India’s spiritual heritage to millions worldwide.
For instance, live streaming of Mahakumbh rituals allows those unable to travel to participate virtually, creating a sense of inclusion. This innovative approach not only broadens the audience but also sets a benchmark for integrating technology into tourism.
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Promoting Sustainable Tourism
The scale of events like Mahakumbh raises concerns about environmental impact and sustainability. To address these challenges, the Indian government and local authorities have implemented eco-friendly measures, including waste management systems, renewable energy solutions, and sustainable infrastructure.
Promoting sustainable tourism ensures that India’s spiritual destinations remain pristine and accessible for future generations. Initiatives like green pilgrimages and eco-conscious accommodations demonstrate India’s commitment to balancing cultural preservation with environmental responsibility.
Collaboration with the Global Travel Industry
India’s emphasis on spiritual tourism has led to collaborations with international travel operators, airlines, and hospitality providers. These partnerships aim to streamline travel experiences, making it easier for global tourists to explore India’s spiritual destinations. Customized tour packages, multilingual guides, and visa facilitation services enhance the appeal of spiritual tourism for international travelers.
Additionally, India’s participation in global tourism events and expos showcases its spiritual offerings to a wider audience. These efforts position India as a leader in the spiritual tourism sector, fostering international cooperation and tourism growth.
Latest from Travel And Tour World: Indian Railways To Operate 1,225 Special Trains For Upcoming Mahakumbh
Expanding Beyond Mahakumbh
While Mahakumbh is a flagship event, India’s spiritual tourism extends far beyond it. Destinations like Rishikesh, Bodh Gaya, and Amritsar attract millions of visitors annually. Yoga retreats, meditation centers, and wellness resorts further enrich the spiritual tourism landscape, catering to a diverse range of interests.
The Indian government’s initiatives, such as the Swadesh Darshan Scheme, focus on developing thematic circuits, including spiritual and religious circuits. These initiatives aim to create a comprehensive tourism experience, connecting lesser-known destinations with major spiritual hubs.
The Future of Spiritual Tourism in India
As the global travel industry continues to evolve, India’s spiritual tourism is poised for significant growth. The increasing demand for meaningful travel experiences aligns perfectly with India’s offerings. By leveraging its spiritual heritage, India can attract a new wave of tourists seeking authenticity, enlightenment, and cultural immersion.
Discover everything and anything about travel, tourism, trade shows at the Travel And Tour World, including breaking travel news and weekly travel updates for travel trade, airlines, cruise, railways, technology, travel association, DMCs, and video interviews and promotional videos.
The success of spiritual tourism in India also hinges on continuous innovation, infrastructure development, and sustainable practices. By addressing challenges and embracing opportunities, India can solidify its position as a global leader in spiritual tourism.
Latest from Travel And Tour World: Uttar Pradesh’s Tourism Growth Accelerates as Mahakumbh 2025 Prelude in New Delhi Invites Global Travelers to Experience India’s Spiritual and Cultural Heritage: New Travel Updates You Need to Know
India’s spiritual tourism, exemplified by iconic events like Mahakumbh, is more than just a cultural experience. It is a powerful force that unites the global travel industry, fostering connections, promoting cultural understanding, and driving economic growth. With its rich heritage, innovative approaches, and commitment to sustainability, India stands as a beacon of spiritual tourism, inspiring travelers and uniting cultures worldwide.
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Tags: Asia Tourism, cultural tourism, global travel industry, India, indian heritage, Indian Tourism, Mahakumbh, Pilgrimage tourism, religious tourism, spiritual tourism, Uttar Pradesh, Varanasi
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Tags: Asia Tourism, cultural tourism, global travel industry, India, indian heritage, Indian Tourism, Mahakumbh, Pilgrimage tourism, religious tourism, spiritual tourism, Uttar Pradesh, Varanasi
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Ordnance Survey: Navigating the role of AI and ethical considerations in geospatial technology – AI News
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As we approach a new year filled with potential, the landscape of technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), is on the brink of significant transformation. Manish Jethwa, CTO at Ordnance Survey (OS), the national mapping agency for Great Britain, offers an insightful glimpse into what we can expect from these advancements and their implications for the geospatial sector.
Breaking Down Barriers with AI
Looking ahead, Jethwa anticipates continued significant advancements in AI and machine learning, particularly with the push towards Gen AI. According to him, the integration of large language models (LLMs) with more sophisticated agents will not only perform complex tasks on behalf of users but also further reduce barriers to interaction. This shift, especially in the geospatial field, means that translating natural language into precise data queries will become more seamless, ultimately making geospatial datasets more accessible, mainstream, and user-friendly.
Training for Complex Tasks
Beyond LLMs, Jethwa is optimistic about progress in the broader category of machine learning, driven by greater access to graphics processing units for training.
He says: “At Ordnance Survey (OS), we’ll leverage this capability to train models for specific, complex tasks such as automatic feature extraction from imagery.
“With an increasing volume of data generated automatically, hopefully next year will also bring innovative tools and techniques to validate data, ensuring it can be confidently utilised for its intended use.”
He underscores the importance of not only pursuing new capabilities but also ensuring that these tools are integrated responsibly into workflows, focusing on quality and risk management.
The Ethical Frontier
The rapid evolution of AI brings with it an urgent need for ethical considerations.
Jethwa explains: “I would like to see a greater emphasis on ethical AI and responsible technology development,” including creating AI systems that are “transparent, fair, and unbiased” while also considering their environmental and societal impact.
This focus on ethics is encapsulated in OS’s Responsible AI Charter, which guides their approach to integrating new techniques safely.
Moreover, Jethwa highlights the role of workforce development in successful transformations. He believes organisations must commit to “retraining and upskilling employees to prepare them for the impact of AI and digital transformation.”
This is vital to ensure that in the pursuit of enhanced efficiency, companies do not “lose the personality, creativity, and emotion that we bring as humans into the workplace.”
Embracing Change While Managing Risks
Despite the promise of technological advancements, obstacles remain in the journey toward digital transformation. Jethwa notes that challenges such as “cultural resistance and rapid successive changes leading to change fatigue will likely persist.”
He advocates for a careful balance between adopting new technologies and addressing the human elements of transformation processes.
As AI continues to influence various aspects of business, from decision-making to risk management, the issue of cybersecurity also looms large. Jethwa points out that “cybersecurity threats being powered by AI are becoming more sophisticated,” urging companies to develop comprehensive strategies that cover everything from data storage to analysis documentation.
The Imperative to Progress
In an evolving landscape, organisations that stagnate risk falling behind their competitors. Jethwa explains: “Companies that fail to keep up open themselves up to risks, such as changing customer expectations as well as attracting and retaining talent.”
He also emphasises the need for a “clear vision of future goals, effective communication of progress, and celebrating milestones to sustain momentum” in digital transformation initiatives.
As we move into a new year filled with promise, the future of AI and geospatial technology holds transformative power – but it must be used responsibly. The path that lies ahead in 2025 requires vigilance, an unwavering commitment to ethical practices and a human touch in order to drive successful innovation.
(Photos by Annie Spratt and Ordnance Survey)
Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.
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Sonic mainnet is launched: Can performance narrative, coin swap, and airdrop bring Fantom back to its peak state? – PANews
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Author: Frank, PANews
From the once-star public chain Fantom to today's Sonic Labs, 2024 is a year of drastic changes on this Layer1 chain: foundation name change, mainnet upgrade, token swap. Fantom tried to complete its "second entrepreneurship" with a series of actions. However, from the TVL falling to less than $100 million, the controversy over additional issuance, to the shadow of cross-chain security that has not yet dissipated, Sonic still faces many doubts and challenges. Can the high performance of the new chain be realized? Can token swaps and airdrops save the ecosystem?
On December 18, 2024, the Fantom Foundation was officially renamed Sonic Labs and announced the launch of the Sonic mainnet. As a new public chain known for its sub-second transaction speed, performance naturally becomes the most important technical narrative of Fantom. On December 21, just three days after the launch, official data showed that 1 million blocks had been produced on the Sonic chain.
What is the secret of "speed"? According to the official introduction, Sonic has made deep optimizations to both the consensus layer and the storage layer, and introduced technical means such as live pruning, node synchronization acceleration, and database weight loss, so that nodes can confirm and record transactions with a lighter burden. The official said that compared with the old Opera chain, the node synchronization speed is increased by 10 times, and the cost of large-scale RPC nodes can be reduced by 96%, laying the foundation for a truly high-performance network.
It is worth noting that although "high TPS" is not new in the competition of public chains, it is still one of the core indicators to attract users and project parties. Fast and smooth interactive experience can usually lower the threshold of users to blockchain, and also provide possibilities for application scenarios such as complex contracts, high-frequency transactions, and metaverse games. 
In addition to "high performance", Sonic said that it fully supports EVM and is compatible with mainstream smart contract languages such as Solidity and Vyper. On the surface, "self-developed virtual machine vs. compatible with EVM" was once the watershed of new public chains, but Sonic chose the latter. The advantage of this is that the migration threshold for developers is low. As long as the smart contract originally written on Ethereum or other EVM chains, it can be directly deployed to Sonic without major changes, saving a lot of adaptation costs.
In the face of the fiercely competitive public chain market, giving up EVM often means re-cultivating developers and users. Obviously, Sonic hopes to "conveniently" inherit the Ethereum ecosystem on the basis of strong performance and implement the project as quickly as possible. From the official Q&A, it can be seen that the Sonic team has also considered other routes, but based on the judgment of industry inertia, EVM is still the most "greatest common divisor" choice, which helps to quickly accumulate the number of applications and user base in the early stage.
In addition, Fantom once fell into trouble due to cross-chain in the Multichain incident. Therefore, Sonic's cross-chain strategy has also attracted much attention. The official technical documents list the cross-chain Sonic Gateway as a key technology and specifically introduce the security mechanism. Sonic Gateway uses the method of validators running clients on both Sonic and Ethereum, with decentralized and tamper-proof "Fail-Safe" protection. The design of the "Fail-Safe" mechanism is quite special: if the bridge has no "heartbeat" report for 14 days, the original assets can be automatically unlocked on the Ethereum side to protect user funds; by default, cross-chain packaging is performed every 10 minutes (ETH→Sonic) and 1 hour (Sonic→ETH), and it can also be triggered instantly for a fee; Sonic's own validator network operates the gateway by running clients on Sonic and Ethereum. This ensures that Sonic Gateway is as decentralized as the Sonic chain itself, eliminating the risk of centralized manipulation.
From a design perspective, Sonic’s main update is to attract a new round of developers and funds through “hardware configurations” such as 10,000-level TPS, sub-second settlement, and EVM compatibility, so that this old public chain can return to the market with a new image and performance.
In fact, the most discussed topic in the community is actually Sonic's new token economics. On the one hand, the 1:1 exchange FTM model seems to be equivalent to a translation. On the other hand, the airdrop plan after 6 months is equivalent to an additional 6% of tokens (about 190 million tokens), which is also considered by the community to be a practice of diluting the value of tokens.
When Sonic was first launched, it set the same initial supply (total amount) of 3.175 billion as FTM, ensuring that old coin holders could get S at a 1:1 ratio. However, a closer look reveals that the additional issuance may only be part of Sonic, and there are also many practices on total balance in token economics.
The official document shows that starting six months after the mainnet goes online, 1.5% (about 47.625 million S) will be issued every year for network operations, marketing, DeFi promotion, etc., for six years. However, if this part of the tokens is not used up in a certain year, they will be 100% destroyed to ensure that only the additional part is actually invested in construction, rather than being stored in the foundation.
In the first four years, the 3.5% annualized validator reward of the Sonic mainnet mainly comes from Opera's unused FTM "block reward share", which can avoid the minting of a large number of new S at the beginning of the launch, causing hyperinflation. After four years, the issuance of new tokens will be resumed at a pace of 1.75% to pay block rewards. 
In order to hedge the inflationary pressure caused by this part of the increase, Sonic designed three destruction mechanisms:
Fee Monetization Burn: If a DApp does not participate in FeeM, users will directly destroy 50% of the gas fees in transactions generated by the application; this is equivalent to imposing a higher "deflation tax" on applications that "do not join the cooperative sharing", encouraging DApp to actively participate in FeeM.
Airdrop Burn : It takes 270 days for the vesting period to fully obtain the 75% airdrop shares; if the user chooses to unlock in advance, a portion of the airdrop shares will be lost, and these "deducted" shares will be directly destroyed, thereby reducing the circulation of S in the market.
Ongoing Funding Burn: 1.5% annual issuance for network development. If the tokens are not used up in the current year, the remaining tokens will be burned 100%. This can prevent the foundation from hoarding coins and limit the long-term crowding out of tokens by certain members.
Overall, Sonic attempts to ensure ecological development funds through "controllable issuance" on the one hand, and "destruction" at multiple points on the other hand to curb inflation. The most noteworthy is the "burning" under the FeeM mechanism, because it is directly linked to the participation level and transaction volume of DApps, which means that the more applications do not participate in FeeM, the greater the deflation on the chain; on the contrary, the more FeeM applications there are, the less "deflation tax" there is, but the developer share will increase, forming a dynamic balance between profit sharing and deflation.
The Fantom team was once in the limelight during the bull market of 2021-2022, but Fantom's on-chain performance in the past year has not been ideal. Fantom's current TVL is only about 90 million US dollars, ranking 49th among DeFi public chains. At its peak, Fantom's TVL value was as high as about 7 billion US dollars. The current data is only about 1% of the peak period. 
Perhaps in order to revive the DeFi ecosystem, Sonic has launched the Fee Monetization (FeeM) mechanism, claiming that it can return up to 90% of the network gas fee to the project party, allowing them to obtain continuous income based on the actual usage of the chain without over-reliance on external financing. This model draws on the "sharing by traffic" approach of the Web2 platform, hoping to encourage more DeFi, NFT, GameFi and other developers to come to Sonic and stay.
In addition, the official has set up an airdrop pool of 200 million S tokens and launched two ways of playing: Sonic Points, which encourages ordinary users to actively interact, hold or accumulate certain historical activities on Sonic; Sonic Gems, an incentive for developers, encourages them to launch attractive and real-use DApps on the Sonic chain. The part of S used for airdrops also incorporates mechanisms such as "linear attribution + NFT lock + early unlocking and destruction", trying to find a balance between airdrops and medium- and long-term stickiness.
The mainnet launch, the 1 million block milestone, and the cross-chain Bridge preview. These news have indeed increased Sonic's exposure in the short term. But the current reality is that the prosperity of the ecosystem is far from its peak. At present, the full competition of public chains such as Layer2, Solana, Aptos, and Sui has already brought the market into an era of multi-chain blooming. High TPS is no longer the only selling point. If Sonic cannot explode one or two "fist projects" in the ecosystem, it may be difficult to compete with other popular chains.
However, the launch of Sonic has received support from some industry star projects. In December, the AAVE community proposed to deploy Aave v3 on Sonic, and Uniswap also announced that it has completed the deployment on Sonic. In addition, Sonic can also directly inherit the 333 pledge agreements on Fantom as the ecological foundation. These are all advantages compared to a pure new public chain. 
Will it rely on performance and high incentives to bring back funds and developers? The answer may depend on whether Sonic can deliver convincing answers in terms of specific application implementation, governance transparency, and cross-chain security in 2025. If everything goes well, Sonic may be able to reproduce the glory of Fantom in the past. If it only stops at concept hype, or fails to resolve internal conflicts and security concerns, this "second venture" may also return to mediocrity in the multi-chain melee.
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