The Ministry of Tourism (MoT), Government of India, and the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) have launched the National Digital Tourism Stack (NDTS), an open digital infrastructure initiative aimed at improving the discoverability, trust, and digital accessibility of India’s tourism ecosystem.
The NDTS is designed to address fragmentation across India’s tourism sector, particularly for smaller businesses, local experiences and lesser-known destinations. The platform will connect tourism providers—including homestays, guides, attractions, experiences and transport services—with travellers through multiple participating digital platforms.
Rather than functioning as another standalone tourism portal or marketplace, the Stack will follow a “list once, reach multiple platforms” model. This will allow tourism providers to publish their offerings once and make them discoverable across participating applications without building separate digital integrations for each platform.
For travellers, the infrastructure is intended to bring stays, experiences, destinations, routes and last-mile mobility closer together through shared digital rails, reducing friction across discovery, payments and other parts of the travel journey.
AI-first tourism infrastructure
The NDTS is being designed as AI-first digital infrastructure, with support for emerging travel discovery and planning models, including AI-led interfaces and personal digital agents.
The initiative is expected to cover an ecosystem of more than 23,000 tourism experiences and homestays. According to the Ministry and ONDC, more than 1,000 tourism experiences, including 170 ASI monuments and 29 museums, are already transacting on the ONDC Network.
Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Union Minister of Tourism and Culture, Government of India, said the initiative is intended to extend the benefits of tourism beyond established destinations and create greater opportunities for local communities, entrepreneurs, women and youth.
He described the NDTS as an AI-native digital infrastructure initiative for the tourism sector, with its broader objective being to create national-level economic and social impact through technology.
Towards a connected travel journey
Bhuvnesh Kumar, Secretary, Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India, said artificial intelligence will play a central role in the Stack, with a vision of enabling a more integrated travel journey through concepts such as “One ticket, One pass.”
He noted that travellers currently need to use different digital platforms to arrange flights, hotels, cabs, boat rides and other local experiences. The NDTS aims to address this fragmentation through common digital infrastructure.
The Ministry of Tourism will act as the catalyst for the initiative and work with states and Union Territories to curate and validate tourism experiences across the country.
Karthick Prabhu, Vice President, Travel, ONDC, said tourism involves multiple stakeholders, including destinations, accommodation providers, experiences, mobility services, local businesses, digital platforms and government systems.
He said the NDTS is intended to connect these participants through shared infrastructure rather than creating separate digital ecosystems, while ensuring that the underlying infrastructure can adapt as AI-led discovery and personal digital agents become more prevalent.
Focus on trust and wider market access
Trust will be a key component of the NDTS. The infrastructure is expected to support capabilities related to provider credentials, reliable tourism information, service standards, ratings and reviews, grievance redressal and other trust mechanisms.
The initiative forms part of ONDC’s wider strategy of developing open digital infrastructure for different sectors. While retail remains ONDC’s core mandate, its network also supports logistics and financial services as enablers, along with mobility, transit and travel-related use cases.
Through the National Digital Tourism Stack, the Ministry of Tourism and ONDC aim to create common digital infrastructure that enables tourism businesses and platforms to connect with travellers and transact, without the Stack itself functioning as a marketplace or competing with participating businesses and platforms.