Ministry of Tourism and travel trade associations have been working on this subject ever since our independence 70 years ago. However there is not much done, for which India can boast. India’s inbound tourism has been crawling at such a slow speed that in 70 years of existence of Ministry of Tourism at Central Government and supported by all state tourism ministries. India’s annual inbound arrivals are around five to six million tourists. There are many smaller countries, which can boast of much higher inbound tourists than India. A small European country like France has achieved 80 million tourists annually. Any comparison with India inbound? Absolutely no!
Our such poor performance compels us to think in a broader prospective as to what are the detrimental factors which are blocking our way to increase inbound tourism such as:
Infrastructure
Inspite of continuous efforts our infrastructure has not improved; it cannot be compared even with neighbouring countries like Dubai, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and China. Beyond our metro cities, the facilities are not up to the mark.
Is India competitive?
Indian inbound tourist budget is much higher than our neighbouring countries, which make India an expensive destination. The hotels and transportation costs are higher. To increase inbound traffic, India has to compete with neighbouring countries.
GST will create a negative impact
It is being announced that the implementation of GST will further hike the inbound cost. This will have a negative impact on the inbound arrivals. The travel industry has already sounded about this in advance. We cannot understand the logic of our tourism ministry which should enlarge the base by reducing taxation and multiply inbound tourism, thereby collecting higher tax revenue in total. Instead, our tourism ministry has chosen to put extra pressure on the existing ailing tourism industry which may increase a bit extra per tourist but overall will not broad-base the revenue.
Foreign exchange earning industry
The Ministry of Tourism should take into account that due to tremendous scope and potential, inbound tourism can become a major contributor to increase our foreign exchange reserves. Such benefits can be passed on to many other industries in India.
Can the tourism ministry accept a challenge that their aim should be to achieve 20 million inbound tourists in a time bound manner? Can they not calculate, how much revenue can India generate? Can they not calculate as to how much benefits can be achieved in terms of revenues from hotels, transportation, shopping and domestic travel? Similarly a massive jump in the employment can be achieved.
Inbound tourism is a smokeless industry thereby increase in its numbers will not create any pollution. However the increase in volume can create massive opportunities for urban and rural employment. We should not underestimate that travel and tourism industry is ranked as third largest employment generating industry.
GDP
The latest news is the fall in GDP. By increasing the inbound tourism and by all above contributing factors, India’s GDP can increase substantially.
Reports show that other countries are attracting higher number of Indian visitors:
1. Ras AL Khaimah (UAE) to attract India’s MICE tourism
2. Visitors from India to Emirate grew by 35 per cent while no of nights by Indians grew to 49.4 per cent
3. Mauritius records 15 per cent growth in Indian arrivals
4. Las Vegas eyeing VFR travellers from India
5. IndiGo adds Doha as its 7th international destination
6. Israel records 49 per cent increase in Indian travellers
7. Jordon announces India arrival figures: unprecedented growth of 18.40 per cent.
If all other countries are increasing their share of Indian inbound travellers, can India claim its great jump in inbound from all countries put together? Inbound tourism needs a total revamp to improve infrastructure, encourage hospitality segments by lower taxation, create more international type of entertainment projects. Every tourist should become our “ambassador” to promote more tourists to India. This cannot be possible unless a complete revamp takes place.
Let our experts in government and the travel and hospitality industries make a joint body to compare our policies with other successful countries and implement their recommendations by which India can be proud of its inbound tourism figures.
Om Prakash, former chairman TAAI (WR), and director InOrbit Tours