Published on : Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Moneyed middle class Indians with 250 million smartphone-toting young professionals out of a population of 1.3 billion-is all set to imitate its regional rival. The World Travel & Tourism Council anticipates India to turn out to be the fourth-largest travel and tourism economy after China, the U.S., and Germany in less than ten years.
Two decades back, around 2.4 million overseas visitors came to India in a year. In current context, more people are visiting India than ever before. In last year, domestic travel experienced five times the real boost. The data shows that around 90 percent of visitors are Indians. Since the pilgrims were interested to visit its temples, the southernmost state of Tamil Nadu has become the most visited place in last three years.
In last year, tourism in the subcontinent churned out almost $230 billion, an increase of almost $209 billion in 2016. India provides a huge variety of options: 36 world heritage sites and 103 national parks, plus the Taj Mahal in Agra, Rajasthan’s hill forts, the holy city of Varanasi, and everything else in between the mountains of the Himalayas and the beaches of Goa.
Also, the country has a benefit of adventure travel market with its jungles with tigers, elephants, and the last of Asia’s lions. The adventure travel market is anticipated to grow to $1.3 billion by 2023.
“In our initial years, most of our tourists were inbound travelers. But over the years we have seen an increase in the domestic weekend travelers from the major cities in India. Now the business is more dependent on the Indian market.”