NEW DELHI: The dip in Indian travellers to the US witnessed in 2017 after a gap of eight years is not one-way.
Last year also saw 7% decline in number of
US residents travelling to India over 2016, according to the US department of commerce’s National Travel and Trade Office (NTTO). In fact India was the only big country in the list of top 15 foreign destinations for US residents that saw a decline in their visits 2017 over the previous year. The other country, at number 15, is Costa Rica.
No. of Indian visitors to US down for 1st time in 8 yrs
The number of Indian visitors to the US has declined for the first time in the last eight years. About 11.14 lakh Indians went to the US in 2017, down 5% from 11.72 lakh in the previous year. Before this, 2009 saw 5.5 lakh Indian travellers to the US, which was a decline of 8% over the previous year.
The NTTO data shows 3.8 crore US residents travelled overseas (not including Canada and Mexico) in 2017, 9% more than the 3.5 crore a year earlier. However, India saw 11.11 lakh of these travellers, down 7% from 11.95 lakh in 2016. Sharat Dhall, CEO of travel portal Yatra, feels a stronger rupee in 2017 may have made Indian an expensive destination then due to which Americans chose other places.
“In 2016, the rupee-dollar exchange rate was averaging at Rs 67-68. In 2017, it was averaging at Rs 64. A stronger rupee made India relatively more expensive destination,” Dhall said. The rupee’s devaluation started happening earlier this year and accelerated from April onwards, and is now close to Rs 73 to a US dollar.
The top pull in Asia for US residents last year was China, followed by Japan and then India. The bulk of foreign travel by Americans happens to Mexico and Canada, which are linked by road too. The overseas destinations are led by European countries like UK, France and Spain, followed by Asian giants like China and Japan. All the top 10 destinations saw an increase ranging from 21% for France and Ireland to 6% for China and Italy.
In a report on inbound tourism to India released this month, CAPA Centre for Aviation has pointed out that “even amongst the top 10 source markets for leisure travel, India’s share of their outbound traffic remains relatively small, at between 0.3% (Germany) and 3.7% (US)…. Of further concern is the fact that in 5 of those (top) 10 markets, India actually lost market share over the last three years, particularly in the UK, France and Sri Lanka. This may possibly be due to complacency because of the assumption that they are well established. The reality is that India has only scratched the surface of its leisure potential.”
The US and UK, according to CAPA, are the leading countries for leisure tourists coming to India with these two accounting for 21.1% of all leisure foreign inbound here. The top 10 leisure tourist source markets for India include — UK, US, Russia, France, Germany and Sri Lanka. Some of leisure travelers from US and UK are persons of Indian origin.
(Representative image)
