Despite fancy campaigns, foreign tourist arrivals in India remain abysmally poor

From the majestic mountains of the Himalayas to the shining seas of India's immense coastlines, and so much more in between, the country has much natural splendour to offer to a tourist. But as anybody will tell you, India has so much more to offer in terms of spirituality, culture and architecture. However, statistics from the Tourism Ministry will make for a shocking reading. In 2015, there were around eight million foreign tourist arrivals. This number includes business travellers and doesn't include the millions, who come across from our porous borders, but the latter are hardly visiting India for tourism or business. This has put India easy down the global tourist destination list. France, of course, remains the world's most popular tourist destination; and despite the terror attacks in Paris, the country clocked a remarkable 83 million tourists in 2016. Population of France is estimated at 63 million. In nearby Thailand, they welcomed an estimated 38 million tourists, including a million from India. In fact, while eight million tourists travelled to India in 2015, the same sources show that 20 million Indians left the country. Again, millions of Indians leave as labour, particularly to countries of the Arabian peninsula, but still this proves the fact that Indians love to travel. Estimates of domestic tourism inside India have Indians taking an estimated 1.4 billion trips inside the country.

It is almost certain that many of eight million tourists visiting are hardly tourists but members of the diaspora returning to visit family members. Despite expensive campaigns to promote foreign inbound tourism, particularly the ‘Incredible India’ campaign that has cost several hundreds of crore over its decade-plus lifetime, India still finds it difficult to promote foreign visitors. Part of that reason is not just that India is far from the key markets of North America and despite a rise in connectivity between India and the US, that does not take away from a minimum of a 12-14 hour non-stop flight. But even among Europeans and Americans who visit, India has been spectacularly incapable of attracting high-value tourists with the notable exception of Rajasthan. But with high rates of taxation for luxury, India is an expensive destination. That said, India continues to be popular with backpackers who love the colour, vibrancy and possibly the easy access to hashish available here. However, India has been missing a major trick when it comes to tourism, that is the Chinese market. While that made the Chinese threats of travel warnings laughable during the Doklam crisis, it also shows how India has miserably failed to penetrate the world’s fastest growing outbound tourism market. This despite the fact that India and China share a long, albeit contentious border and flights between major population centres are never longer than six hours. There are still far few flights between our two nations and usually they're full of Indian businessmen. India has to do more to promote tourism from China and from across the world. And if that means learning to say ‘shi shi’, so be it.