Foreign tourist arrivals in India have remained well below pre-pandemic levels, despite a recovery in 2023, and industry bodies feel that this is largely because of a lack of aggressive international brand marketing of Indian tourism and absence of tourism offices in key markets.
The Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism and Hospitality (FAITH) and Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) also say there was reduction in allocation for tourism in the Union Budget.
In the Budget presented in July, the total allocation of the Union Tourism Ministry was increased marginally to ₹2,479 crore in 2024-25 as compared to ₹2,400 crore in 2023-24, the revised estimate for the year 2023-24 was ₹1,692 crore.
Though there has been a significant increase in the number of foreign tourists visiting India in 2023 with 9.23 million footfalls (according to industry estimates), as compared to 6.44 million in 2022, the numbers were still below the pre-pandemic levels.
In 2018 and 2019, India has seen 10.56 million and 10.93 million foreign tourist arrivals respectively, which dipped to 2.74 million in 2020 and further to 1.52 million in 2021, majorly due to COVID-induced lockdown.
According to Rajiv Mehra, president, IATO, while everybody hopes that the number of foreign tourists will go up, the actual story is different. “Numbers this year may be better than 2023, but they won’t reach the level of 2019”.
“We live in a competitive world. Our neighbours like Sri Lanka, Thailand are all wooing the international tourists by way of free visas, cheaper airfares, competitive hotel room rates and they publicise themselves a lot in their source market. Unfortunately, on none of these parameters, we match up,” he said.
Mr. Mehta added that incentives to tour operators for promoting India are almost negligible. “We have slashed the tourism budget, which was meant for our embassies to promote India abroad”, he said.
Aashish Gupta, Consulting CEO of FAITH, says the lower numbers as compared to pre-pandemic years is largely because of a lack of aggressive international brand marketing of Indian tourism and absence of tourism offices in key markets.
“It is critical that an intensive digital-led tourism marketing campaign of Incredible India and its key segments (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions [MICE], adventure, heritage) is undertaken. Boosting the presence of tourist specialist officers in major tourism markets to interact with local tourism travel trade and measures such as free visa for important source markets will become an added incentive,” he said.
