DATA POINT: India’s Tourism Challenge: Foreign Tourist Arrivals Remain Below Pre-Covid Levels

Context:

• The latest data for August 2023, released by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), shows that the number of foreign tourists arriving in India has shrunk by 19.7 per cent compared to August 2019, when 0.8 million visited.

Key Highlights

Foreign Tourist Arrivals:

• Bangladesh remains India’s largest source of foreign tourists, accounting for 23.7 per cent of all arrivals, followed by the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

• The 2019 annual numbers reveal a similar mix. It was 23.6 per cent for Bangladesh, 13.8 per cent for the USA, and similar numbers for the UK (9.15 per cent), Australia (3.4 per cent) and Canada (3.2 per cent).

Indian Travelling Abroad:

• The Gulf is the top destination for Ind­i­ans travelling abroad. The Un­i­ted Arab Emirates (25.2 per cent) and Saudi Arabia (11 per cent) accounted for over one-third of all Indians travelling overseas.

• Overall, the top five destinations — UAE, Saudi Ar­a­bia, USA, Thailand and Singa­pore — comprised over 50 per cent of outbound Indians.
• The top five in 2019 were UAE (23.72 per cent), Sau­di Arabia (10.83 per cent), USA (7.2 per cent), Thailand (6.48 per cent) and Singapore (5.94 per cent).

Foreign Exchange: 

• Foreign exchange earnings from tourism have also fallen below the 2019 figures, registering at $2.3 billion in August 2023 compared to $2.6 billion in August 2019.
• The bulk of foreign tourist arrivals (45.6 per cent) were for leisure, holiday and recreation in 2023, compared to 57.1 per cent in 2019. 

• Business and professional travel share drop­ped to 10.7 per cent from 14.6 per cent earlier. Medical tourism went up to 6.9 per cent from 6.4 per cent. 
• The share of the Indian diaspora rose to 25.4 per cent from 12.6 per cent in 2019.

Source: Business Standard