JOIN USFalling tourist arrivals from high-spending countries like France, Germany and United Kingdom has triggered a decline in the tourism sector for FY 2015-16, the Economic Survey has said.
On the other hand, domestic tourism continues to be an important contributor to the sector’s growth, it noted.
“India’s tourism growth which was in double digits at 10.2 per cent in terms of foreign tourist arrivals (FTA) and nearly so at 9.7 per cent in terms of foreign exchange earnings (FEE), in US $ terms, in 2014, decelerated to 4.5 per cent in terms of FTAs and fell by 2.8 per cent in terms of FEEs in 2015,” the Survey said.
The FTAs stood at 8.0 million and FEEs at US$ 19.7 billion in 2015, it added.
“The lower growth in FTAs and fall in FEEs in 2015 is due to negative or low growth in FTAs from high spending tourists originating from European countries like France, (-6.2 per cent) Germany (3.9 per cent), and the UK (3.4 per cent), besides Japan ( -5.5 per cent). There was also a high negative growth in FTAs from Russia at - 36.1 per cent,” the report highlighted.
It took note of a “a high positive growth” in FTAs from the “second top source country” Bangladesh (20.3 per cent), though it was considered a “low spending” FTA source country. India’s tourism imports is partly reflected in the 18.3 million departure of Indian nationals in 2014, showing a growth of 10.3 per cent over 2013. “There has been a continuous increase in domestic tourist visits, with the CAGR of domestic tourist visits to all states/union territories (UT) from 1991 to 2014 being 13.75 per cent. In 2014, it grew by 12.9 per cent to reach 1290.11 million visits,” it noted.
The top five states in domestic tourist visits in 2014 were Tamil Nadu (327.6 million), Uttar Pradesh (182.8 million), Karnataka (118.3 million), Maharashtra (94.1 million) and Andhra Pradesh (93.3 million), according to the report.