Tourism in India getting a boost for 2010
Robert JonesAccording to India’s tourism minister, the sharp decline in tourist numbers have levelled out.
Kumari Selja said visitors to the country had slumped by 7% to 4.2m in the 10 months to October over the same period in 2008. But Foreign earnings have increased by 4.1% over the same period.
Addressing this year’s edition of the World Travel Market in London, Selja said the Mumbai attacks and the global economic slowdown have negatively impacted tourist numbers to India this year.
He said that despite experiencing an average growth rate of 14.5% in terms of visitors between 2002 and 2008, India had just 5.6% growth last year, although still higher than the world average of 2%.
In the six years to 2008, the number of tourists to India rose from 2.38m to 5.3m, before falling sharply in 2009.
Selja said a number of initiatives and events planned for next year have been initiated as measures to stimulate tourist numbers.
The World Commonwealth Games in Delhi in October are surely the largest of these events.
About 30,000 new hotel rooms are being built for the Games which are expected to bring in up to 100,000 people and will take places from between October 3 and 14 2010.
Selja said a number of initiatives have been created to attract tourists including highlighting niche markets such as rural tourism. About 150 sites were identified which India’s government intends to promote as places to discover the arts and crafts and cuisine of the country. It’s been said that up to 30 of these sites will receive UN Development Council financial assistance.
One initiative is ‘Heliport Tourism’, which sees to encourage tourism in remote and hilly areas of the country. Selja said financial assistance was given to the State Governments to help open up more inaccessible zones.
Medical and wellness tourism is another initiative being promoted; state of the art medical services can be obtained at a fraction of the cost of in the West and Ayurverda, which is part of India’s ancient tradition of healing and health, is increasingly popular.
/images/rssicon.jpg "Subscribe to RSS feed")
Subscribe for free and recieve the latest Self-Catering-Breaks news and stories
Filed under Travel News, World News