The Hindu : Advisories hit tourist arrivals

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 05, 2002

National

National

Advisories hit tourist arrivals

By Gargi Parsai

New Delhi June 4. Concerned over the decline in tourist arrivals, the Ministry of Tourism is writing to the Ministry of External Affairs to ask Indian Consulates in the countries that have issued travel advisories against travel to India, to withdraw the directive.

The Ministry has also convened an urgent meeting of the travel and tourism industry to work out a strategy to meet the situation. There has been a decline of about 12 per cent in foreign tourist arrivals in the last month and hotel occupancy has been affected with cancellations.

Several countries, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Israel, Malaysia, and Thailand last week advised their citizens against travel to India because of tension with Pakistan. A similar advisory has been issued by these countries against Pakistan as well. In fact, some staff of the embassies of these countries have already starting leaving for home.

The Secretary, Tourism, Rathi Vinay Jha, said the timing of the advisory was ``unfortunate'' when after a successful Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) conference in New Delhi, India was gearing up for a big take-off in the tourism sector.

She said this was a time of concern. ``We will try our best to infuse confidence. How successful we will be, we can't say. But it looks like it'll sort itself out. Let's wait and see.''

Between 2000 and 2001, India saw a decline of 4.2 per cent in foreign tourist arrivals. However, in 2002, between January to May there has been a drop of 13.9 per cent in tourist arrivals over last year. The reason is not just the present tension between India and Pakistan. In September world movement came to a halt after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Then came the December 13 attack on Parliament in New Delhi which hit tourism. And in February-March, the incidents in Gujarat impacted arrivals. India received the highest number of tourists in 2001 from the United Kingdom (4.5 lakh), followed by the U.S. (3.2 lakh) and Sri Lanka (1.1 lakh), France (1.02 lakh), Canada, Japan, Germany, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore, the Netherlands, Italy, Nepal, Israel and South Korea. Significantly, there has been a decline in tourist arrivals from most countries except from France, Canada, Nepal, Israel and Korea. From India, the outbound traffic also declined from 3.62 million in 1999 to 3 million (provisional) in 2000.

According to Amitabh Kant, Joint Secretary in Ministry of Tourism, after September 11, tourist movement has not yet picked up and India being a long haul destination there is slow movement towards it. But he believes the ``pent-up feeling'' will soon make people travel and tourism will bounce back with a vengeance, more so in the domestic sector.

Domestic tourism grew to 210 million tourists in 2000. The decline in foreign tourist arrivals has prompted the Government to emphasise domestic tourism by developing integrated circuits, focussed destinations and asking States to perform. The strategy is to shift the South-East Asia-bound Indian tourists to destinations within the country ``to discover India and re-discover themselves''.

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