A Complete Analysis of Indian Tourism Report 2024

The UNWTO Indian Tourism Report 2024 put India in a green and positive light. Tourism in India is recovering from the losses and setbacks from COVID-19. Covid-19 has brought an awakening of the masses, especially in the service industry. It shows how unprepared we are in the industry and a setback can easily snatch our livelihoods. It also showed the destinations’ vulnerability in dealing with such a situation and protecting its stakeholders whose livelihoods are directly influenced by the industry. UNWTO in its statement towards COVID-19 had said that it is a new phase of the tourism industry and could take years to be at the place like in the year 2019.

(UNWTO, 2023)

Post Covid-19, destinations are slowly returning to their normal phase but the very basic morale of visitors as well as service providers have changed. The Indian Tourism Report 2024 is to give glimpse of the development happened post covid-19. We have become much more SMARTER AND more TECH-FRIENDLY leading to a welcoming smart future.

Stakeholders are getting more savvy and tech-friendly. Online payments have provided people with alternate payment methods. Below are the major statistical reports of Indian Tourism through six lenses, which are:

1. Inbound Tourism Statistics
2. Outbound Tourism Statistics
3. Domestic Tourism Statistics
4. Tourism industries
5. Employment
6. Macroeconomic Indicators

UNWTO monitors and assesses these 6 parameters for understanding the tourism nature of any country. We are going to understand India’s current statistics through these 6 parameters. Indian Tourism Statistics is presented below on the basis of 6 parameters of UNWTO Report.

a. Inbound Tourism Statistics

In Inbound tourism, as per the UNWTO report, the statistics for inbound travelers in India have seen travelers coming from all 6 major regions of the world. However, through the consecutive years, the data kept on changing majorly due to various setbacks that Indian tourism has faced including COVID-19, closures of businesses, work-from-home culture, layoffs, and many more.

• Visitations of Tourists: Percentage of visitations in India from 6 Different regions of the world are given below in Table 1.

Table 1 shows the percentage of visitations of travelers from 6 different regions to India. In the table, we can see that the number of travelers in 2021 has on average decreased with the percentage of visitors in 2021. The highest number of visits in 2021 is from America, Europe, and South Asia and the lowest Middle East and Africa.

• Modes of Transport: In Inbound tourism, there are three modes of transport used (air, land, and water) and Table 2 shows the data.

Table 2 shows that in 2022, the number of travelers from land has more visitations as compared to air and water. In 2020 and 2021, just opposite data has occurred were air travel was mostly preferred.

• Purpose of Trip: In Inbound tourism, majorly there are two purposes of the trip being noted by the UNWTO report which is Personal and Business and Professional as shown in Table 3:

Table 3 shows that visitors who are visiting India in 2022 mostly have their travel done for their leisure. Visitations for business purposes have significantly reduced.

• Expenditure: In Inbound tourism, majorly there are two major types of expenditures done by the visitors which are those who spend money through Travel and those who used passenger transport as shown in Table 4:

Table 4 shows that the spending capacity of travelers has increased during their personal travel or using passenger transport.

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b. Outbound Tourism Statistics

In Outbound tourism, as per the UNWTO report, the statistics for outbound travellers in India have seen its citizen traveling to different regions of the world. However, through the consecutive years, the data kept on changing majorly due to various setbacks that Indian tourism has faced including COVID-19, closures of businesses, work-from-home culture, layoffs, and many more.

• Arrivals and Departures: The record of several arrivals and departures in 2020 and 2021 shows outbound tourism statistics of India post-COVID-19 as given below in Table 5.

Table 5 shows that the number of Arrivals and Departures has increased in 2021 than in 2020.

• Outbound Expenditure: In outbound tourism majorly there are two major types of expenditures done by the visitors which are those who spend money through Travel and those one used passenger transport as shown in Table 4:

Table 6 shows that the spending capacity of travelers has increased during their personal travel or using passenger transport.

The expenditure of Inbound and Outbound tourism from 2020-2022 is clearly shown with major differences as shown in Table 7.

Table 7 shows how much difference is there between Inbound and Outbound tourism in India as per the expenditures. The data shows that the expenditure has increased in 2022 as compared to previous years, and outbound tourism has more expenditure than Inbound tourism.

c. Domestic Tourism Statistics

In Domestic Tourism as per the UNWTO report, the statistics for domestic travelers in India have seen its citizen traveling to different regions of Indian destinations. However, through the consecutive years, the data kept on changing majorly due to various setbacks that Indian tourism has faced including COVID-19, closures of businesses, work-from-home culture, layoffs, and many more.

• Domestic Visitors in India– Table 8 shows the increment in domestic visitors in India in 2021 than of its previous years 2019 and 2020.

d. Tourism Industries Statistics

As per the UNWTO report, the statistics for Hotels and other infrastructure under Tourism industries in India have seen its citizen traveling to different regions of Indian destinations. However, through the consecutive years, the data kept on changing majorly due to various setbacks that Indian tourism has faced including COVID-19, closures of businesses, work-from-home culture, layoffs, and many more.

Total number of Hotels and similar establishments

e. Employment:

As per the UNWTO report, the statistics for employees working in Indian Tourism Industry has shown for years 2020 and 2019. The employees come from major 6 sectors which are Accommodation Services, Food and Beverage, Passenger transport, Travel Agencies, and Other service providers.

Table 10 shows the 6 major sectors where people work and their involvement seems to decrease in 2020 as compared to 2019 which indicates the effect of COVID-10 on the livelihood of Indian people.

• Total employees by tourism industries

f. Macroeconomic Indicators

As per the UNWTO report, 15 macroeconomic indicators show the overall tourism performance of any country/ region based on additional data collected from several international sources, which are:

• Gross travel propensity
• Inbound tourists overpopulation
• Outbound tourism expenditure over GDP
• Tourism balance (inbound minus outbound tourism expenditure) over GDP
• Tourism openness (inbound plus outbound tourism expenditure) over GDP
• Tourism coverage (inbound over outbound tourism expenditure)
• Inbound tourism expenditure over exports of goods
• Inbound tourism expenditure over exports of services
• Inbound tourism expenditure over exports of goods and services
• Inbound tourism expenditure over current account credits
• Outbound tourism expenditure over imports of goods
• Outbound tourism expenditure over imports of services
• Outbound tourism expenditure over imports of goods and services
• Outbound tourism expenditure over current account debits
• Outbound tourism expenditure over GDP

References

E-UNWTO. (2024). https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/book/10.18111/9789284424146
Tourism Statistics UNWTO Report. (2023). “All Countries: Domestic Tourism: Trips by mode of transport 1995 – 2022 (12.2023).” Tourism Statistics, (1)