Should we rethink our tourism policy?

I really should be doing a column summarising the political events of 2024 and telling you what to expect in 2025.

But, honestly, let’s give politics a break this week. I will spare you the tiresome annual roundup column that is traditional at this time of year.

 

Instead, I will focus on something that, even if it is not more topical, is certainly more immediate.

 

   Many of you, I imagine, are on vacation. Some of you have just returned home to face the New Year. And the rest are probably wishing they had gone on vacation. So let’s focus on holidaying in India this week.

 

   Or not holidaying in India. This column is being written while I am wrapping up my vacation in Sri Lanka, only a short distance away, but much less expensive and as much, if not more, fun than anything I could’ve done in India.

 

   And if you have been following social media, you will know that everyone seems to be posting about the collapse of Goa as a holiday destination or putting up photos of the glorious vacations they are enjoying in foreign countries that are only a short distance away from us.

 

   But don’t rely on social media posts. Look at the figures. The government of India has told us that India should get 100 million foreign tourists by 2047. That sounds like a lot but compared to the rest of the world, it is not a big deal. In 2019, 90 million tourists visited France. In 2023 Spain recorded 85 million arrivals. So it should be entirely possible for India to reach that 100 million figure in another 20 years, if not earlier.

 

   Except that, unless something changes dramatically, it just won’t happen.

 

   To reach that figure, Indian tourist arrivals will need to grow at 15% a year. That doesn’t sound like much but the truth is that during our best phase for growth in tourist arrivals (from 2001 to 2019), we could only grow at 8.5%. And now, tourist arrivals are actually coming down. They peaked in 2019 at 10.9 million and they have never reached that number again.

 

   This is odd because tourism is booming all around the world. As The Economist pointed out in a recent article about our tourism failures, even when India peaked at 10.9 million visitors, Dubai, a single city, attracted 16.7 million tourists. Dubai’s numbers have kept growing. In the first half of 2024, Dubai attracted 11% more visitors than the same period in 2019. But during that same period, India’s arrivals actually fell by 10%.

 

   So, every way you look at it, less and less people want to come to India. The Economist offers some explanations – red tape, lack of promotion, concerns about pollution, cleanliness issues, etc. – all of which are valid but which we simply refuse to confront.

 

   Over the last decade, we have begun to take the stand that even if foreign travellers do not want to come, we don’t really care. The Indian middle class is growing. It loves travel. Domestic tourism will fill our destinations.

 

   This makes a certain amount of sense. One reason why countries like Spain and France attract so many tourists is because easy access within the European Union makes them a little like domestic destinations for Europeans. And for countries like ours domestic tourism offers one great advantage: it is relatively stable. Foreigners may be put off by a bomb blast or a health scare as has happened frequently to us in the past. But Indians will keep travelling.

 

   After all, goes the argument, look at America. One reason why Americans don’t try and make it easy to get tourist visas or bother to reduce the immigration lines at their airports is because they don’t really care about foreign tourists. Over 2/3 of all tourism in the United States, comes from domestic travellers. So they don’t really need foreign tourists to fill their hotels or pack out their destinations.

 

"Why would anyone want to go back to Goa when it is so much easier and cheaper to holiday abroad?"

   If you have been to an Indian destination (let’s take Goa or Jaipur as examples) you will know that Indian tourists now vastly outnumber foreigners. Even in Agra which used to depend on foreign tourists you will find that Indians are taking over.

 

   So, should we just rethink our tourism policy? Should we stop focusing on foreigners?

 

   Well, yes or no. Because the problem is that even Indians are increasingly avoiding our tourist destinations.

 

   Obviously, Goa is a case in point. While you can go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal only once or twice in your life you should be able to go back to Goa again and again. And indeed, I know many people who used to do exactly that: myself, for instance. For many years, I went to Goa every Christmas and New Year. I wrote glowing articles about the destination and trumpeted its virtues.

 

   But over the last two years, I have consciously avoided Goa. One major reason is cost. At nearly every end of the market, Thailand is much cheaper than Goa. There are many cheap flights from more and more Indian cities and Thai budget hotels are better and cheaper than the Goa hotels. At the top end of the market, Goa is a joke. The business class fare from Delhi to Bangkok is lower in high season than the fare from Delhi to Goa. Moreover Goa also has few good luxury hotels and they are usually more expensive than those in Bangkok where the luxury hotels are more numerous and vastly superior.

 

  Last year, I went to Thailand in the winter and this year, I chose Sri Lanka where the excellent, brand new hotel I stayed at, the Ratnadipa, run by India’s ITC Hotels is cheaper over New Year than most of ITC’s luxury hotels in India. (And ITC Ratnadipa is the big boy in Colombo with the highest room rates in the city.) The same is true of Colombo’s Taj Samudra: a lovely hotel that’s cheaper than Taj luxury hotels India.

 

   Why would anyone want to go back to Goa when it is so much easier and cheaper to holiday abroad?

 

   I used the example of Thailand. But like Sri Lanka, other medium-haul destinations are even cheaper. There has been a concerted push on behalf of Vietnam on social media this year and even I, who’s been going there for 20 years, am intrigued by what good value it now is.

 

   And while nearly every destination in the far east is a serious competitor to Indian destinations, central Asia has also suddenly opened up. Once upon a time – even five years ago – I would’ve laughed if you had told me that Indians would flock to Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan for New Year. But more and more people I know are choosing Central Asia because the flights only take around three hours, hotels are good and inexpensive and everything else is competitively priced.

 

   For most medium-haul holiday destinations, visas are no longer a problem. You can get them online or on arrival and in some countries you don’t even need them. Thailand allows Indians in without visas now. Other countries are following suit.

 

   It isn’t just the money. It’s also the sense that tourists are valued. I don’t want to go into the reasons for Goa’s decline. You will have read innumerable articles about the taxi mafia, the terrible infrastructure, the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, the policeman-thug nexus etc. So I won’t say more except that the response of the Goa authorities– to say that there is a conspiracy against their state – tells you everything you need to know about why Goa will face even more hassles in the years ahead.

 

   Does it all matter? After all, if Indians prefer to holiday abroad, why should we care so much?

 

   Well, because tourism is good for the economy. It boosts the prosperity of every popular destination and it increases the incomes of those who work there. The big revelation, when you visit countries like Sri Lanka or Vietnam, is how much ordinary people have prospered and benefited from tourism.

 

   In India, on the other hand, tourism’s contribution to GDP actually declined from 5.8% in 2002–2003 to 5.2% in 2019–20. Even now, we have not bounced back from Covid times and have still to reach the numbers we did before the pandemic struck.

 

   Is there a way out? Probably. But it’s not up to you and me; it’s up to the politicians. In many destinations politicians profit financially from tourism while refusing to do anything to encourage it. And even the Central government does not regard tourism as a priority. The one good tourism minister in the 10 years of the Modi regime – AJ Alphonse – was not allowed to continue. The tourism ministry is simply not regarded as being of any consequence.

 

   Could it be because, whenever you take a flight to the west, a politician will be on it? There are so many Indian politicians vacationing in London in the summer that you realise what their priorities really are. They have a good time in the west and they couldn’t care less about Indian tourism.