Tourism earnings jump 117% to Rs 10,597 cr

Odishas total earnings from the tourism sector has been assessed at Rs 10,597.54 crore in 2013-14, a jump of 117.38 per cent over FY 13.

The State Economic Survey report for 2014-15 has assessed earnings on the premise of expenditure incurred by foreign and domestic tourists visiting Odisha.

The average duration of visit and spending of a domestic tourist is 3.7 days and Rs 1,357 respectively. Similarly, an overseas tourist spends Rs 2,255 per day with his average duration of stay in the state being 14.2 days.

Amongst the domestic tourists, Odisha draws the maximum inflow from West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. During 2012, Odisha drew 15.03 per cent of the total inbound domestic tourists from West Bengal and 3.51 per cent from Andhra Pradesh.

From abroad, France, Germany, UK and USA are the major tourist generating markets. In 2013, nearly 54 per cent of the foreign tourists to the state were from western Europe.

But the survey points out that Odishas share of all foreign tourists visiting the country is abysmally low at less than one per cent.

Tourism is treated as a priority sector in the state due to its rich employment potential, income generation, foreign exchange earnings and value addition to the state economy. Endowed with abundant natural assets, Odisha tourism has undertaken programmes for ecologically sound and economically viable tourism development and integration of infrastructural support, institutional mechanism and investment with development framework of the state.

Although tourism in Odisha has a very minuscule role vis--vis the countrys overall tourism scenario, the state has huge potential for growth on this front. With both forward and backward linkages, the sector generates employment for more than 92,000 people and indirect jobs for 277,000 others.

According to the Economic Survey, the share of the trade, hotels and restaurants sub-sector to the states Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) has gone up from 4.85 per cent in 1950-51 to 13.37 per cent in 2013-14 in real terms. The sub-sector is expected to contribute 13.09 per cent to the real GSDP of the state in 2014-15 (at 2004-05 prices).

The survey says the hotel and tourism industries are strongly linked and over the last 14 years, the number of hotels has more than doubled, registering a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.83 per cent.

Between 2005 and 2013, the number of hotel beds has increased by 79 per cent. During 2013, there were 1585 hotels in the state with 33349 rooms and 65,967 beds. Of this, 306 catered to high spending groups, 356 to middle spending groups and 923 to lower spending groups.