Decline in tourists availing visa-on-arrival scheme

Contrary to the expectation, there was a decline in the number of foreigners availing visa-on-arrival facility in March this year with a total of 1,958 VoAs issued as against 2,107 in the corresponding period last year, registering a fall of 7.1 per cent.
"There was expectation of growth in the number of foreigners availing VoA scheme in March this year. But it has not happened so," a senior Tourism Ministry official said.
He said the number of Japanese nationals availing the scheme is not upto our expectation which resulted in decline in the growth in March.
"We have called a meeting of tour operators next week to know the reasons of the decline. We will examine whether it is world-wide phenomenon that Japanese are travelling out less or it is confined to India only," the official said.

The number of VoAs issued under this scheme during March 2014 for nationals of the eleven countries were 1,958.
According to Tourism Ministry data, 571 Japanese had availed the VoA scheme followed by Indonesia (373) and New Zealand (322) in March.

However, there has been a growth of 1.70 per cent in the January-March 2014 period in the number of tourists availing the scheme as compared to the same period in 2013.
A total number of 5,841 VoAs were issued in January-March 2014 as compared to 5,744 VoA in the same period of 2013 registering a growth of 1.7 per cent.

As a facilitative measure to attract more foreign tourists, the government has launched the VoA scheme for 11 countries which include Finland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos and Myanmar.