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Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Telangana are competing for domestic and international tourists amid a surge in travel and tourism across the country and overseas.
Some of these states and Union Territories (UTs) are pegging their tribal festivals, farm, wine, adventure, and wellness tourism, stunning landscapes along with the religious and spiritual tourism circuits to attract tourists, while they confer industry status to the hospitality sector and provide incentives.
Arunachal Pradesh, the land of dawn-lit mountains, recently unveiled a five-year tourism policy through which it aims to achieve a two-fold increase in domestic tourist arrivals and a 10-fold increase in foreign tourist arrivals. It had over 1 million domestic tourist arrivals in 2023.
“Arunachal has a 360-degree tourism opportunity from spiritual, wellness, heritage to biodiversity. Homestays are a revolution and become a window to the most stunning landscapes of the land, which are situated in the remotest locations,” Pasang Dorjee Sona, minister for tourism, Arunachal Pradesh, told Business Standard.
“We have one five-star hotel in Tawang and smaller chains like Cygnett are also coming in now. We are also in talks with boutique hotel brands like Postcard Hotels to build in the state,” he said, underlining the state’s efforts to increase branded hotels, and its efforts to confer industry status to the hotel industry.
The government of Jammu and Kashmir, too, wants to put the state back in the spotlight, and remind travellers that the destination is still “Instagrammable and magical”. At a tourism event in Delhi earlier this week, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said that it was time to shift the focus from numbers to drive value tourism to the state.
“Increasing number of tourists added to our economic activity while giving a sense that perhaps better days are ahead of us and hence, we chased volumes. Today, I believe that we need to reposition Jammu and Kashmir not just as a destination for volume tourism but also value tourism,” he said.
To this end, the government has identified nine new tourist destinations for development and is eyeing a funding of ₹5,500 crore for the same.
“This will ease some of the pressure on Gulmarg, Pahalgam and Sonmarg in the Valley, while at the same time open areas of Jammu which have been undiscovered for tourism until now. Until they come, the Valley is saturated,” Abdullah said.
While these states and UTs refocus their tourism policies to raise footfall, they will have to go head-to-head with the likes of Goa, Kerala, and Rajasthan, which have been traditional tourism hubs.
This assumes significance as the 2025 Union Budget outlined development of 50 top tourist destinations in partnership with states through a challenge mode while also allocating ₹2,541.06 crore to enhance infrastructure, skill development, and travel facilitation.
While states will be required to provide land for critical infrastructure, including hotels, which will be classified under the infrastructure harmonised master list (HML) to attract investments and boost hospitality services.
Forty projects across 23 states will receive interest-free loans totalling ₹3,295.8 crore, for 50 years as part of the Special Assistance to States for Capital Investment. The Centre has outlined religious and medical tourism as key drivers, with India’s medical value travel sector projected to reach $13.42 billion by 2026.
“At every state level a lot is happening. Industry status is being given to hotels, hospitality, which will definitely give impetus to local industry to build more. We have given our suggestions to the ministry of tourism and we’re actively engaging with all stakeholders to identify these 50 locations,” Pradeep Shetty, vice president of the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India , told Business Standard.
Telangana’s first-ever tourism policy, mapped for the coming five years, aims to develop 27 special tourism areas based on the tourism potential of different regions, including Yadagirigutta, Bhadrachalam, Nalgonda, Warangal, and the Charminar cluster.
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Banking on eco-tourism, wellness, and sports tourism, the state intends to position itself among the top five tourist destinations for domestic and international travellers. The state also aims to attract ₹15,000 crore in new investments to the tourism sector in the next five years.
Its neighbour Karnataka is focusing on caravan, heritage, and wellness tourism and aims to attract around ₹8,000 crore as direct investment and generate employment opportunities for 1.5 lakh people. “A priority sector for the state, tourism has an important role to play in Karnataka becoming a $1 trillion economy by 2032,” according to the state’s policy document.
Up north, after the success of the Maha Kumbh and the consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, the Uttar Pradesh government is looking at a major contribution from tourism towards its goal of becoming a $1 trillion economy by 2029.
“We have good road connectivity and the opening of the Jewar airport later this year will increase tourist footfall to the state,” said Preeti Srivastava, joint director (tourism), government of Uttar Pradesh, outlining 12 major tourist circuits that will be developed.
“There continue to be a lot of tourism opportunities in the state which we want to exploit. Under our new tourism policy, we are welcoming all sorts of accommodation units, promoting adventure tourism, and want convention centres, theme parks, and hot air ballooning to come up too,” said Srivastava.
With domestic travel booming and the Centre envisioning tourism to become a $3 trillion economy by 2047, states are reworking their tourism policies and identifying new avenues of tourism activity in a bid to attract more tourists to their states.
Arunachal Pradesh, for instance, is working on a policy to regulate its 793 homestays while stepping up its online presence and marketing. A special focus on improved road connectivity across 14 key tourism circuits has been set to facilitate seamless travel. There will also be a special focus on tribal tourism, with the identification and promotion of major festivals and the development of suitable villages as hubs for tribal tourism along tourist circuits.
Tribal festivals draw a massive number of tourists to states. According to data from travel platform ixigo, flight bookings to Nagaland witnessed a 95 per cent year-on-year surge in December 2025 for the annual 10-day Hornbill festival, while train bookings soared 13 per cent.
