Making Incredible India work

India underperforms its tourism potential

India’s 39th ranking in the World Economic Forum’s latest biannual Travel and Tourism Development Index (TTDI) indicates below-par performance in a high-potential business opportunity. The country has the largest travel and tourism sector in South Asia and scores as the TTDI’s top lower-middle income economy, the study, which covered 119 nations, noted. This ranking is not strictly comparable with the 2019 study, in which India stood at 54. This is because of changes in index parameters. But several data subsets suggest that the country has recovered since the pandemic. For instance, India is among only three countries in the top 10 on three resource criteria — natural (sixth), cultural (ninth), and non-leisure (ninth), the last being defined as travel for business, medical reasons, and education. Also encouraging is its ranking of 18th for price competitiveness, 26th for competitive air transport, and 25th for ground and port infrastructure. The study also notes progress on some key enabling gaps, such as internet connectivity, health and hygiene, environmental sustainability, and tourism socio-economic impact.
 

The overall picture suggests India could do much better, given the high employment potential from travel and tourism in a country that enjoys a rich variety of natural beauty and a vibrant multiculturalism. Despite this, the country’s share in international tourist arrivals stood at 1.54 per cent in 2021. Though this is an improvement over the 0.63 per cent in 2011, it obscures the fact that a large chunk of foreign tourist arrivals are non-resident Indians. Also, India does not appear to have greatly benefitted from the fact that China, one of the world’s 10 most visited tourist destinations, was under a prolonged lockdown in that year. In the latest TTDI, for instance, China ranks eighth, despite lifting its draconian lockdown only in January 2023. It is notable that the world’s top 10 tourist destinations are all high-income economies, mostly in Europe.
 

Though the beauty of their cities and countryside and professionally curated museums play a stellar role in ensuring that tourists keep coming to these destinations, the critical differentiator is the quality of infrastructure. Whether France, Spain, Japan, China, or Italy, it is possible for ordinary tourists to access top-quality local mass transport — buses, trains, and trams — and  a sufficient inventory of hygienic and safe budget hospitality options. In India, with the honourable exception of the metro rail in two cities, public transport, including inter-city bus and train services, is far from the world-class quality that characterises Indian airports and air travel. Unlike in the West, where citizens of all classes use mass-transport services, rich and upper-middle class Indians generally avoid them in their own country. Such inadequacy plays a role in diminishing India’s price competitiveness.
 

The upshot is that Indian tourism underperforms its potential. The industry accounts for about 6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) and provides just 80 million direct and indirect jobs. In the Dharamshala Declaration as part of the G20 meetings last year, the government set itself an ambitious target of adding $1 trillion to GDP by 2047 through tourism and sought to make India a major tourism destination. Working on the basics of making India cleaner and more habitable for all of its citizens would be a good way to start.