The tourism sector in India has earned Rs 5,54,657 crore in foreign exchange between 2019 and May this year, shows the latest government data. Overall, 2019 saw a total earning of Rs 2,16,467 crore, which is the highest in these five years but the very next year this dropped to its lowest at Rs 50,136 crore and, the next year too, it was only Rs 65,070 crore.
“Both 2020 and 2021 were hit by Covid lockdown and even domestic tourists were not allowed to go out. This is the reason for lower foreign exchange earnings in those two years,” said a senior official from the tourism ministry.
The official said the ministry of tourism is implementing several schemes/initiatives to attract foreign tourists. “We have launched the Swadesh Darshan Scheme for the development of tourism-related infrastructure. The ministry has revamped this as ‘Swadesh Darshan 2.0’ with the objective to develop sustainable and responsible destinations following a tourist-and-destination-centric approach,” the official said.
The official further said the ministry has launched the PRASAD (Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Augmentation Drive) scheme, which is a national mission for integrated development of identified pilgrimage and heritage destinations. To help tourists with details and information, a toll-free 24-hour multilingual tourist helpline has also been launched, the official added.
“Now, we are providing a facility of e-visa for 5 sub-categories like e-tourist, e-business, e-medical, e-medical attendant and e-conference for nationals of 167 countries. The e-visa has been further liberalised and visa fee substantially reduced,” the official said.
The ministry also has a scheme to woo tourists based on products available at each place, which is called ‘Niche Tourism’, the official said. This is based on specific interests of tourists and to ensure they visit again for the unique products in which India has a comparative advantage, the official added.
The ministry is conducting programmes under the ‘Capacity Building for Service Providers’ (CBSP) scheme to train and upgrade manpower to provide better service standards.
“New mountain peaks have been opened for mountaineering/trekking to boost adventure tourism. Along with this, the GST rate has been lowered on hotel tariffs of Rs 1,001 to Rs 7,500 per night to 12 percent, and those above Rs 7,501 to 18 percent to increase India’s competitiveness as a tourism destination,” the official said.
On recommendations from the ministry, 61 tourism routes have been awarded to identified airlines by the ministry of civil aviation under the RCS UDAN scheme. In order to boost visitor arrival, the ministry has declared ‘Incredible India! Visit India Year 2023’, the official said.
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