The Indian tourism market is maturing

By Kavi Ghei
Director, TRAC Representations (India)

The outbound leisure market is expected to grow by 20 per cent with 15 million tourists by the year 2011. With the spending ability increasing and the number of free individual travellers growing faster than ever, outbound tourism is bound to be on the rise. This implies opening up of newer areas of tourism to cater to this growing market. Accordingly, this growth can also be witnessed by the coming in of newer tourism boards into India. The future of tourism in the Asia-Pacific region belongs to India and China; countries that will take tourism in the region to newer heights. The future for outbound tourism from the country looks very bright, posing a challenge therefore for the NTO's to bring in unique products along with matching the barometers of service standards.

Currently in this phase, the Indian tourism market is maturing, and in the next two years it shall reach where it intends to be. While looking at inbound tourism, the segment that is growing the fastest is leisure tourism; but what has kept the industry growing till now has been the business traffic. However, due to various problems that engulf the industry at this stage, the inbound market has not been able to take a forward leap akin to their outbound counterpart.

Many infrastructural problems still exist that come in the way of development, and we are not at all equipped to take optimum advantage of the boom that we are witnessing. For example, the Delhi airport when it was first built several decades ago, saw only about 150-200 landings per day as compared to the present, when there are 600 landings every day. Still, the infrastructure is yet incapable of handling those numbers, despite changes that have been initiated to handle the situation. Besides, numerous taxes and outrageous accommodation tariffs have been keeping the tourists at bay. India's scope of being a long haul destination only diminishes with such systems in place.

To encourage healthy growth of the inbound tourism industry, it is necessary to tap the various varied costs like taxes, transport, hotel tariffs, etc. It has to be understood that the tourism industry is a major employment generator and its survival depends on cutting of these extra costs. At this time when the ground infrastructure is highly expensive, a new model needs to be worked out in order to survive and sustain in this scenario.

As a suggestion, a single window policy is what the industry needs, along with initiatives reducing the overall costs of the projects, which is also the need of the hour.