Newstrack

MoT reacts to the recent world economic forum report

ETW Staff - Mumbai

World Economic Forum (WEF) has released its second Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2008 on 4th March 2008. In addition to other information, the report provides the ranking of 130 countries according to travel and tourism competitiveness index. According to the latest report the overall index for India is 65 in 2008 as it was in the 2007 report.

However there are glaring shortcomings in the two reports. Out of the 71 indicators considered for compilation of the index in 2008, only 46 indicators were used in 2007. Further, hard data have been used only for 42 indicators out of 71 and for others the results of Executive Opinion Survey conducted by WEF have been used. Surprisingly, the details of the methodology of the survey such as sample size, selection of executives, etc are also not given in the report. Because of the perception bias of the respondents in the opinion surveys, the results of such surveys have to be seen from a wholistic perspective unlike the piecemeal interpretation which has been done in certain sections of the press which is quite inappropriate.

Growth of tourism in India has to be appreciated in its entirety, and a piecemeal analysis does not do justice either to the situation or to those drawing inferences from incorrect analysis. India has shown an impressive performance in the tourism sector with foreign tourist arrivals growing at about 12.4 per cent and foreign exchange earnings in dollar terms growing at about 34 per cent over the previous year. Incredible India is not only attracting an increasingly a large proportion of the world tourism market but has also been able to capture the high end tourists who are spending a longer duration in India.

This is evident from the UN WTO's latest report which indicates that even though countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore may be having larger number of foreign tourist arrivals but the foreign exchange earned per foreign tourist of India which stood at about US$ 1,920 was much higher than that of Indonesia (US$ 905), Thailand (US$ 830) and Singapore (US$ 835) & Malaysia (US$ 520). These facts confirm that India is attracting travellers across the globe who are spending more time and money as compared to the other South East Asian countries.

Considering India's tremendous potential and the high growth scenario for the future, the ministry of tourism has been coordinating with other ministries and other organs of the government to ensure that constraints related to infrastructure, connectivity, visas etc. are removed. A major achievement has been the proposal in the next year's budget for a five year tax holiday for hotels constructed at World Heritage Sites.

It is unfortunate that unsubstantiated reporting sometimes causes damage to a successful campaign, defeating the common objective of promoting and positioning India domestically and internationally as the most preferred tourist destination.