Economically important and is growing rapidly. The World Travel & Tourism Council calculated that tourism generated INR8.31 lakh crore (US$120 billion) or 6.3% of the nation's GDP in 2015 and supported 37.315 million jobs, 8.7% of its total employment. The sector is predicted to grow at an average annual rate of 7.5% to INR18.36 lakh crore (US$270 billion) by 2025 (7.2% of GDP). In October 2015, India's medical tourism sector was estimated to be worth US$3 billion. It is projected to grow to $7–8 billion by 2020. In 2014, 184,298 foreign patients travelled to India to seek medical treatment. About 80.27 lac (8.027 million) foreign tourists arrived in India in 2015 compared to 76.79 lakh (7.679 million) in 2014, recording a growth of 4.5%. Domestic tourist visits to all states and Union Territories numbered 1,036.35 million in 2012, an increase of 16.5% from 2011. In 2014, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh were the most popular states for tourists. Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Agra have been the four most visited cities of India by foreign tourists during the year 2011. Worldwide, Chennai is ranked 38 by the number of foreign tourists, while Mumbai is ranked at 50, Delhi at 52 and Agra at 66 and Kolkata at 99.Despite the rich cultural and natural heritage which India possesses, the security issues and crime — especially against female visitors, form a persisting trouble that has plagued the Indian tourism industry.
Published in Chapter:
Infrastructure and Tourism Development: A Panel Data Analysis
Sourav Kumar Das (Vidyasagar University, India) and Tonmoy Chatterjee (Ananda Chandra College, India)
Copyright: © 2017
|Pages: 14
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-2361-1.ch011
Abstract
Infrastructure is not the engine but the wheels of economic development. Since the onset of economic crisis, followed by economic reforms, the importance of infrastructure development has been emphasised through policy, pronouncements, higher budgetary allocation of funds, formation of Infrastructure development, etc. It opens out a region by providing an access to its tourist places. In its absence, the resource potential for tourism can't be of any benefit. In addition to the common infrastructure tourism development requires special infrastructures, which is growing importance to India and foreign tourists in recent years. This chapter tries to investigate the significance of infrastructure as a factor in tourism development by applying panel data estimation techniques upon 27 Indian States for the period 2005-2015 and finds that the infrastructure has been contributing positively to tourist arrivals, particularly from India and abroad. Apart from this we have also shown that tourist arrivals from host along with infrastructure expenditure will affect Indian tourism in a positive manner.