Draft Report of the High Level Group on Services Sector

Chapter 3

Tourism
Tourism is estimated as contributing 5.83 % to the GDP and 8.27 % to employment in the country. According to a sophisticated statistical model--the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA)—developed by the Ministry of Tourism in collaboration with the NCAER the employment generated by tourism is estimated at 51.1 million in 2006-07. Foreign tourist arrivals (business travellers, leisure travellers and persons of Indian origin holding foreign passports) had increased to 4.42 million in 2006 and the earnings in US $ to 8.93 billion in the same year. The number of domestic tourists as reported by the Ministry of Tourism was 462 million in 2006. Although the authenticity of this figure remains to be rigorously verified, it is established that the domestic tourists are mostly people on social visits .
Tourism in India has an impressive variety of tourism products: heritage and culture tourism (with the 26 and 14 potential World Heritage Sites at the core); eco-tourism (wild life in National Parks); adventure tourism (mountain climbing, mountain trekking, river-based sports including rafting, and skiing); wellness (ayurveda and yoga institutes in Kerala and Rishikesh) and medical tourism (being developed by private sector hospital chains); beach tourism (centred around Goa); religious tourism (Varanasi, Haridwar, Tirupati, Bodh Gaya, Ajmer, to name a very few); MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) tourism; desert tourism; and finally rural tourism.
The past four years, 2003-06 have seen a good growth in international tourist arrivals as well as in the foreign exchange earnings from tourism as can be seen from the following table: