Estimated Total Foreign Tourist Arrival

to India during 1010

Year Most Optimistic Pessimistic
scenario
likely scenario
scenario
2010 5532180 5854723 5224443

A few Issues Highlighted in this

presentation
• Inflow from different regions of the world
• Predominance of a few regions
• Seasonality in tourist inflow
 A Few Observations

• Couple of regions, West Europe and North America

are the major source regions.

• These two regions account for about 70% of the

total inbound tourists to India

• West Europe is the region which contributes about

45 to 50% of the total tourists

• However, the gap between West Europe and North

America in terms of number and share to total
tourists is reducing over time consistently, though
the gap is still significantly large.
•
 A Few Observations

• Amongst the lesser important region in terms of

inbound tourists to India, South East Asia and East
Asia are coming up
Significantly.

• A close look at the numbers suggest that a

significant change in foreign tourist arrivals have
taken place from 2002/03 onwards. This is true for
almost every source region.

• Opening up of the economy and initiatives towards

promoting Indian tourism are the major reasons

• Incredible India campaign has also played a

significant positive role.
 A Few Observations

• If one looks at year to year

change in number of number
of tourists from different
regions, an erratic movement
can be identified.
•
• This involves several internal
as well as external reasons
which includes macro-
economic situations of the
source regions coupled with
internal factors such as
terrorist activities as well as
some policy issues.

•The direction of growth fro

almost every source country is
more or less similar though in
varying degree.
Seasonality in arrivals of foreign tourists

• Foreign tourists arrivals in India is characterized with marked

seasonal differences
• The data on inbound tourists arrivals to India are available for four
quarters of the year, viz., 1) January to March,2) April to June, 3)
July to September and 4) October to December
• For every region under study, it was observed that the quarter
October to December received maximum number of inbound
tourists followed by January to March. This trend has prevailed for
through out the time span reported in this presentation.
• In case of a couple regions, West Europe, South East Asia and East
Asia, number of tourist arrivals are almost similar during these two
quarters.
• Perhaps the most important reason behind concentration of
inbound tourists during these two quarters are the weather,
especially for liesure tourism purpose.
• The only exception is West Asia, where July to September quarter is
higher than other quarters significantly. Perhaps, this is dominated
more by the business tourists compared to leisure tourists.
For Whom These Trends are Important

•Hotels and other accommodation related

industries

• Logistics and transport operators

• People involved with cultural and in production

process of other local products like handicrafts
etc.

• Researchers to understand the tourism trajectory

• And, of course the planning professionals

What can be done with this data
•Likely foreign tourist arrivals can be projected
using proper econometric forecasting technique/s

• Forecasting should take care of macro-economic

conditions of the source countries as well as India

• While forecasting, seasonality aspects need to

considered. Recently I forecasted annual inbound
tourists to India for 2010 through 2015. Instead of
a panel of quarterly data for several years or
pulled quarterly data, annual tourist data from
source regions proved to be a better option.

• Apart from non-availability of several select

macro-economic data, huge variation across the
What can be done with this data
• However, effort for forecasting tourist arrivals
from source regions for particular quarters can be
worth doing from planning point of view of several
stakeholders, especially, hospitality and transport
operators