How to attract Indian tourists
- Destinations are competing for the travelling rupee
INDIANS ARE on the move. In 2019 international departures from India hit 27m, a number that will surely be exceeded this year and is predicted to rise to 90m by 2040. Annual spending on foreign travel by Indians will nearly triple to $89bn in three years, reckons Bernstein, a research firm. Airlines’ networks are being expanded and redesigned to handle larger numbers of Indian tourists. Many trips are for business or to visit friends and family. But about 40% are pure leisure, and holidaymakers pack fat wallets.
Around the world tourism boards, hotels and restaurateurs are starting to compete for Indian travellers, especially in the Middle East and South-East Asia. That makes sense. Tourism accounts for 3% of global GDP. It creates jobs, boosts exports and builds cultural ties. A long boom in tourism from China is flagging: its travellers made only 87m trips last year, 40% fewer than they did before covid-19 prompted China to turn inward. All the more reason, then, to lay out the red carpet for Asia’s other giant. But how should countries attract Indian travellers?
Step one is to make it easier for them to get in. India has long had a “weak” passport, which allows visa-free travel to only a few places. As the country grows more powerful, that is changing. Malaysia and Thailand have abolished visa requirements and seen a surge in visitors. Digitising the process and keeping fees low boosts numbers, too. But many Western countries have onerous visa policies, which put off both Indian tourists and those visiting their relatives in the diaspora. A ten-year multi-entry tourist visa to Britain costs £1,000 ($1,300), seven times as much as an American one. America’s consulates are slow: it takes over a year to get an appointment. Continental European countries are stingy, rewarding painstakingly submitted paperwork with visas that last as few as four days.
Once a country has made its tourist-visa regime more welcoming, what next? One way to win the attention of Indian globetrotters is to collaborate with Bollywood. Spain’s tourism agency worked with the makers of “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara” (“You Only Live Once”), a hit film from 2011. Arrivals from India doubled the following year. Yash Chopra, an Indian director, made movies in Switzerland in the 1990s, introducing many to its Alpine charm. A grateful Swiss nation erected a statue of the man and named a train after him. Many Indian films have scenes shot in Dubai for a dose of glamour: last year more Indians used Dubai’s airport than any other nationality.
Diplomacy can also help put a country on the Indian tourist map. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, travels a lot and loves to be filmed against dramatic backdrops. India’s fawning news channels follow his every step, providing the sort of exposure a tourism board cannot buy. After each visit, say tour operators, interest in that destination shoots up—though perhaps not for Ukraine, where Mr Modi arrives this week on what will be his 80th foreign trip.
Once a place has captured Indian tourists’ imagination and let them in, there is one more thing: it must offer them food they enjoy. Good Indian—and especially vegetarian—food tops the list of requirements for outbound tourists. Indian cuisine takes many forms, from the kebabs of the north to the dosas of the south. Its consumers vary too, from hard-core vegetarians who eschew even potatoes and onions, to the urban rich who fancy the sort of modern Indian food unavailable at home, such as at Michelin-starred Gaggan in Bangkok. Offering a wide variety of Indian nosh to Indians who have just got off the plane from India may sound absurd. But it works.
© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com
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Business NewsSpecialsHow to attract Indian tourists
First Published:8 Dec 2024, 06:58 PM IST
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