Taj Mahal- Number of Visitors?

mridula

I was wondering if anyone here has any clue about how many people visit the Taj in a year, month or a day? Basically I am looking at some kind of a statistics and my own searches did not turn up much.

The report quoted in the above article says the Taj gets 24.3% of the domestic travelers (2005) and Tirupati is slightly higher at 24.5%. And I have seen the original data for 2005 at the incredibleindia.org site too. Not of much help.

But I mean what happens when we take into account international arrivals? Any ideas? I know many members at Indiamike say they like going to the Taj during the early hours because then they do not share it with thousands others But any clue about how many thousand? Where to find this out from?

Some may know why I am asking this question.

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shashank.aggarwal

few years back I read that it was 3 million people in a year...not sure though

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mridula

Shashank, thanks a lot for the reply. But as I need this figure for an academic article, I will need a source!

steven_ber

International tourists make up a very small pecentage of the total tourists in India, maybe 1 - 1.5%.

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Mickey S

This UNESCO document, dating from 2003, gives the following figures for visitor numbers:

2000: 1,955,404 Indian; 39,757 overseas; Total: 1,994,161
2001: 1,977,458 Indian; 249,267 overseas; Total: 2,226,725

Unfortunately, this seems to be the most recent UNESCO document relating to the Taj Mahal.

This MSNBC news page quotes figures for 2005:although the number of Indian visitors seems to be way out of line with UNESCO's figures for 2000/2001.

You could try emailing the Archaeological Survey of India directly, at directorgeneralasi@gmail.com

dhans

It's very dangerous to draw any conclusions form just one obeservation, but last time we were there, the amount of Indians was far and far above the international visitors. Also the internal tourism in India really has grown. The MSNBC figures for 2005 therefore seem not very logical.

Hans

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Mickey S

I agree. When I was last there (December 2006) the foreign visitors were vastly outnumbered - 10 or even 20 to 1 - by the Indian visitors. And the long, long queue for entry in the afternoon seemed to me to be almost entirely Indian.

mridula

Mickey and Dhans, thanks a lot for your replies. Mickey thanks a ton for putting the links to the numbers. What search words did you use?

shashank.aggarwal

The Unesco figures seem to be in line the number I quoted..

in 2001 it was 2.2 Million, so Its safe to imagine that it might have been close to 3 million in recent years...

However as Mridula said that she needs a source for the same...I guess getting in touch with Unesco might give better results as they are the people who are responsible for world heritage site status...

mridula

Shashank, for me it is sufficient to quote MSNBC or UNESCO, as a news organization is a credible source and I need the rough numbers. The powers at the UNESCO would expect people like me to use google for our research purposes. But what surprises me is the the Indian tourism ministry does not have these numbers., or maybe I was not ale to find it.

shashank.aggarwal

have you tried wiki ?

Mickey S

I've used the UNESCO site before, so I searched on that site for all the documents they had relating to the Taj Mahal. And then I think I entered "UNESCO Taj Mahal" into Google to see if there were any media reports of more recent figures. That led me to MSNBC.

I was very surprised just how difficult it was - in fact, I failed - to find accurate, up-to-date visitor numbers. Even the official Taj Mahal website did not provide them.

ranjan154

Very difficult to judge the actual numbers of visitors but on an average it is in millions.

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Mickey S

But surely, someone must know exactly how many visitors the Taj Mahal receives. Someone must count up the number of tickets sold at the end of each day and enter the figure - longhand, in triplicate, for this is India - in a big book somewhere.

mridula

Not only count it, please make someone should make it available to poor souls like us who want to write a simple fact in a paper. Instead we have to ask people for help at IM!