Tourism traffic on the rise

NEW DELHI - India seems to have overcome the aftershocks of the terror strikes and border tension with Pakistan, with domestic and international tourist traffic registering an upswing since last year, Federal Tourism Minister Jagmohan said.

While domestic traffic increased by 30 percent in the past seven months, the foreign tourist inflow recorded a growth of 17.5 percent this month compared with the corresponding period last year, he told a press conference.

"Our priority is to promote domestic tourism which would in turn create the infrastructure backbone for international tourist traffic," he said.

He claimed that several initiatives taken across the country by his ministry and an "aggressive" marketing strategy had yielded results. Recognizing India as a "sleeping giant" in the tourism and culture sectors, the government has increased the Tenth Plan allocation on tourism fivefold - from Rs 5.25 billion to Rs 29 billion (US$598.9 million), he said.

Jagmohan said as many as 35 hubs of tourism and culture had been identified in almost all states and union territories.

(Asia Pulse/PTI)

Things must be picking up, as the lies are getting more interesting. 35 hubs of tourism and culture? Infrastructure? Good one.

These guys make me feel frustrated and thats all they r good enough for..formulate policies that r cut off from reality or the grass roots requirement of tourism in india. For example why don't they get rid of this tourism ministry and just set-up a ministry for cleanliness instead! That'll get in more tourism then all their hackneyed policies and plans and sheer waste of public money. Besides it'll provide usefull employment for a lot of people!

I was in delhi a fortnight or so back running around the corridors of these ministrys, the corruption is one thing, but whats as disturbing is the SLOTH and TORPOR one sees!

So don't expect much from these guys and lets do our thing.

And no they are not 'telling lies'. They really believe that they r doing the best they can!

This seems like a lot of money, but without any details on how it's going to be spent it's difficult to know how the Indian tourist industry is going to benefit.

As budget travellers, in recent years we have been impressed by those people in the private sector who have set up their own hotels. These places are generally clean, sympathetic to their guests requirements and well run. Unfortunately, over the past year or so, with both domestic and foreign tourism down, many hotel owners have had a hard time.

Instead of pouring Government money into possible "black holes", it might be a good idea to give tax relief or incentives to these people who are already providing an infrastructure for tourism, both domestic and foreign.

Indiawise uses the words "topor" and "sloth" to describe the Government servants he has had to deal with. The situation in Government or state run hotels is often the same. Basically, there is a lack of initiative in this sector and the attitude is often "Why have a full hotel when you can have an empty one, watch cricket on TV and pick up the same salary?" To be fair we have stayed in a few pleasant state run places over the years.

In the previous poll on this site the option which scored highest was "Fear of getting sick in India", so perhaps some of this money could also be spent on training employees and setting up an inspection system for hotels and restaurants. Would this work?

I know this is not directly related, but the provision of clean toilets at bus stations, train stations and places of tourist interest, where a charge is payable to an on-site atttendant, would be appreciated by many tourists. This seems to work well in many other countries - why not India?