Nearly 40 lakh foreign tourists visited the country this year leading to an earning of Rs 25,934 crore in foreign exchange, Government told the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
NEW DELHI: Nearly 40 lakh foreign tourists visited the country this year leading to an earning of Rs 25,934 crore in foreign exchange, Government told the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
"As many as 3.88 million foreign tourist arrivals took place till November this year recording a 12.9 per cent increase over that of last year," Tourism Minister Ambika Soni said during Question Hour.
Foreign exchange earning also grew by 16.9 per cent over that of last year, the Minister said.
Replying to queries, Soni said with a view to ensuring effective marketing overseas, the Ministry has proposed opening of three new offices abroad in addition to 13 existing India tourism centres in foreign countries.
These offices are located in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Amsterdam, London, Dubai, Johannesburg, Tokyo, Sydney and Singapore, she said observing that series of promotional activities by these offices had contributed in significantly increasing tourist arrivals in the last three years.
Soni told the House that focus was being laid on countries like Russia, China and the Latin American region to boost tourism.
Giving details of the mechanism adopted to measure tourist arrivals, she said her Ministry was using satellite accounting system, sale of tickets and data received from its foreign offices, among others, for the purpose.
Answering questions, Soni said a large number of countries including Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Macao, Nepal, the UAE, Turkey, Australia, the UK and Ireland were operating offices from Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.
On the scope for employment generation through tourism, she said hotel industry and heritage sites were being operated through public-private partnership and growth in tourism has led to unemployed youths getting direct and indirect employment.
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