New Delhi, November 26 (Financial Express): Statistics given by the Ministry of Tourism to parliament show that the top three countries whose tourists arrived in India in 2018, are Bangladesh, the United States and the United Kingdom.
The data provided by the Ministry also highlights the consistent increase in overall foreign tourist arrivals as well as the earnings of foreign exchange over the years of 2016, 2017 and 2018. From Bangladesh, 13,80,409 tourists arrived in 2016. The numbers saw a significant increase in 2017 as they jumped to 21,56,557. In 2018, it peaked with 22,56,675 tourists arriving in India. A sharp contrast was seen in the tourism trends from Pakistan. There, the numbers fell from 1,04,720 in 2016 to 44,266 in 2017 and a dismal 41,659 in 2018.
Indian Tourism, Ministry of Tourism , Bangladesh, United States, United Kingdom, Foreign Tourist Arrival (FTA), Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, foreign tourists
The arrivals were consistent from the US with 12,96,939 tourists coming to India in 2016. The number increased minimally in 2017 with an addition of 100,000 tourists. In 2018, another 100,000 tourists entered the country.
The UK maintained a steady flow of tourists towards India with around 900,000 visiting in the year 2016-17. The numbers increased to 10,29,757 in 2018.
In 2018, Tamil Nadu saw the most visits by foreign tourists among individual states, these were over 6,000,000. Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh lagged behind with over 5,000,000 and 3.7 million visits. Delhi, in the fourth place, saw 2.740,502 tourist visits. Rajasthan in the last place saw around 1.7 million tourists visit the state.
The fee collected in US dollars per million foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) differs for the three years in focus. In 2016, 8.80 FTAs generated 22,923 billion in fees. While in 2017, 10.04 FTAs equalled to 27,310 billion dollars in fees. The year 2018, saw an all-time increase with 10.56 FTAs coinciding with 28,586 billion fees.
