Friday, August 14, 2009

Important highlights of country-wise Foreign Tourist Arrivals during 2008.

Following are the important highlights of the country-wise Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) in India during 2008. According to Ministry of Tourism, Government of India a total of 5.37 million Foreign Tourist Arrivals were estimated for 2008. 

· As far as the different regions of the world are concerned, maximum growth in 2008 over 2007 was observed for West Asia (20.9%) followed by Eastern Europe (18.5%), Central and South America (12.7%) and South East Asia (10.5%). The growth rate in 2008 was lower than the all-India growth rate of 5.6% in the FTAs from North America (4.4%), East Asia (3.6%), Western Europe (2.9%) and Africa (2.7%).

· The top ten countries for FTAs in India during 2008 were USA (827866), UK (787197), Bangladesh (540092), Sri Lanka (228548), Canada (223587), France (217816), Germany (209252), Japan (150732), Australia (148055) and Malaysia (119040). FTAs from these ten countries constituted about 64.34% of total FTAs in India during 2008.

· The maximum growth rate in FTAs was observed for Oman (54.9%), followed by Myanmar (54.0%), UAE (44.0%), Afghanistan (43.4%), Nigeria (29.8%), Denmark (24.1%) and Brazil (21.8%). The share of these countries in total FTAs, however, is quite low. 

· Some of the countries in respect of which a decline in 2008 over 2007 in FTAs was observed are Pakistan (-25.1%), Finland and Kenya (-10.1%), Mauritius (-8.5%) and South Africa (-6.2%). 

· FTAs from UK, which is the second most important source market for India, also observed a decline of 1.1% in 2008 over 2007, whereas the number one source market, USA, observed an increase of 3.6%. 

· The growth rate observed for some of the other important source markets for FTAs in India in 2008 over 2007 are Germany (13.6%), China (12.1%), Australia (8.9%), Singapore (8.0%), Canada (7.4%), France (6.3%), Malaysia (5.6%), Japan (3.6%), South Korea (-2.7%) and Italy (-4.6%). Thus, the growth in FTAs from most of the top source markets of the country has been higher than the average growth of FTAs (5.6%) in 2008 over 2007.

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