Foreign Tourists arrival in India and Vietnam

In spite of the fact that India is a large country with a lot of places of historical, tourist and religious interests, the foreign tourist arrivals in India has not increased as much as it could have. Air connectivity with foreign countries cannot be a reason now as most of the tourist originating countries are connected to India either directly or through intermediate countries in Europe, West Asia and East Asia.Though the international flights from and to Vietnam of late is increasing, Vietnam is still much behind India in air connectivity with other countries.
Tourist arrivals in Vietnam have surpassed that of India.The foreign tourist arrivals during the last three years in Vietnam and India are as follows:

Year———–India————– Vietnam

2010 ———-57 75 692————50 49 855
2011———–63 09 222————60 14 032
2012=———-66 48 318———— 68 47 678

While in 2010 Vietnam was behind India, in 2012 it had more foreign visitors than India.

The reason is that the Tourist Department of India does not promote several major places of tourist and historical interests. It concentrates on Taj Mahal and a few other interests. Tourist Department in the centre should have closer contacts with States Tourist Departments and promote important places jointly.

Central Tourist Department should also not confine its activities on participation in a few tourist fairs, organizing a few food festivals, sending a limited number of foreign tour operators on familiarization trips to India, subsidising their pamphlet printing.The main work of tourist department should be putting large number of foreign outbound tour operators with Indian inbound tour operators who would take care of the few activities being undertaken by the department. Both Central and State Tourist departments should much closer interaction with the Indian Embassies and High Commissions abroad.