Despite air travel boom, foreign tourist arrivals still lower than pre-Covid days

Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) for the first half of 2024 stood at 47,78,374 as compared to 43,80,239 in January-June 2023 and 52,96,025 in January-June 2019.

Indian carriers are adding new destinations by the day and increasing frequencies to existing ones. From Bali to Baku, several new routes are now being connected, the rapid expansion fuelled by a burgeoning Indian middle class rushing to travel abroad for holidays.

With Goa as the tourist capital of India, the appeal by the prime minister to visit domestic destinations may not have yielded results as we headed into a pandemic post that call in 2019. (Unsplash)

But even as new peaks are reached in air travel, the foreign tourist arrivals in India continue to lag the pre-Covid numbers.

Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) for the first half of 2024 stood at 47,78,374 as compared to 43,80,239 in January-June 2023 and 52,96,025 in January-June, 2019, with a 9.1% growth over last year but a drop of nearly 10% over 2019 - the pre COVID year. This is even as International footfalls at Indian airports were up 9.9% in Q1-FY25 when compared to the same period in FY20.

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Foreign Exchange Earnings has registered a growth of 5.54% over the first half of 2019. The January-June period this year saw Foreign Exchange Earnings of US$15.339 billion as compared to US$14.524 billion for the same period in 2019. This is typically indicative of the spending being higher but remains unclear if it is due to the costs having gone up or India attracting higher-paying tourists. The weakening of the rupee as compared to 2019 means that in rupee terms, the earnings have gone up by 25.4%, all of this when absolute numbers are down. The data is released by the Ministry of Tourism.

During the same period, India has seen an increase of 674 weekly frequencies and 140,435 additional seats on international routes from India, as per data shared by Cirium - an aviation analytics company, exclusively for this article. This is a growth of nearly 20% in departures and seats, and 27.5% in Available Seat Kilometres (ASK) when the end of June this year is compared with the end of June 2019.

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How is international growth being fuelled then?

The Instagram stories and vlogs from Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Indonesia appear to be fuelling a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) for travel aficionados.

Indians flying internationally stood at 1,50,22,731 in the January to June 2024 period, as compared to 1,33,80,079 in January-June 2019 registering a growth of 12.28%. UAE, Saudi Arabia, USA, Thailand and Singapore topped the departures for Indian nationals.

Airports like Singapore were below the pre-COVID average as late as the first quarter of this year, only to recover in the holiday season. The Russia - Ukraine war which started in 2022, challenges in the Middle East led to further stress on travel, both in terms of availability and people trying to either not risk travel or save for bad days.

There has been a general consensus that travel costs have gone up post-Covid. Fuelled by revenge tourism, shortage of planes and in general capacity, the costs had shot up. Yet, only a few markets were travelling. Stricter rules in China meant that travel was low, which led to countries like Thailand and Malaysia offering visa-free travel to Indians, leading to a surge.

Overall, not all countries and airports have reached the pre-Covid levels. The Indian domestic market surpassed the pre-Covid numbers in 2023, even as it lost one major airline in the same year.

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Major campaign needed

The tourism ministry has to focus on a major campaign along the lines of previous campaigns like Incredible India or Atithidevo Bhava, to attract more tourists to India. With Goa as the tourist capital of India, the appeal by the prime minister to visit domestic destinations may not have yielded results as we headed into a pandemic post that call in 2019.

Cheaper options to Vietnam, Thailand and Sri Lanka in the vicinity, which are consistently ranked cleaner than India and costs which are not as exorbitant as those in India could have possibly led to foreign travellers opting for other destinations over India.

While a campaign is much needed, the supporting infrastructure is equally important. This includes shifting focus back on Clean India, possibly introducing Tourism Helplines or Tourist police, amongst others. The worsening traffic management in cities, as well as hills also puts attracting foreign tourists into a difficult proposition. Can a major source of foreign exchange be overlooked? Definitely not.