Tourism Can Be India's Next Big GDP Earner

After the success of its tourism’s promotional slogan ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’, the Indian tourism ministry has come out with another catchphrase 'your search ends here'.

- Tushar K. Mahanti

One hopes the new slogan helps in attracting more foreign tourists to India for experiencing nature’s beauty and cultural diversity. The country needs a vibrant tourism sector now more than ever. The economy is decelerating, private consumption is slowing down as is service sector growth. Higher growth in tourism and hospitality sector that accounts for nearly a tenth of India’s GDP and more than 8% of total employment can appreciably help the economy’s turnaround bid.

In its annual analysis quantifying the global economic and employment impact of travel and tourism in 185 countries, the World Travel & Tourism Council’s (WTTC) research reveals that the sector has outpaced the global economic growth for the eighth consecutive year in 2018 and grew at 3.9% during the year – higher than the global GDP growth of 3.2%. It contributed $8.8 trillion to the global economy and accounted for 319 million jobs, equivalent to one in every ten jobs. The scale of growth and importance of the sector is also evident from the fact that one in five of all new jobs created in the world over the last five years were in travel and tourism.

A large number of people are traveling across the world – be it for work needs or pleasure or for enjoying the beauty of old architectural splendours – and the number is increasing steadily with international arrivals growing from 25 million in the 1950s to 1.4 billion in 2018 and to an estimated 2.2 billion by 2029. The industry is proving resilient to both geopolitical uncertainty and economic volatility.

India jumps six places in tourism competitiveness index