India calling: 6.19 million foreign tourists visited in 2022

NEW DELHI: India received 6.19 million foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) during 2022 as compared to 1.52 million during the same period of 2021.

There were 10.93 million FTAs in India during the pre-pandemic year 2019.

The tourism industry has shown good signs of revival after Covid-19 pandemic.

The Ministry of Tourism under its schemes of ‘Swadesh Darshan’, ‘PRASHAD’ and assistance to central agencies, provides central financial assistance to the state governments, Union territories for development of tourism related infrastructure and facilities to provide an enriching tourism experience to visitors in a planned and phased manner.

The Ministry of Tourism has set up a 24x7 Multi-Lingual Tourist Info-Helpline in 12 languages, including 10 international languages (German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic), Hindi and English for domestic and foreign tourists to provide support service in term of information relating to travel in India and to offer appropriate guidance to tourists in distress while travelling in India.

According to a written reply in Parliament on April 6, the Ministry of Tourism has taken several initiatives to give a boost to the tourism sector in the country and to increase foreign tourist arrivals. It launched the ‘Dekho Apna Desh’ initiative with the objective of creating awareness among the citizens about the rich heritage and culture of the country and encouraging citizens to travel within the country. It is conducting programmes under the ‘Capacity Building for Service Providers’ (CBSP) Scheme to train and upgrade manpower to provide better service standards.

It also launched Incredible India tourist facilitator certification programme, a digital initiative that aims at creating an online learning platform with the objective of creating a pool of well-trained professional tourist facilitators across the country to support tourists.