Quantitative Dimension of India’s Tourism Trajectory in the Post-reform Era

Tourism occupies a prominent place in the development strategy of the country, due to its vast potential and multiplier effect through spillovers and linkages. Tourism multiplier is an all-encompassing indicator to measure its economic essence owing to its impressive inter-sectoral linkages. India could leverage the travel-centric traits of the global population by creating a conducive destination attribute through enabling policy and advisory services. Both due to the splendid destination attributes and facilitating policy milieu, India claims a sizeable slice in the global visitation pie. The ‘Incredible India’ call has conferred ample mileage in its tourism campaign in the international fora. The various initiatives taken by the government to promote tourism as a growth engine have amply supported the phenomenal growth in visitation and its positive spillover in the country. In this backdrop, the proposed study traces the longitudinal trends of various tourism-related indicators, relevant to India, corroborating policy levels. The scope of the study is limited to foreign tourists’ arrival in the country and its associated quantitative dimensions. The relevant data for the research will be elicited from Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy’s online repository through institutional access. The database comprises of foreign tourist arrival in gender and selected nationality dimensions, FOREX earnings from tourism, profitability and industry returns positions. The major analytical tools were CAGR, correlation, t-test, one-way ANOVA and MANOVA. The results of analysis confirm impressive strides in the variables taken for analysis.