Foreign tourist arrivals in India: Americans no 1

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Foreign tourist arrivals in India: Americans no 1


New Delhi: The US remained on top as the source country of foreign tourist arrivals in India in 2009.

While the US was closely followed by the UK, the neighbouring country Bangladesh occupied a distant third position among top 15 source countries from where the maximum number of tourists came to India last year.

Nepal also entered the top 15 league as 87,487 visitors from the Himalyan nation visited India during the slowdown period in 2009, according to the data prepared by the Tourism Ministry.

In 2009, out of total 51,08,579 foreigners who visited the country, 8,03,021 tourists were from the US. The number of Americans (8,04,933) among foreign tourists was also the maximum in 2008.

The US was followed by the UK with 7,48,765 visitors who came to India in 2009.

India received 4,58,063 tourists from Bangladesh followed by Sri Lanka (2,40,836), Canada (2,21,448) and France (1,95,307). There were 96,997 visitors from China.

Others in the top 15 source countries are Germany (1,93,557), Australia (1,48,846), Malayasia (1,34,340) and Japan (1,24,219).

The tourist sector witnessed a bad year all over the world in 2009 and the foreign tourist arrivals (FTA) in India during 2009 were 5.11 million as compared to 5.28 million in 2008, registering a fall of 3.3 per cent.

The share of top 15 countries was almost same (72.9 per cent) in 2009 as compared to 72.6 per cent in 2008.

However, there was growth in FTAs in some regions including Africa (17 per cent), Central and South America (9.6 per cent) and South East Asia (4.7 per cent).
 
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