The latest World Economic Forum (WEF) report on Travel and Tourism Competitiveness 2008 across the World ranked India at the 65th place in overall growth of tourism industry.
The government of India while responding to this latest report termed it as not apposite for India and asked to value the growth of Indian tourism industry in entirety but not thorough an incorrect analysis.
The report released on March 04, 2008 provides data of 130 countries on the basis of travel and tourism competitiveness index.
This year under the theme Balancing Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability, the report placed India at the 65th position. These figures used to measure how good tourism industries are in countries around the world.
The second annual World Economic Forum report took as many as 71 indicators compared to last year’s 46 in addition with some others to list out the destinations having the most conducive environment for tourism.
Furthermore the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index 2008 in various categorical rankings puts India at different spots: 107th in Regulatory Frame Work, 59th in Business Environment & Infrastructure and 26th in the Human Culture & Natural Resources.
However, as far as the accuracy of this report is concerned it can be questioned in the absence of the details of methodology and survey used for this survey.
The report too doesn’t account about the sample size, selection of executives for opinion survey that can be biased.
Growth of tourism in India has been appreciated since the last few years as government with the brand name ‘Incredible India’ has been doing a tremendous job to attract inbound tourists and this can be viewed from the fact that there is a paramount rise of about 12.4% in foreign tourists and nearly 34% growth in the foreign exchange earnings over the previous year.
Even the latest UN WTO report puts India in the driving seat ahead of Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore in terms of foreign exchange earnings.
Though India attract less number of foreign tourists but its earnings in dollar is about $1920 compared to Thailand’s $830, Singapore-$835 and Indonesia-$905, says WTO report.
This proves that travellers from across the globe prefer India the most as one of the favoured destination as it cost lesser by staying longer in India compared to other South East Asian Countries.
Criticising the latest report of WEF, the Ministry of Tourism said: “Considering India’s tremendous potential and the high growth scenario for the future, the Ministry of Tourism has been coordinating with other Ministries and other organs of the Government to ensure that constraints related to infrastructure, connectivity, visas etc. are removed.”
“It is unfortunate that unsubstantiated reporting sometimes causes damage to a successful campaign, defeating the common objective of promoting and positioning India domestically and internationally as the most preferred tourist destination”, Ministry added.
|
|
Read More: East Godavari
Comments:
