Tourism in India showing signs of early recovery from the impact of global economic meltdown: Kumari Selja

20.10.2010 11:14 IST

The Tourism Minister Kumari Selja has said that tourism in India has already started showing signs of early recovery from the impact of global economic meltdown and in December 2009 tourist arrivals grew substantially by 21 % registering a growth of over 8% over the arrivals in December 2007 which was a year of high growth. She was speaking at the 5th Tourism Leadership Forum on the “Prospects & Challenge of Tourism Recovery for 2010/2011” held in Madrid, Spain. She informed the gathering that one of the reasons for the tourism sector in India not being impacted as much as rest of the world was the good performance of the Indian economy. She said, inspite of the global economic recession in 2008 and 2009, Indian economy has continued has continued to have good growth. India’s GDP in 2008-09 grew by 6.7%. During April-September, 2009 India’s GDP has seen a growth of 7%, whereas the global economy is estimated to have a negative growth in 2009.

Kumari Selja said, the quantum jump in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the Hotel & Tourism sector in the years 2008 and 2009 is also indicative of the positive scenario. Most of the major international hotel chains including Starwood, Hilton, Carlson, etc. have either already come to India or are in the process of doing so. These factors, coupled with the performance of in-bound tourism in India the last few months, are very encouraging for tourism in India. With the global economy too showing signs of recovery, the international tourism can be expected to revive worldwide.

The Minister also spoke about the number of policies initiatives taken by the Government of India for generation of employment in the country. In this regard, she spoke on the Prime Minister’s mission for employment generation and skill upgradation.

The other high profile participants at the forum were, Mr. Christopher Rodrigues, Chairman of the British Tourism Board, Mr. Zhu Shanzhong, Vice Chairman of China National Tourism Administration, Mr. Charles Petruccelli, President of American Express Global Travel Services, Mr. Michael Frenzel, Chairman of TUI, AG, Mr. Geoffrey Kent, Chairman of World Travel & Tourism Council and Ms. Angela Grerekou, Vice Minister of Culture and Tourism of Greece.