Safety concerns, economic woes make foreign tourists shun India

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-04-03/news/38248433_1_foreign-tourist-arrival-travel-advisories-domestic-air-travel

Vijaya Rathore & Ravi Teja Sharma, ET Bureau Apr 3, 2013, 04.00AM IST

NEW DELHI: The financial crisis in Europe, high domestic airfares and the perception that India is unsafe for women tourists has adversely impacted inbound tourism and hurt the country's foreign exchange growth in the bargain. "This is a reflection of the recession in Europe, which was a key market. Even inbound from the US is slow," says Dipak Deva, chief executive officer of Kuoni Destination Management for India & South Asia.

Foreign tourist arrivals in the first two months of the year were 13.87 lakh, a growth of 2.1%, compared with 13.59 lakh in the year ago period, when the growth was 8.7%. This has impacted the country's foreign exchange earnings growth. Earning from tourism in Jan-Feb this year was Rs20,584 crore with a growth of 20.2% compared with Rs17,125 crore with a growth of 27.5% in the year-ago period.

The perception that India is an unsafe destination has only been heightened with many cases of rape and molestation being reported recently and the travel advisories issued in this regard. This has led to a decline in the number of women travellers to the country. "Single women travellers are definitely looking at other Southeast Asian countries instead of India owing to the travel advisories that have been issued by countries like the UK and Australia," says Taruna Seth, vice president at Pearl Luxe, a unit of Pearl International Tours and Travels.

A major irritant, Deva says, is that it takes up to two weeks to obtain an Indian visa in some European countries, which makes people opt for more accessible destinations. His forecast is sombre: "Growth this year is down to single digits, from 12-14% earlier and is likely to remain the same in 2013." Subhash Goyal, chairman of STIC Travel Group, blames the high cost of travel within India. "Domestic air travel has become very expensive in India. Different tax structures of states act as a deterrent to the growth of tourism," says Goyal.

The ministry of tourism says the decline in growth rate of foreign tourist arrival should be attributed to the economic crisis across the world. "Statistics provided by UNWTO indicate that total numbers of tourists travelling across the world will only grow by 3% and India is no exception," says Ravi Kant Bhatnagar, additional director general (market research) at the tourismministry.

Europe may be slow, but India can pin hopes on other markets like North America, Russia, CIS nations and Asia. "Markets like Canada and North America are going strong in terms of tourist demand," points out Arjun Sharma, managing director of Le Passage to India.

Would you go to Timbuktu?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2012/09/tourism-mali?zid=319&ah=17af09b0281b01505c226b1e574f5cc1

Sep 18th 2012, 15:14 by S.A | BAMAKO

ON A weekend evening in Bamako, Mali’s capital, the Abissinia restaurant on Rue 311 is practically deserted. It was not always thus. When Jessica Mouclier, a 30-year-old Spaniard, first opened the establishment with her Ethiopian husband late last year the place was packed. “Since the coup d’état everybody just fled,” she says, sitting under a wooden lampshade at a red-and-white-clothed table. “After the coup d’état you’ve seen nothing, zero.”

The coup in question came on March 22nd, when disgruntled soldiers deposed President Amadou Toumani Touré. Six months on and the governments of America, Britain and France, whose citizens once accounted for many of Mali’s tourists, still advise against travel to the country.

In truth, Mali’s tourist industry was in decline even before the coup. In August last year the government said instability in the north had cost the country 50 billion CFA francs ($110 million) in lost tourism receipts and 8,000 jobs over the preceding two years. But on March 22nd the shrunken industry—which had long lured foreigners to the spectacular escarpments of the Dogon Country and the desert city of Timbuktu—stopped overnight.

Hotels in Bamako, including the Azalai Grand, are shuttered. Restaurants have closed or laid off staff. In the Marché de N'Golonina, where artisans sell crafts along one main alley, there is little trade. Tales of woe circulate. “Two shops have closed in this market,” 37-year-old necklace maker Hamidou Dramera tells Baobab. “It’s difficult. There is no activity.”

Mali’s national museum below the presidential palace at Koulouba, north of the capital, is effectively empty too. Samuel Sidibe, the museum’s director, says that as a state institution it is protected from closure, but it has still been hit hard. “For us at the museum it’s very serious, many of the tourists who come to Mali come to the museum,” he says. “The situation is creating an economic disaster.”

Malians dependent on the tourist trade hope that the “Toubabs”, as Caucasians are known, will soon return. Diplomatic families and NGO staff are filtering back to Bamako. But with two thirds of the country in rebel hands, and power in the government-controlled rump uneasily split between the interim president, the prime minister and post-coup military junta, Mali is unlikely to make its way back onto the west African tourist trail for a while yet.

India's hospitality industry takes a hit

http://www.economist.com/comment/1962716#comment-1962716

Apr 5th 2013, 14:02 by N.B. | WASHINGTON, D.C. 

 TRAVEL to India may have dropped by as much as 25% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2013, according to a survey of 1,200 tour operators conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry of India. The problem, says the group, is that many travellers, and especially women, feel less safe going to India in the wake of the fatal gang rape in Delhi that attracted worldwide attention in December. Even some of the positive effects of the fallout from the murder—a dramatic rise in the reporting of sex crimes, for example—are likely to deter foreigners from visiting.


 Travel and tourism are big businesses in India, supporting more jobs in 2011 than the country's much-vaunted communications sector, according to a study by the World Travel and Tourism Council. Until recently, they were growing quickly, and indeed generated over 6% of India's GDP in 2011 while supporting tens of millions of jobs. It seems that one more result of this terrible crime is to remind the world's leaders that the seriousness with which they fight crimes against women can have a real impact on their countries' economic welfare.