Indian government plans to promote religious tourism

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Mar 19, 2018 : The Indian government plans to promote religious tourism, says federal Minister of State for Tourism K J Alphonse.

 

“Our big focus is getting people to see India itself. Bulk of domestic tourism is really religious tourism,” explained the minister. He quoted government estimates that that noted nearly 60 percent of domestic tourism in India is religious-based.

The government, he added, is now investing in creating infrastructure around religious places.

Plans are also afoot to popularize yoga and Ayurveda among millennials (those born after 1980s), as part of efforts to reach out to people across the globe and get “millions of more people to India.”

The number of domestic tourist visits in 2017 stood at about 1.8 billion, up about 12 percent from the over 1.6 billion in the previous year.

The government in 2016 approved two projects: Swadesh Darshan (See your country) Scheme to build infrastructure around places of tourist interest under the umbrella of 15 themes such as Buddhist Circuit, Krishna Circuit, Spiritual Circuit, Ramayana Circuit and Heritage Circuit. The second project, Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Augmentation Drive (PRASAD) scheme focuses on development and beautification of identified pilgrimage destinations.

The government has approved allocation of about 70 billion rupees for about 90 projects under the two schemes.

“Almost all the projects under both schemes will be inaugurated by December this year.”

“We are repositioning what India is. There are two big things that we want to sell — one is yoga and the other is Ayurveda. This is to attract both domestic and foreign tourists,” Alphons said.

The Tourism Ministry recently launched ‘Yogi of the Racetrack’, a minute-long advertisement on yoga, that received more than 11.5 million hits in a week. “With this ad, we are addressing a completely new group of people. Earlier, it was thought that yoga is just for people over 40 and Ayurveda too is for older people. Now we are addressing the millennials.”

Six more similar advertisements on topics, including Ayurveda, will be released soon. “The whole idea is to storm the world with what the true essence of India is.”

Foreign tourist arrivals in 2017 stood at over 10 million, a growth of 15.6 percent over 8.8 million such arrivals in 2016. This resulted in foreign exchange earnings of $ 27.6 billion last year, a growth of 20.8 percent over 2016.

“We don’t want people to just come and see and go. It doesn’t bring any benefit to the local community… Longer stay means hotel rooms will be occupied, tourists would shop, go to restaurants… this helps us get foreign exchange as well as generate more jobs,” Alphons said.

The Minister said that to boost tourism, the attitude of citizens also need to change. “… the perception is that when you see a foreign tourist, you want to go and take a selfie with them, get unnecessarily close. A whole lot of people don’t like that. They want privacy… let people be, don’t bug them.”