Asia is projected to remain the dominant source region over the forecast period, while Europe and the Americas, the second and third major suppliers of visitor numbers into India, are projected to have visitor share contractions
Visa tied up with the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) for the Asia Pacific Destination Forecasts 2022-2024. The India Report highlights key travel trends, observations, and forecasts for the industry and country specifically, reported ETTravelWorld in an exclusive report.
According to the report, Asia is projected to remain the dominant source region over the forecast period, while Europe and the Americas, the second and third major suppliers of visitor numbers into India, are projected to have visitor share contractions.
The report forecasts that India is expected to witness 13.34 million inbound visitors by 2024, which is around 22.1 higher than that of the pre-pandemic year 2019. That year, India received 10.93 million inbound tourists. The number of tourists travelling to India will increase year-on-year between 2022 and 2024. The year 2022 will see 4.1 million tourists that will double in 2023 to 8.5 million and 13.34 million in 2024.
Inbound tourism numbers in India as well as globally came down in the last two years due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of international visitors to India saw a reduction to 2.74 million in 2020, a 74.9 per cent drop in comparison to the previous year mainly due to stringent border control measures, lockdown, and other pandemic-related restrictions.
Add to that the fact that there were no scheduled international commercial flights: that also saw numbers dropping drastically. The share of India in international tourist arrivals in 2020 was 1.57 per cent and the country accounted for 10.67 per cent of international tourist arrivals in the Asia Pacific region in 2020.
As per PATA, the numbers of inbound visitors in 2021 had also gone down significantly to hit a new low with only 0.75 million international travellers visiting India. The Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, which keeps the record of India Tourism statistics and releases the number of tourist arrivals in the country has not yet come out with official figures for 2021.
Small businesses and merchants across categories and geographies can then provide their customers the convenience of contactless payments and acceptance of cross-border transactions, in addition to seamless, secure, and speedy payments that international travelers are accustomed to
Three scenarios were developed for this forecast period. Under the first scenario (mild), visitor numbers in 2024 are forecast to reach 13.34 million, 22 per cent higher than pre-pandemic (2019). Similar trends are predicted under the medium and severe scenarios but with lower recovery rates.
The PATA and Visa report also highlighted that if the prediction goes by historical arrival trends, the number of inbound tourist arrival is expected to reach 3.44 million by the end of 2022, 6.21 million by 2023, and 10.10 million by 2024.
Sharing his thoughts on the forecast and the Visa – PATA report, Ramakrishnan Gopalan, Head – Products, India and South Asia, Visa, “The uptick in travel makes it important for a country to provide a superior travel experience to its visitors, and digital payments infrastructure should open these commerce and revenue opportunities for merchants everywhere. Small businesses and merchants across categories and geographies can then provide their customers the convenience of contactless payments and acceptance of cross-border transactions, in addition to seamless, secure, and speedy payments that international travelers are accustomed to.”
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