New Delhi, Aug 12 (IANS) Foreign tourist arrivals dipped in India in 2009 but domestic tourism saw a surge with some 650 million people preferring to explore the country’s tourist spots, parliament was informed Thursday.
In a written reply, Minister of State for Tourism Sultan Ahmed said that the number of domestic tourists in 2008 and 2009 was 562.98 million and 650.04 million respectively.
He said the number of foreign tourists in India registered a decline of 3.3 percent as compared to 2008.
‘This decline may be due to various reasons including the global financial slowdown, terrorist attacks, H1N1 pandemic,’ the minister told the Rajya Sabha.
India received 5.37 million foreign tourists in 2008, around 5.7 percent more than the 5.08 million of the previous year.
In 2009, Tamil Nadu got the maximum number of tourists with 2.5 million foreigners visiting the state. It was followed by Delhi (1.9 million), and Uttar Pradesh (1.5 million).
Maharashtra came next with 1.9 million, West Bengal (1.1 million), Rajasthan (1 million), Andhra Pradesh (795,173), Kerala (548,737), Bihar (423,042) and Himachal Pradesh (400,583).
The northeast saw the least number of foreign tourists.
While Manipur received 337 visitors, Mizoram had 513. Nagaland got 1,423 tourists, Tripura 4,246, Meghalaya 4,522 and Sikkim hosted 17,730 tourists.
