Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, June 28, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
11.06.2024 - 15:25 / skift.com / Rashaad Jorden / Narendra Modi / Ask Skift / Himmat Anand
India’s clout in travel is booming, especially as the country’s growing middle class is poised to play a major role in the industry’s growth. India is also the world’s largest emerging outbound tourism market.
But India has been prioritizing domestic tourism, having recently cut its overseas promotion budget by 97%. Of the 1.7 billion trips Indians took in 2022, 99% were domestic.
As India’s travel and tourism industry is projected to generate nearly $24 billion of revenue in 2024, how is India marketing tourism?
We asked our intelligence chatbot Ask Skift the question. Ask Skift used information appearing in our past news coverage and research, and we also conducted additional reporting on the matter.
India has been actively marketing its tourism through various strategies. According to articles from Skift published in May 2024:
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India’s Union Budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year included a big increase in funding, with Skift reporting that domestic tourism was the primary focus for Indian authorities.
Himmat Anand, founder of A Dog’s Story, one the first chain of pet-friendly boutique hotels in India, said Indian authorities would emphasize religious tourism, which should give domestic tourism a boost.
But Rajeev Kohli, joint managing director of Creative Travel India, believes Indian officials aren’t consciously marketing religious tourism.
“The government has had a focus on religious sites as a part of large politics, but that is a bit different from marketing them as tourist places. The discourse is a bit convoluted,” Kohli said. “Pilgrimage tourism has always been significantly large … The major change has been the newfound media interest in the story.”
Indian authorities have emphasized a growing emphasis on sustainable tourism. The Ministry of Tourism formed the National Strategy for Sustainable Tourism in 2022 as part of the industry’s strategy to bring sustainability into the mainstream. The ministry had launched the previous year the Travel for LiFe campaign to encourage responsible tourism.
In addition, the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board runs a Responsible Tourism Mission, which the agency’s Managing Director Sheo Shekhar Shukla said promotes organic farming and locally sourced cuisine. Visitors to the state have the opportunity to participate in activities such as pottery, bamboo craft and cooking.
Indian officials are also promoting some of the country’s less visited destinations, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi notably promoting his January trip to Lakshadweep on social media. Google searches for the archipelago surged to an all-time high shortly after Modi’s visit. Online travel company MakeMyTrip reported a 3,400%
Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, June 28, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
In December 2019, India and China were connected through 539 direct passenger flights. Now there are none.
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Flight attendants at Alaska Airlines reached a preliminary deal with the airline for a new contract on Friday, while cabin crew at American Airlines inched closer to a summertime strike.
Alaska Airlines is adding a new route to the Big Easy from one of its West Coast hubs.
It just got easier to visit «The Big Easy» from the West Coast.Alaska Airlines recently announced new direct service connecting their popular Portland, Oregon hub to a new destination, New Orleans, Louisiana. Travelers seeking this route on Alaska currently have to connect through Seattle, and the flight can take as long as nine hours. The new, direct flight will only take four hours and 25 minutes.
India’s National Stock Exchange has launched the Nifty India Tourism Index to capture the performance of travel and tourism companies within the Nifty 500 Index. The index is used by investors to manage their investment portfolios and serve as a benchmark for different purposes, including tracking expected returns of certain segments.
Which hotel group is coming up with the largest IPO in the history of India’s hospitality sector? Which large Indian carrier is now offering hotel booking options? Find out responses to all this and more as the Skift India Travel Podcast discusses the latest happenings in Indian travel, tourism, and hospitality in this episode.
This week, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) wraps up the phased opening of the $2.4 billion Harvey Milk Terminal 1.