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View Point
The Call From Britain
Indian visitor arrivals into England have doubled to 256,000
in the decade beginning 1994. The annual growth over 2003 was a hefty 28 per
cent. This has only whetted that country's appetite for Indian holiday makers
and a high-powered delegation from VisitBritain, successor to the erstwhile
British Tourist Authority (BTA) made a four city tour of India this month. Led
by CEO, Tom Wright its two other members were Kumar Muthalagappam, Board Member
and Keith Beecham, regional manager, South Asia. In Delhi, Wright formally inaugurated
VisitBritain India office in the capital's suburb of Gurgaon and later met trade
representatives and media persons at a reception held by country-manager, Punam
Singh. The other cities on their call were Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore.
In a chat with this writer, Wright said that India is especially important for
Britain as it has been identified as an emerging market of extreme importance.
In the current scenario, he said, outbound traffic from India has gone up from
two million to five million (in a few years) and its economy is booming with
people travelling more often and spending more on their overseas visits.
During 2004 Indians who chose Britain for their holidays spent 239 million.
The figure represents a growth of 54 per cent over the previous year and works
out to more than 1,000 per visitor - a cool Rs 85,000 per head.
Speaking of recent trends, VisitBritain CEO pointed out that the number of direct
flights to UK has increased due to a new bilateral agreement with India.
There are many new players in the market like Jet Airways and BMI; Sahara will
introduce its service in November. Direct flights to Birmingham have also been
launched which increases convenience of travel beyond London.
Wright said direct flights to UK have also started from what he called Tier
II cities like Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Cochin, Thiruvananthapuram. He pointed to
a recent study by NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research) which
says that the inhabitants of these cities have disposable incomes for travel.
And, 75 per cent of what Wright described as `sheer rich' and 60 per cent of
`real rich' live in the Tier II cities. He added that VisitBritain's promotional
efforts in these cities have been stepped up through partnership with the British
Council. The Visa scene has also improved, he said, with the opening of 12 new
hubs of Visa Facilitation Centres whose services extend to Tier II cities also.
The clever use of Bollywood in Showcasing Britain to Indian travellers is recorded
in a thematic brochure `Bollywood Movie Map' which apart from identifying locales
for films like Lamhe also has postcards from stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Karisma
Kapoor.
"The Kapoors have always loved London" says Karisma, and adds, "my
grandad, Raj Kapoor would tell me of the great theatres like the Old Vic and
the Theatre Royal Haymarket while grandma would talk about the splendour of
Kew Gardens in full bloom. Having spent most of my holidays in London I know
this favourite city of mine as well as Mumbai". There is also reference
to the wax figure of Amitabh Bachchan in Madam Tussad's in the brochure.
Britain, which wrested the number one position as a source market for India
in the late 70s has maintained its lead except for neighbour Bangladesh which
sends twice as many visitors as UK.
According to India Tourism Statistics which has figures only for 2003, arivals
from Britain in that year were 430,917 and from USA 410,803, a difference of
barely 20,000 which has led to media speculation that USA might after all recover
its numero uno slot. Surprisingly, Bangladesh does not figure in the top ten
inbound list.
After UK and USA, Sri Lanka and Canada are neck and neck for the third and fourth
position with just over 100,000 counts each. Then come France, Japan, Germany,
Malaysia, Australia and Singapore.
Talking of Indian outbound there has been much debate and some concern also
about the fact that more Indians are travelling abroad than foreigners who come
to India. Official data given out by the tourism ministry shows that while 3.37
million overseas travellers came to this country in 2004 as many as 6.2 million
Indians went abroad.
Some analysts and industry leaders have been pointing out that the country is
in an adverse balance so far as foreign exchange earnings from tourism are concerned.
But a more detailed study is necessary to find out if this is really so.
India offers some basis for such a study. Of the countries that receive Indian
traffic in six digits are of course UK as already mentioned followed by USA.
The others are Bahrain (312975), UAE (336046), China (219097), Hong Kong (178130),
Malaysia (145442), Singapore (309448) and Thailand (253752). And, now see the
data of Indian departures from the various airports.
Of the 5 million plus Indians who went abroad (in 2003) the number that flew
from Thiruvananthapuram was 323477, from Cochin 347567 and from Calicut 266534.
Obviously most of them were Indian expats returning from their home vacations.
In other words, we need to segment leisure seeking or corporate Indian travellers
from those working abroad. The forex adverse balance may turn out to be a favourable
balance.
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