Sans hotels, Agra tourism not promising

The period October-January is considered the peak time for the tourism industry of Agra. Millions of tourists arrive in the town during this four-month period, bringing enough business to Agra's tourism industry.

But this year, while the tourist traffic has been unprecedented, the business from tourism has shown little improvement.

Every day, at least 8,000 to 10,000 tourists, both foreign and Indian, are arriving in Agra these days and the hospitality sector of the town is enjoying a boom time but for the handicrafts industry of Agra, dealing in marble and wood handicrafts, carpets and glass craft, there has hardly been any change, with the tourists still avoiding to make handicraft purchases from Agra.

Talking to Business Standard on Friday, Prahlad Agarwal, convener, Agra Foreign Tourists Traders & Exporters Association, said the tourist business in Agra is broadly divided between the hospitality sector, tour-travel sector and handicrafts industry and while the hotel industry and tour-travel sector have benefited a great deal from the increased tourist traffic, the Rs 600 crore handicrafts industry of the town is still ailing.

According to Agarwal, in the month of October, while the tourism industry had registered a 150 per cent growth, with foreign charters landing in the town for the first time in six years, the handicrafts industry was still to show improvement.

He said earlier the tourist traffic being less, the Agra hotels agents offered discounts to attract tourists and these discounts left a lot of surplus money with the tourists to spend on handicrafts purchases in Agra. But this year, the hotels had refrained from making any discount offers, having already been "booked to the brim" till the new year.

He said that over the years, it had been observed that the European tourists were the best buyers of handicrafts and presently, the tourist traffic that was arriving in Agra mainly comprised of the South-East Asian tourists, who were mainly shoe-string travelers, journeying on a very tight budget with no room left for purchasing handicrafts.

Also, he said, some other destinations in China, Thailand, Indonesia and South India had emerged lately that offered "cheaper" tourism compared to Agra and a large part of the handicraft sales in India was being captured by the southern states like Kerala.

Besides, he said, the mood of the tourists arriving in Agra these days was more bent towards "culture tourism" and they wanted to see as much of the country as possible, travelling on a low budget.