While overall foreign tourist arrivals (FTA) in 2009 were down in India compared to the earlier year, thanks to the global economic slowdown, the traffic from quite a few places actually went up, in some cases significantly.
Overall, there was a drop in FTA of 3.3 per cent over 2008. However, the number of tourists from Africa rose as much as 17 per cent and from Central and South America by 9.6 per cent.
From Southeast Asia as a whole, it rose by 4.7 per cent, though the picture varied by country (Singapore was marginally down, Malaysia sent more).
In South Asia, arrivals from Sri Lanka rose, continuing an earlier upward trend.
By contrast, those from Bangladesh fell significantly.
The largest number of foreign tourists come to India from the US, which was true for 2009, too, the number falling slightly. However, FTA from Britain saw a 16 per cent drop.
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“The whole of Europe has suffered because of the global economic slowdown.
In Southeast Asia, however, conditions have not been bad. Countries like the UK will take some time to be back to the 2007 level,” said Subhash Goyal, managing director of Stic Travel Group.
FTA during January-May 2010 was 2.26 million, a growth rate of 11.3 per cent compared to that in the corresponding period in 2009.