The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce in India (FICCI) and investment bank Yes Bank found in a study that the average trip travel spent by a tourist in India is almost 2.8 times the travel time spent in Singapore, 4.5 times that in Malaysia and 6.5 times in China. Yet, the contribution of the tourism industry to the gross domestic product, or GDP, is less than that of China, Malaysia and Singapore.

 TYPES OF TOURISM

• Recreational tourism: Tourism is an often activity for recreational purpose. Most tourism took for a change vand rest; this is the reason why package tours have become so popular.
• Environmental tourism: Rich and affluent tourist are preferred to spend more visits to remote places where they get pollution free airs to breath.
• Historical tourism: Tourist is interested to know how our forefather lived and administered in a particular area. They visit heritage locations, temples, churches, museums, forts etc.
• Ethnic tourism: This refers to people traveling to distance places looking to their routes and attending to family obligations. Marriage and death bring people together to their native places. Persons who are settled overseas during later part of life visit place of their birth for giving boost to ethnic tourism.
• Cultural/Rural tourism: Some people are interested to know how other people or communities stay, survive and prosper. The kind of culture they practice their art and music is different from ours. So in order to acquire knowledge, understands culture well, to become familiar with the culture, they undertake journey.
• Adventure tourism: There is a trend among the youth to take adventure tour. They go for trekking, rock climbing, river rafting etc. They organized camp fire and stay under the blue sky. This tourism is meant for people with strong nerves who can tolerate stress.
• Health tourism: In recent years, health tourism has become highly popular. People visit nature cure centers and hospitals providing specialist treatment. Many foreigners visit India for treatment because similar services in their country are costly.
• Religious tourism: India represents multi-religious composition of population. Various package tours are organized to enable people to attend the religious duties and visit places of religious importance. E.g. Char Dham yatra.

CHALLENGES FACING TOURISM IN INDIA
• Infrastructure roadblocks

• Tourism infrastructure is the supply chain of transport, social and environmental infrastructure collaborating at a regional level to create a destination which includes the visitor access from international and domestic source markets through airports, major roads and rail to the stock of rooms to accommodate visitors and physical structures for exhibitions, events and services that attracts visitors and also the environmental infrastructure of national parks, marine parks and reserves, including visitor facilities.

• Environmental concerns

• The quality of the environment, both natural and man-made, is essential to tourism.
• Tourism’s relationship with the environment is complex. It involves many activities that can have adverse environmental effects. The negative impact of tourism development can gradually destroy the environmental resources on which it depends.
• Tourism not only contributes to climate change, but is affected by it as well. Climate change is likely to increase the severity and frequency of storms and severe weather events, which can have disastrous effects on tourism in the affected regions. Some of the other impacts due to tourism are drought, diseases, heat waves, flash floods(ex: Uttarakhand floods), landslides, plastic debris choking rivers and oceans etc.

• Resources concern

• Lack of professionals who can cater to the needs of the tourists.
• India has thousands of incredible archaeological sites that need restoration and maintenance.

• Fragmented Policy and Programs

• Failure to have a comprehensive Tourism policy on board ,programs are run by several ministries also, there is tussle between state and centre over subject of tourism.

• Socio-economic concerns

• Violence: Tourist is often attacked and this has become a repellent. Recent inhumane violence on Africans in India is a grisly reminder. This especially is true
• for women safety (German girl killed in Goa and subsequent litigation)
• Health Standards: Poor sanitation standards serve as a big deterrent for tourist. Recently an US female citizen died of a superbug she infected when in India.
• As identified by the United Nations Environment Programme the negative social impacts of tourism include:
  • Change or loss of indigenous identity and values
  • Culture clashes
  • Physical causes of social stress (increased demand for resources)
  • Ethical issues (increase in sex tourism or the exploitation of child workers)

• Regulation:

• Stringent visa norms and movement viz a viz other countries (e.g. Schengen region in Europe) are also a roadblock in promoting tourism.

SOLUTIONS AND WAY FORWARD

• Tourism requires a strong coordination at inter-ministerial levels as the customer experience is dependent on visas, air passage, and health regulations, import restrictions, which come under the jurisdiction of home, civil aviation, health, finance, environment and commerce ministries.
• Need to have Toursim Councils in all districts of India.
• Eco-tourism needs to be promoted so that tourism in India helps in preserving and sustaining the diversity of India’s natural and cultural environments.
• Build roads and access points, promote accessible infrastructure.
• Allow corporate sponsorship for heritage buildings like Adopt A Heritage Scheme
• Boost Niche areas in tourism like – Temple, Festivals, rich village heritage.
• Aspire for creating world class museums; consider the beautiful city of Geneva, Switzerland, which has a population of less than 2 lakh people. It has more than 40 museums and 50 art galleries, all exquisitely maintained.