India wants to attract at least one per cent share of China’s total outbound tourists in the next one year and 10 per cent in the next five years.

In a bid to attract more tourists from China, the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Tourism, KJ Alphons, will be travelling to the country by August end and hold road-shows in four cities.

Outbound tourists

“China is the biggest outbound market in the world. Last year, around 144 million outbound tourists were from China out of which only 2.4 lakh visited India. We want at least one per cent share of their total outbound tourists in next one year and 10 per cent in the next five years,” Alphons said at a media interaction organised by the Indian Women’s Press Corps on Monday.

During the visit to China, the focus would be on hard-selling India’s heritage sites as the Chinese have also got ancient heritage and know how to appreciate it. Another area of focus would be the Buddhist circuit, the Minister said.

He added that his Ministry was trying to attract more Buddhist tourists from round the world as India received just a small percentage of around 490 million Buddhists all over.

“To increase these numbers we are also in talks with Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari and now we are set to make four-lane highways which would connect the entire Buddhist circuit,” he added.

Job growth

With these initiatives, we hope to get big numbers of Buddhist travellers who are also big spenders, the Minister said.

While talking about the job growth in the sector, Alphons said that in the past four years the sector has produced 14.62 million jobs.

Recently, to boost tourism approval was given for the construction of water aerodromes; however, Kerala being a state surrounded by water was not included in the list.

“It curbs fishing and because of which fishermen faces problem, so there is a need to first identify the areas (where there is no fishing)”, said Alphons.

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