"Indian visitors to Vietnam are expected to increase by at least 1,000% compared to pre-pandemic", the article of the US television channel CNN emphasized in a forecast that visitors to the world's most populous country will "explode" in Southeast Asia.

According to recent reports, by 2024, Indians are expected to spend more than $42 billion per year on overseas travel.

 

India is experiencing what Omri Morgenshtern, Agoda’s CEO, calls a “boom” in tourism and is now the “biggest growing foreign destination”.

 

A series of bold investments

 

Much of India’s outbound tourism-related growth trajectory is being driven by infrastructure improvements and expansion in the aviation sector, experts say.

 

The Indian government this year announced plans to spend 980 billion rupees ($11.9 billion) by 2025 to build and modernize airports in the country.

 

Among them is Noida International Airport in the city of Jewar in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The airport, which is currently opening in 2024, is poised to become Asia’s largest airport and will enhance connectivity to and from the wider Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) and Western Uttar Pradesh.

 

 

Gary Bowerman, founder of Check-in Asia, a travel marketing and research firm, said “the work that India is doing in the country is starting to bear fruit. The country has more airports, more stations, more infrastructure than a decade ago.”

 

Since 2017, at least 73 airports have been commissioned under India’s regional connectivity plan. Meanwhile, Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport entered the list of the world’s 10 busiest international airports for the first time, with 59.5 million passengers by 2022.

 

Indian airlines increase purchases of new aircraft, conditions to help increase foreign arrivals

 

Morgenshtern said the increase in outbound travel from India is the result of investment not only by the government but also by private airlines.

 

With the merger and consolidation of airlines under the Tata umbrella, Air India is now the country’s second largest domestic airline and the largest international airline.

 

The airline has taken other moves to facilitate the growth of Indian tourism. In February, Air India purchased nearly 500 new aircraft, the most ever purchased by an airline in a single order. Over the past two years, the airline has also increased frequency on existing routes and added several new routes to key destinations in Europe and the US.

 

Air India is not the only airline stepping up its game. In early June, low-cost carrier Indigo announced the addition of 174 new weekly flights and six new destinations across Africa and Asia.

 

To meet the growing demand for air travel, India has also expanded its charter program to both domestic and international routes.

 

To attract more Indian tourists, Morgenshtern suggested countries should ease visa restrictions and increase the number of flights from India. “When those two things are done, miracles happen in a developing market like India,” he said.

 

Which country benefits?

 

Based on data collected by Agoda, Indians are now traveling to a wider variety of countries than before. Morgenshtern said to CNN: “If you look at European destinations, you will see more Indians going to France or Switzerland. Those are two countries that weren’t in the top 10 destinations for Indians before the pandemic.”

 

In 2019, the three most popular destinations for Indians were Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. When it comes to Southeast Asia, the top countries frequented by Indians today are almost the same as they were five years ago, but the number of tourists has increased.

 

 

“We’re seeing more and more Indians coming to Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia. All these countries had Indian visitors before but not to the extent that we see them now,” Morgenshtern said.

 

For example, Indian visitors to Vietnam are expected to increase by at least 1,000% from pre-pandemic levels, according to Morgenshtern.

 

Southeast Asia in general is clearly the top destination for Indian tourists. In contrast, based on Agoda data, not many Indians travel to Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, partly because they are far from India.

 

However, according to Mr. Morgenshtern: “When we talk to the travel agencies of the countries, they recognize India as a developing power and they all have something planned. But when it comes to advertising promoting destinations to Indian customers they are “just getting started”.

 

Vietnam tourism used to expect Indian tourists to replace Chinese tourists and implemented many destination promotion programs to attract visitors from the world’s most populous country. However, so far, in the statistics of international tourist markets to Vietnam by the National Administration of Tourism, there is no data on Indian visitors.

 

Source: thanhnien.vn