New Delhi, Jul 1 (IANS) India seems to find favour with Americans and Britons, as they accounted for the maximum of nearly 5.1 million tourists to this country.
According to sources in the tourism ministry, about 803,021 Americans visited India in 2009, while 748,765 Britishers came here.
But the tourist number was higher in 2008 from these two countries. While 804,933 Americans came in 2008, about 776,530 were Britons.
About 5.1 million tourists visited India in 2009, against 5.2 million in 2008.
Last year, tourist figure saw a dip with the Mumbai terror attack and the global meltdown, sources said.
Bangladesh continued to draw the third largest number of tourists in the country for the second consecutive year, although the figure saw a dip. While last year, the figure was 458,063, it was 541,884 in 2008.
Sri Lanka came fourth with 240,836 visitors to India in 2009.
Canada came fifth with about 221,448 Canadians visiting the country last year.
This is followed by France (195,307), Germany (193,557), Australia (148,846), Malaysia (134,340), Japan (124,219), Russia (97,705), China (96,997), Singapore (94,754), Nepal (87,487) and Italy (77,995).
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A.S.Mathew, U.S.A.
Thu, Jul 01 2010Lennu, kemman: I do agree with you.
If India would like to have more
foreign tourists, treat them with
respect and make their stay
comfortable. But the same old
police and other systems of the
society will deter tourists in
future visits.
We are not living at the "post card" era, but in the computer
era, and things can be done very
easily as fast by the press of a
few buttons if we wish to do.
But, the Indian bureaucracy
loves to create red tape and
deliberate delays to create
inconvenience to the public.
One person's job in the U.S. which can be done in 30 minutes is done by 4 people in India, and the
duration will be 4 hours.
I had to visit the District Police
office for some registration, which
took three days of travel and
suffering extreme frustration.
Had I given a kick back, I could have avoided all the troubles.
So, the laws are made very complicated for generating a secondary income for the employees.
But, there is another side of the
coin. If we complain to the
proper authorities in the correct
language and right pressure, they
will immediately respond.
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lennu, kemman
Thu, Jul 01 2010Yesterday I was watching the pathetic scenes at Bangalore about the tourists visiting India were waiting in front of the police station for registering themselves sphysically , This shows our callous attitude towards the visitors to our country. Instead of saying athithi devobhava lets change the motto as athithi devvoobhava, as if we are scared to these tourists. I f i was given a choice I wont visit any country which will harass thier guests this way!
We are in the information technoly era , And Bangalore being the capital of IT technology why cant we use the laptop to register rather than going to the police station and worsening the greed of these personnel of these stations ?
Mr Chidambaram if you go to USA and they ask you sit in front of the unprotected policestations for registering your self , you will understand the pain
I will tell the tourists to stop visiting INCREDIBLE INDIA WHICH IS INCREDIBLY ANTI TOURIST IN NATURE
JAIHIND
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